Conflict Management Support Team

​The Conflict Management Support Team (CMST) serves Central Plains Mennonite Conference congregations to help people address conflicts and harms in healthy, biblically-informed ways. Services range from resources and workshops on communication skills for conflict transformation to facilitation work for requested interventions.

To strengthen this work in 2020, CMST is inviting members of Central Plains churches to consider three different levels of participation:

1. Join our team as an active Committee Member (Requires some background in resolution work; includes a monthly online team meeting)
2. Join as an Associate Member to assist in workshops or facilitation work in your region or state (Requires a sense of gifting in guiding hard conversations)
3. Join as a Facilitator-in-Training to provide low-level dialogue supports in your own church (Next fall we hope to have an initial facilitation training)  

We ask every church to prayerfully enter into this request for new partners and to collectively discern who might be affirmed by congregations to join our work.  Please contact Susan Janzen to learn about next steps or to get more information. 

Take the Conflict Management Support Team Survey

Workshops and Resources for congregations

Finding our way through conflict to reconciliation
by Tim Detweiler

The mediator’s perspective
by Lois Janzen Preheim

Contact Us: Susan Janzen
​susanjanzen@centralplainsmc.org

Introducing the team

​Charity Brubaker lives and works on a farm in rural Marion, South Dakota.  She earned her B.A. in Social Work from Goshen College in 2004, and has worked intermittently since then facilitating mediations with juveniles and adults in the criminal justice system through the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program in Elkhart, IN and with Restore, Inc. in Sioux Falls, SD.  She attends Salem-Zion Mennonite Church outside of Freeman, South Dakota.

Ted Lewis (Duluth, MN) is a Restorative Justice consultant and trainer with the Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking, University of Minnesota. Since the mid-90's, he has mediated cases in both criminal and civil realms. Between 2004 and 2009, he served churches in the Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference. Ted also writes articles for The Mennonite on conflict and communication themes.

Lon Marshall is a licensed marriage and family therapist. He works in private practice and is the founder and owner of Cornerstone Brief Therapy in the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City corridor. He has worked in critical incident debriefing, conflict resolution, counseling and therapy in many contexts for 25 years. He attends West Union Mennonite Church in Parnell, Iowa. 

​Sharon Waltner farms with her husband and daughter. In addition, she works part time with the Avera Healthcare System in leadership training and facilitates mediations/interventions. She has taken multiple mediation courses with the Lombard Peace Center and KIPCOR.

Susan Janzen is the Conference Minister for Ministerial Leadership. Susan works alongside the Conflict Management Support Team.