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A Guide to Resolving Relational Conflict

You have conflict in your life—we all do. You encounter it in your home, your workplace, your school, or even your church. All around us tensions exist and disputes persist.

Offered here is a step-by-step process for pursuing peace in ALL your relationships and a tool you can use to help others. This guide is:

• BIBLICAL — relies on the absolute authority, sufficiency, and life-giving power of God’s Spirit-breathed Word
• CHRIST-CENTERED — depends on the forgiving and empowering grace of Jesus
• PRACTICAL — provides concrete action steps, case examples, discussion questions, and suggested language to handle specific situations
• PROVEN — offers tried-and-true methods from a pastor, professor, counselor, and certified Christian conciliator who has led couples, churches, and Christian schools to make peace for over twenty-five years

Packed with wisdom and practical techniques, this manageable book on reconciliation will send you on your way to pursuing peace while helping others to do the same.

Here is a manageable book on reconciliation that offers a practical, grace-based plan with a simple three-step model. Ultimately, it addresses various types of conflicted relationships so that peace might be established.

Robert D. Jones (DMin, Westminster Theological Seminary) serves as a biblical counseling professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a certified biblical counselor, a Christian conciliator, an adjunct instructor, and a church reconciliation trainer with Peacemaker Ministries. Jones is the author of Uprooting Anger and has written numerous ministry booklets and articles.

“Interpersonal conflict is a misery maker, stirring up chaos and the fog of war. Robert Jones carefully walks down the narrow road that makes peace and stirs up joy. His presentation is judicious, wide-ranging, balanced, biblical, and full of grace. Every counselor needs to know these things. Every struggler willing to take the time will benefit—and we are all strugglers in these matters. Speed-reading not allowed! Pursuing Peace needs to be slowly absorbed and would make a marvelous twelve-week study.”—David Powlison, Faculty,Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation; Senior Editor, Journal of Biblical Counseling

“Conflict comes in many shapes and sizes, so we need a variety of perspectives and insights into how to respond to it in biblically faithful ways. I am delighted that Robert Jones has brought his many years of pastoral and counseling experience to bear on this topic—providing a fresh perspective on how to approach conflict and estranged people in a grace-filled, gospel-centered way.”—Ken Sande, President, Peacemaker Ministries

“In a day when ‘us and them’ seems to be the default presumption with which our society confronts culture, politics, and religion, Robert Jones has provided us a scripturally sound and pragmatic path to follow to experience the peace for which most of us have a God-given desire. While the book may find itself in the syllabus of many Christian counseling classes, it is equally at home in the school of practical theology. Rich with biblical references and connected to practical application, Pursuing Peace will be helpful specifically for those dealing with issues of conflict in any arena of life, and generally for all who wish to gain a clearer understanding of how to interact with others in God-pleasing ways. With uncanny insights and sharp clarity, Dr. Jones addresses and then makes sense of normal, everyday conflicts and how they should be handled so that full resolution might be experienced. This book is indeed a helpful contribution to the culture of our day.”—Thom Rainer, President and CEO, LifeWay Christian Resources

“Robert Jones has written a most profitable and sound book in Pursuing Peace. Though I wish it were not needed in the church today, the fact is that the message and advice of this book are desperately needed even among believers. I urge all of God’s leaders in the household of faith not only to read this volume, but to discuss it as a guide for what to do the next time the peace of Christ’s church is disturbed. Such reading and discussion will save loads of grief and some future headaches, as well as possible loss of the joy of the Lord.”—Walter C. Kaiser Jr., President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Old Testament and Ethics, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary