The elements described below offer different ways to engage with the topic of this session. It’s up to you whether you use all of them or just one. They are tools for you; you decide how to use them. What matters:

  • Be flexible and adapt the activities to the group dynamic.
  • Make sure all participants are included and feel comfortable.
  • Be sensitive to emotional reactions, especially when it comes to personal topics.

Icebreaker activity “Chair Chaos”

⏱ 20 minutes

This exercise can get pretty messy and may even lead to some hard conflicts. Over time, the participants will hopefully realize that their tasks don’t actually contradict each other and start working together. The tasks are worded so that they leave room for interpretation, and so are the instructions. For example, the participants can communicate with each other nonverbally and still keep the rule of “no talking.” But they have to discover that way out themselves, without your help. In the end there is no right or wrong. The focus is on how people behave and what they experience in a conflict. The reflection helps the participants see how they react in a conflict: fight, flight or freeze.

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Tip: Don’t give away a solution, and only step in if someone could get hurt or the instructions are being ignored. Make it clear that nobody is allowed to get hurt. Keep an eye on the participants’ safety.

Divide the number of participants by three. That’s how many slips of paper you need for each task. Then write the following three tasks on small slips of paper so that every participant gets one task:

  • Turn all the chairs so their backs face the window
  • Stack all the chairs
  • Lay all the chairs on the floor

Fold the slips so nobody can see what’s written on them and mix them in a container.

Have every participant draw a slip. But before you pass the container around, give these instructions:

  • Everyone draws a slip but doesn’t look at it yet.
  • Each slip has a task on it that you have to carry out. Nobody else may see what’s on your slip.
  • The task only refers to this room.
  • You may not talk while you carry out the task.
  • When you think you have completed your task, sit down on the floor at the edge of the room and wait.
  • The game is over when everyone is sitting and everyone thinks their task is done.
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Tip: Observe the interactions and take notes for the reflection later.

Reflection questions

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Do you think you completed your task?
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Are you satisfied with how you completed your task?
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What were you thinking and feeling during the exercise?
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What was the most challenging part for you?
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What made you work against each other?
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How did the lack of communication affect the result?
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At what point did you notice that others had the same task as you?
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At what point did you realize that together you could complete all the tasks?
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Use your observations to give individual feedback and prompt deeper reflection.
  • “___, I noticed that you walked away when ___.”
  • “___, how did you feel when ___?”
  • “___, what made you ___?”
  • “What was going through your mind in that moment?” “Do you often think that in conflict situations?”
  • “___, what would you have wished for when ___?”
  • …
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What can you take from this experience for real conflicts?

Case study: the broken controller

⏱ 10 minutes

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Tip: Print out the case study with the questions so the participants can work on it in small groups.

Jake visits his cousin Leo over spring break. They don’t see each other often, so they’re all the more excited to spend the break together. Naturally, gaming is a big part of it. Time flies faster than they’d like, and soon Jake is on his way home again. That evening, Leo discovers that something is wrong with one of the controllers. He suspects it got damaged during a game because of Jake’s rough playing style. But he isn’t sure whether he should call Jake about it, and he decides to ignore the problem and just put the broken controller aside.

When Jake and Leo see each other again over summer break, Leo remembers the broken controller and what the repair cost him. He decides to bring it up. But months have passed by now, and Jake can barely remember the specific incident. He feels unfairly accused and reacts with annoyance and confusion, which leads to a tense mood between the two of them.

Questions

  • Who do you think is in the right? Why?
  • What makes it hard to judge who is in the right?
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Takeaway: If the problem had been addressed right away, Leo and Jake might have been able to reconstruct the situation more clearly and sort it out without accusations. By waiting, the memory of the exact circumstances became blurry, which made the conflict worse.
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Who can tell me what we talked about last week?

Do you see how hard it is to reconstruct what happened a week ago?

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Imagine I showed you a video today and asked you next week what you saw in it. How much do you think you would still remember correctly?

Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer did exactly that. They showed people videos of accidents and asked them a week later whether they had seen broken glass. Many of them said yes, even though there was no glass in the video. Even if that had to do with how the question was asked, it still shows us how tricky our memories can be.

Bible study

⏱ 10 minutes

📖 Read Ephesians 4:26-27 and 29-32

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What advice does Paul give us here about conflicts?
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How can we follow Paul’s advice and make sure we resolve conflicts before the day ends?
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How can we make sure our memories don’t lie to us if we aren’t able to resolve the conflict right away?

Back to our case study once more:

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What do you think kept Leo from addressing the problem right away?
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What could keep you from addressing things right away?

Closing activity “Friendship Funeral”

⏱ 5 minutes

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Materials for each participant: some sand or soil, a spoon, a slip of paper, a pen
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Hand out the materials to every participant.

You’ve just received some sand, a spoon, a slip of paper and a pen from me. Write the name of someone close to you in the middle of the slip. That could be someone from your family, a friend and so on.

Now imagine you have a conflict with that person. Maybe you’ve already had a conflict with them. Keep this in mind: with every “Oh, I’ll sort that out later” or “It’s not that bad” or “I don’t want to talk about it,” we dig another shovelful of our relationship’s grave.

When you’re in a conflict and think, “Oh, I’ll sort that out later,” you start burying the relationship. Now take a full spoonful of sand and pour it over the name.

Imagine the other person tries to talk with you about it and you say, “I don’t want to talk about it.” Take another full spoonful of sand and pour it over the name. Now imagine the person sitting next to you comes to you and tells you about their conflict, and you listen and agree with them without knowing how the other person experienced it. Take another full spoonful of sand and pour it over the name on the slip of the person to your right. We help others bury their relationships by making ourselves available as a trash can for their frustration.

None of us wants to bury relationships, our own or other people’s. But keeping them alive takes courage and effort. That’s why it’s important that we encourage each other to resolve conflicts, and to do it before the day ends.

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This session is based on the article “How Our Memories Can Bury Relationships”.

English version: September 2026