Full Course Description
Start a Peacefire Practice (1 Module)
Professor: Attorney/Pastor Brian DeCook
Presenter: Haley Steiner
Full Course Description
Start a Peacefire Practice is a leadership multiplication course for Christian leaders who have completed Navigating Conflict in Christ ministry training or MIN 240: PeaceSmart Relationships. These courses, developed by Attorney/Pastor Brian DeCook, equip believers to navigate conflict as a place of discipleship, spiritual formation, and faithful Christian witness.
This follow-up practice course helps trained leaders move from personal Peacefire formation into ministry multiplication. Students learn how to start a Peacefire Practice in a Soul Center, local church, chaplaincy setting, parish ministry, small group, online ministry, workplace, or community-based Christian care context.
Using the Peacefire framework, students learn to help others distinguish the Wildfire of flesh-driven reactions from the Peacefire of God’s presence, truth, grace, wisdom, and power. The course also prepares leaders to recognize Strangefire, the temptation to pursue godly goals through self-powered, controlling, or ungodly methods.
This course is especially important for ministry leaders, bi-vocational ministers, chaplains, Soul Center leaders, life coaches, pastors, parish care leaders, and Christian leaders serving in enterprise, organizational, or community settings. Professor Brian DeCook practiced law for over twenty-five years and saw firsthand how unresolved conflict damages families, churches, businesses, ministries, and communities. This course brings biblical wisdom, practical ministry design, and PeaceSmart conflict navigation into the real situations Christian leaders face.
Course Overview
Conflict is not only a problem to survive. In Christ, conflict can become a place of discipleship, maturity, truth, repentance, forgiveness, boundary-setting, reconciliation where possible, and faithful witness.
Start a Peacefire Practice equips students to bring a biblical peace culture into real relationships and ministry settings. Students learn to pursue God’s purposes in conflict rather than reacting from anger, fear, pride, shame, avoidance, control, or revenge. They are trained to depend on God’s presence and reconciling power as they help others take the next faithful step.
Across twelve topics, students learn how to design and launch a practical Peacefire ministry pathway that helps people navigate the trap of offense, the desires beneath conflict, personal responsibility, confession, forgiveness, reconciliation, boundaries, enemy love, and the Jesus Mindset of humble obedience and relentless reliance on Christ.
Practical applications include marriage, parenting, family relationships, church life, ministry teams, workplaces, leadership settings, chaplaincy conversations, enterprise-related conflict, parish care, Soul Center ministry, and relationships with opponents.
This course does not train leaders to offer licensed counseling, legal advice, crisis intervention, formal mediation, workplace investigation, or pressure-based reconciliation. It does not teach conflict avoidance, religious niceness, or reconciliation without truth and safety. Instead, it equips Peacefire leaders to offer Christian conflict-navigation coaching with role clarity, consent, wise boundaries, trusted referral pathways, and accountability.
By the end of the course, students will have a launch-ready Peacefire Practice plan that includes a public ministry description, service menu, first-session pathway, consent language, safety and referral statement, follow-up process, partnership plan, ninety-day pilot, and commissioning prayer.
The goal is multiplication: trained Christian leaders helping others return to the Peacefire of God’s presence, own their part, confront sin wisely, forgive faithfully, build appropriate firebreaks when needed, and overcome evil with good in ways that honor Jesus Christ.
Course Outcomes
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
Explain the Peacefire framework as a Christian conflict-navigation ministry model.
Discern and pursue God’s purposes in situations of conflict.
Recognize and avoid harmful Wildfire reactions such as anger, fear, bitterness, gossip, control, avoidance, retaliation, and pride.
Identify Strangefire, the temptation to pursue godly goals through self-powered or ungodly methods.
Help others seek God’s presence in conflict through humility, faith, love, sacrifice, prayer, Scripture, and dependence on Christ.
Use PeaceSmart principles in families, churches, ministries, organizations, workplaces, chaplaincy settings, enterprise contexts, and evangelism.
Support loving confrontation, confession, forgiveness, reconciliation-readiness, and faithful repair without pressure or manipulation.
Distinguish forgiveness, reconciliation, restored trust, consequences, access, safety, and appropriate firebreaks.
Develop a setting-specific Peacefire Practice with clear role boundaries, consent language, safety awareness, and referral readiness.
Create a public service menu and first-session pathway for one-to-one conflict-navigation coaching, group formation, workshops, Bible studies, and follow-up care.
Build partnerships with pastors, chaplains, counselors, ministry leaders, safeguarding contacts, and other referral resources.
Complete a ninety-day pilot plan for launching a Peacefire Practice with humility, accountability, sustainability, and the Jesus Mindset.
Final Course Deliverable
Students will complete a Peacefire Practice Launch Portfolio, including:
Practice purpose statement
Public ministry description
Service menu
First-session pathway
Consent and role-clarity language
Safety and referral statement
Conflict intake and Peacefire discernment tools
Firebreak and boundary guidance
Follow-up pathway
Partnership and referral plan
Ninety-day pilot plan
PeaceSmart Rule of Life
Commissioning prayer
Final Course Goal
The final goal of Start a Peacefire Practice is not merely that students understand conflict. The goal is that trained Christian leaders can multiply Peacefire ministry in real settings, helping others return to Christ in the middle of conflict.
Students are equipped to launch humble, safe, biblical, consent-based, accountable, and referral-ready Peacefire Practices that help people resist Wildfire, reject Strangefire, seek God’s presence, tell the truth in love, build faithful firebreaks when needed, and overcome evil with good.