How to Have Difficult Conversations Without Destroying Your Relationships

Ivan Williams and Michael Campbell invite you to join them October 5, 2021 for the Best Practices online Book club featuring author Dr. Seth Pierce and his latest book, Seeking an Understanding: How to Have Difficult Conversations Without Destroying Your Relationships (AdventSource, 2020). The book is about how we communicate, especially in an often-polarized environment where in online discussions it can be extremely difficult to maintain a civil conversation.

The book is the result of Seth’s experience as a pastor in which he developed a sermon series. Instead of trying to solve all these contentious issues, he backed up to look at issues related to power and how we communicate, especially within the church. The challenge comes when a person is confronted with different ideas than their own that leads to cognitive dissonance—a silencing of those with whom we disagree. A step in the right direction is recognizing the influence of various and diverse cultures upon each of our lives. Understanding those cultural spheres is a great starting point. One such conversation is understanding the Critical Standpoint Theory, developed by Nancy Harstock in the early 1980s, that helps inform many contemporary social justice movements. How we understand systems of power relates very much to Adventist eschatology in Revelation 18. Dr. Pierce confronts four barriers to seeking an understanding and suggests some helpful paths forward that every pastor and communicator will want to reflect on his ideas, along with practical applications, both online and in the pulpit.