Can We Talk but Still Stay Together: Using Restorative Practice to Address Conflict in Faith Communities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Restorative practice is increasingly being used in numerous Canadian contexts, including social work practice, to resolve conflict in emotionally healthy ways. It aims to facilitate dialogue, repair and nurture relationships, and foster belonging. Its strategies align with the Christian imperative to develop right relationships with our neighbours. Despite its potential value to social work professionals, including Christians, little scholarship describes how it can be implemented. This article offers a case example of restorative practice work implemented in faith communities to address conflict and build stronger, more connected communities. First, the origins of the approach are discussed. Then, an overview of the approach developed for faith communities is offered. This is followed by an overview of how it is implemented in practice. Finally, an example is offered illustrating its implementation across the Christian Reformed Church of North America. The article concludes with considerations for Christian social work professionals interested in understanding or utilizing this approach
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.015 | 0.019 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.025 | 0.023 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.009 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.020 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".