Hi friends,
Hope you are all doing well. Thanks for subscribing to my blog. I have much yet to share, and I am very grateful that you are interested in these personal stories and my reflections about them. I want all my content to be always free for everyone, so it means all the more when some folks choose to pay for it. Every little bit helps me continue this work, so THANK YOU!
This post is about my work with Peace Catalyst International and Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East.
I did not grow up in a church tradition that emphasized peacemaking as an essential part of the gospel. My impulse was always towards such work, but it was one which I felt I had to suppress in the churches where I spent most of my younger life. Somehow it was considered “worldly” work. Our main focus was to get people “saved” – which as I understood it at the time was essentially afterlife security rather than the holistic kind of salvation that Jesus demonstrated in his life and ministry—and his unsurpassed work of peacemaking in so many different dimensions.
I continue to hear from other Christians that they have had similar experiences. Overall, we have not heard Christians (especially those from an Evangelical orPentecostal/Charismatic background like mine) emphasizing the theological and practical centrality of shalom and the work towards holistic just peace as part of the good news.
Many Christians are longing for this kind of expression of faith (and of course, many non-Christians and followers of other faiths wish they had more Christian allies). This is where Peace Catalyst International comes in. PCI is a movement focused equipping and mobilizing Christians for collaborative peacebuilding across lines of difference. We are a community dedicated to a lifestyle of learning, peacemaking, justice work, reconciliation, forgiveness, truth-telling, and honoring the most vulnerable among us as essential to our Christian faith.
PCI is in the middle of what we are calling an international week of peacebuilding, and we have a lot of great resources out there. Tomorrow – Saturday – there will be two sessions: Identity and Conflict, and Embracing the fullness of biblical peace. On Sunday, I’ll be participating in a session called Practicing Hope in Times of War. Along with a few other dear PCI friends—Andy and Cari Larsen and David Vidmar-- we will be talking about our experience in Israel-Palestine and how we can think about it from a Christian perspective of peacemaking. I really hope you can join us.
I also wanted to let you know about my other organization, Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East. We are creating new conversations in evangelical spaces and if that resonates with you, I’d love for you to be a part of it. We’ve got some great upcoming webinars, such as “Does Just War Justify too much?” We will also be holding a forum this December 6,7,8 in Montecito, California entitled Israel and Palestine: How Can American Christians Respond? We will learn together, meet trustworthy teachers, stand on the side of peace.
Finally, if you would like to partner with me in this work, I am currently raising support for the work that I do in PCI, NEME, and other capacities. If you would like to support this work you can of course do so here, through substack. And if you would like to become a monthly supporter, you can do that through Peace Catalyst. This will really help me move forward with confidence in the work the Lord has called me to do both here in the states, Egypt, Israel/Palestine and beyond.
I want this place to be relational. I’ll continue to share stories here, as well as theological reflections and informing you of events that you might want to be a part of. I am hoping to make this blog the central area where you can find these things. You can also follow me on Facebook for more content.
I’ll close with this video from one month ago, when I had the honor of participating in this interfaith prayer vigil at the Gaza border, led by Rabbis for Human Rights. I am so glad I pulled out my phone while we sang Amazing Grace in three languages. You can hear the chirping of desert birds joining us. You can also hear the sounds of bombs falling in Gaza, which is just a few kilometers from where we were.
In some ways, this video communicates everything that I want to say about the importance and urgency of peacemaking. Especially here at the one year anniversary of Oct 7 and all the suffering that has followed since then.
Thanks for listening, thanks for joining, and thanks for your support.
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