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Churches, synagogues, and other religious institutions are often natural conveners and rare meeting grounds for Americans with disparate backgrounds and views. Clergy and religious institutions often wish to model respectful engagement across divides in their communities, but feel ill-equipped to do so. Many end up shying away from important moral and political issues for fear of controversy, tension, or rocking the boat.
Drawing on conflict resolution expertise, RTT’s world class trainings have supported thousands of faith leaders across the country with road-tested tools, skills, and a framework for building a culture of dialogue across divides in their communities. Through our training, consultation, and programming, religious leaders have turned their institutions into vibrant, welcoming spaces to discuss and learn about the thorniest issues while honoring all of their congregants, even where they strongly disagree. RTT programs have also supported clergy to share their own moral voices and concerns, defusing resistance by making more room for all voices to address charged issues in a spirit of partnership.
RTT’s recognized toolkit has supported “good conflict” in religious institutions across the country. If you are interested in bringing RTT to your network or community, we’d love to hear from you.
This model truly lives up to its name—transformative. The training gives us the knowledge and the skills—and the opportunity to practice those skills—to enter boldly into very challenging interactions in a way that truly honors every participant while inviting them into deeper understanding of each other.The facilitators helped us anticipate challenges and figure out how to implement this in our own work. I feel much more confident and hopeful about entering into and helping facilitate difficult conversations. I am eager to put the tools into place to help deepen a sense of community among those with very different views and perhaps even move towards solutions to some of the most challenging issues of our day.”
The RTT workshop answered a need I have felt deeply for some time. The increased polarization in our country saddens me, and this workshop taught me concrete skills that we can use and teach others. My dream is to take this back to my Synod team—I want each congregation to have at least one person trained in RTT’s framework to facilitate these kinds of discussions. For the first time in a long time, I feel hopeful that building God's beloved community is possible. We've got tools to give us confidence to try something now... It’s not easy, but it’s possible.”
In just a few sessions I have learned more concrete skills to use in my professional life than I have in many other trainings combined. What appears simple at first opens up a world of possibility and has helped me rethink the notion of conflict mediation into conflict transformation. I will use RTT skills in teaching situations, pastoral care situations, working with colleagues, board members, etc.—even when there isn't a conflict per se, but just as a way to operate more intentionally in all personal and professional settings. In my humble opinion, these skills can be likened to a spiritual practice as much as they are tools in my professional toolbox.”
RTT is a beacon of light in a culture that has lost the ability to have productive conversations. These methods are both easily attainable yet theoretically robust and supported. This whole process has given me a framework for work with college students specifically trying to create spaces to have hard conversations. This training will help me have more fruitful conversations with those in my life, community and ministry for years to come.”
Working with RTT exceeded even our highest hopes. Not only was it a pleasure to work with them each step of the way, not only were the sessions deep, focused, and connective—but after participating, the entire cohort now feels inspired to continue doing this work throughout our synagogue by utilizing the tools they learned from RTT. We hope to keep working with RTT as we endeavor to keep our community empowered, energized, and engaged!”
I have been so disheartened by the divisions in our country (and my local community) that I simply avoid sharing some of my strongest feelings. This training has helped me reconsider and re-think how the church should be the one place where such listening and engagement should be occurring and modeled for others. We live in such a polarized time. Resetting the Table served as experiential education for me—a vision of what can be experienced when we dive into listening and release our fear and presumed divisions.”
Resetting the Table is the gold standard in conversations across differences. They do a masterful job of integrating theory and practice.”
