Eruptive conflict is a pastor’s bailiwick. Who among us hasn’t had to talk a disgruntled organist down from her posturing threat to withdraw from the Christmas concert? We’ve all had to lobby an exasperated Sunday School teacher for mercy on behalf of an unruly kid and his embarrassed parents.

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if your life depended on it by Chris Voss, FBI.

What does a terrorist hostage negotiator for the FBI have in common with a Reformed Baptist pastor? As it turns out, way more than I imagined.

I’m not saying my church is any more fraught with life-and-death stand-offs than the average congregation. But I was intrigued by how closely insights from the FBI’s experience and Harvard Business School’s research presented in this book matched the seminary training I received in biblical counseling.

Pastors, like FBI agents, move in the world of tense relationships, camouflaged motives, prickly personalities, and charged emotions. Eruptive conflict is a pastor’s bailiwick. Who among us hasn’t had to talk a disgruntled organist down from her posturing threat to withdraw from the Christmas concert? We’ve all had to lobby an exasperated Sunday School teacher for mercy on behalf of an unruly kid and his embarrassed parents.

One week the minister is mediating between a conservative band leader and an overly energetic drummer, the next he’s curating a hymn selection that is equally acceptable to millennials and octogenarians, and in his spare time he defuses an explosive power struggle on the missions committee, while refereeing a bitter bun fight between a volatile Euodia and a touchy Syntyche.

Pastors could teach at Quantico.

To be clear: there is little to glean from this volume that you wouldn’t learn from reading Paul Tripp, Deepak Reju, or the Book of Proverbs. But I found it entertaining and truly helpful to see Solomonic common sense being employed in a context alien to church life. To me, the high stakes negotiation roundtable is an exotic environment. But it is precisely this novel perspective that brought out new hues of implementation of the principles I use all the time in ministry.

Chris Voss honed his emotional intelligence in the field. As the lead international negotiator for the FBI he has secured the safe release of kidnapped missionaries. He has rescued hostages from bank robbers, while armed with only a telephone. He has settled international conflicts for foreign governments. And these techniques transition seamlessly into everyday interactions. From airline check-in counters to a toddler’s bedtime: “Life is negotiation. The majority of the interactions we have at work and at home are negotiations that boil down to the expression of a simple, animalistic urge: I want… I want you to give me a 10% raise…and I want you to go to sleep at 9 p.m.” (pg 17.)

Sounds a little like the FBI has been studying the Book of James, doesn’t it? “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask,” (James 4:1-2).

Never Split the Difference is named for the maxim that a lazy compromise leaves both parties giving up value, while some skill and effort could uncover underlying needs, yielding a solution where both parties get what they really want from a situation giving up only that which they didn’t truly value. This takes some finesse. And the author believes the skill can be learned.

Voss cites myriad behavioral experiments and psychological findings to substantiate his methodology, and he illustrates their implementation by recounting dramatic hostage scenarios he experienced. But the methods he avers are so simple that they quickly become habits in daily life. Without consciously attempting to do so, I found myself applying the communication techniques in conversations with members, elders, visitors, counselees, and my children (though trying influence tactics on your wife is not recommended, especially if she too has read the book).

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