Ken Sande's The Peace Maker

Ken Sande's “The Peace Maker”

A “biblical guide to resolving personal conflict”, this, in a nutshell is what “The Peace Maker” is all about. In this critical book review I will be taking topics from the book and giving the reader my personal views on how I either reacted or related to the topics covered. My goal for this paper is to give the reader a non-biased opinion of “The Peace Maker”, which was published by Baker Books in June of 2004.

To first critique a book you must have some background information on the author himself and why he is qualified to write a book on conflict management through a biblical perspective. Ken Sande is the author of the book as well as being the president of Peacemaker Ministries, which is a company designed to offer Christians conflict training by using the bible and its scriptures. Mr. Sande who is an engineer and lawyer by trade has been using his peacemaking skills since 1982 to solve conflicts in business, in the church and in family disputes. Ken is a Certified Christian Conciliator™ and has served on such committees as the Christian Legal Society and the Dispute Resolution Committee of the State Bar of Montana, which is where he earned his qualifications to write this book.

“The Peace Maker”, is what I would describe as a self-help book that can be read by anyone that wants to have a solid understanding of conflict resolution and it does not matter if you are a Christian or not this book makes good points on how to solve conflict. If you are a non-Christian this is a bit harder of a read because of the constant reference to the bible and its scriptures but there are a lot of valid points that are made even without the references to the bible.

The purpose of this book is to inform the reader of the best course of action to take when trying to resolve conflict while at the same time preserving God’s good grace, which can be difficult even at the best of times. In order to do this the reader must stick to the four G’s of biblical conflict management which are to Glorify God, Get the log out of your own eye, Gently restore and Go and be reconciled. By following these four G’s you will bring praise to God and hopefully open up others to his glorious ways. At times in the book the author’s point of view goes from being an informer of ways to deal with conflict into being more of a preacher of the...

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...this is in chapter 9 where he states that you can read one of his other books to get more information on being a reconciler but a reconciler does the same thing a mediator does but not to the same extent.

In conclusion, this book has showed me some good techniques to solving conflict and has showed me that the bible can have an influence on people even if you are not a Christian, like myself. I do admit that this book is not for everyone but if you can look past the downfalls that I have pointed out and find the relevant information this book can be an essential tool to any mediator or negotiator. I think this would be an excellent book for any person who is involved with the church who plans on taking on mediator roles because “The Peace Maker” offers great tips on how to bring estranged siblings back together as well as reuniting failed marriages. I would suggest this book to anyone that is taking a conflict management course that has not had the opportunity to see how to solve conflict from a biblical perspective because to be an effective mediator or negotiator you should be able to use all the resources available to solve any conflict that might be presented to you.