Priya Parker on Fighting Well, and Why Conflict Is Not Sin

About this sermon

Think about the last real fight you had with someone you love, then think about what you did with it. Most of us swallowed it and called it peace. Priya Parker has spent twenty years walking into rooms where groups are coming apart, churches mid-split, companies that lost their founder, families with one topic nobody will name at the table. She is back on the show with a new book, The Art of Fighting, and her argument is that the peace we keep by avoiding each other costs us the very thing we say we want most. Jen and Priya open with a hot takes round on pineapple pizza and whether a hot dog is a sandwich, which turns out to be one of Priya's actual tools: low stakes arguing is practice for the high stakes kind. From there, what unhealthy peace looks like inside a family, a team, or a church. Priya tells the story of her grandfather's funeral, where the minister's highest praise for a fifty year marriage was that the couple never fought. Jen names the four years she let a business partnership die rather than have one hard conversation. They get into how to diagnose the fight you are actually in, why “we're not a ___” is the sentence to listen for, and what happened when Priya went looking for the best literature on group conflict and kept landing in the Christian tradition. Conflict is not sin. It is a skill, and every one of us can get better at it. Part of September's Sacred Work series, here on the show and over in the AWAKE Collective. Links The Art of Fighting by Priya Parker: https://www.priyaparker.com/ Group Life on Substack: https://priyaparker.substack.com/ Leave Jen a voicemail: https://jenhatmaker.com/podcast The AWAKE Collective on Substack: https://jenhatmaker.substack.com/ Connect with Jen Website: https://jenhatmaker.com/ Instagram: https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Facebook: https://facebook.com/jenhatmaker Twitter: https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy. jen hatmaker, for the love podcast, priya parker, the art of fighting, the art of gathering, sacred work, healthy conflict, conflict resolution, how to fight fair, unhealthy peace, conflict avoidance, conflict is not sin, church conflict, church split, family conflict, difficult conversations, repair and repentance, non anxious presence, group dynamics, belonging, facilitation

Topics

• Repentance