At our center we bought a bike to be shared by two of the staff there. At first it worked out fine, with each one using the bike 3 days but then one of them wanted to have transportation more readily available and so she borrowed money to buy a 2nd bike. Then she went to the other staff and said that they should sell the church bicycle and split the money evenly. You can imagine that this came as a surprise to the first woman because she would be without transportation if the bike was sold.
They had a conflict between them and so I, with the new skills from Peace Bridges, was faced with the challenge of insuring a “win-win” situation. I met with each of them to help them to understand the other’s feelings. Once the second woman saw that she had made the decision alone to buy the bike and that it wasn’t fair to just assume that it would be OK to sell the church bike she admitted that she’d made a mistake. She understands that she is still welcome to use the church bicycle when she needs it and the two women seem closer having resolved the problem respectfully.
- Male Co-pastor, C3
