WHAT does it look like to disagree well with someone? Many children learn quickly in life that no one is ever going to agree with everyone. Conflict is part of the bread and butter of living, and yet it is also something that many people, children and adults alike, find very difficult. We find disagreement, polite or otherwise in every part of life: online, and in real life. It is hard, because it touches on matters that are important to us, on values that we treasure; how we understand ourselves and the world. When our buttons are pushed, we push out.

As Christian communities across Cumbria: Anglican, Methodist, United Reformed, Salvation Army, and others seek to work more closely together, it is rarely long before disagreement, polite or otherwise, enters the frame. As we seek to work together as partners we realise that we have different perspectives on how to love God and how to love and serve our communities. The process of negotiation to find a solution is not always easy. But we have promised to stick by each other, because we are stronger together than apart.

Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, offers a framework for working with disagreement. It is challenging, but points to the possibility of reconciliation that leads to a renewed shared purpose, that uses the conflict as a building block for fullness of life. Disagreement is not the problem, it is a fact; how we work with it can build new possibilities we might never have imagined.

The Rev Sarah Moore, President of the United Reformed Church in Cumbria