Spring 2025 · Vol. 54 No. 1 · pp. 7–20
Peacemaking as Mission: Engaging a World in Need of God’s Shalom
The world is broken and desperate for peace. Whether it is mean-spirited partisan politics, oppressive economic disparity, violent racial wars, or interpersonal strife, the world seems to be ruled by hatred, greed, and endless conflict, leaving too many relationships fragmented and too many people without hope.
Within God’s mission story, the church is positioned as an active agent of reconciliation, entreating others to be reconciled to God and to one another so that all may join in God’s holistic and just peace. p. 8
As peacemaking practitioners and followers of Jesus, we have come to believe that peacemaking lies at the very heart of Christian mission, although it is an aspect that has often been neglected or misunderstood by the church. The call to peacemaking, however, is based on the biblical understanding that God’s mission in the world is to bring shalom, the Hebrew word for completeness, soundness, welfare, and peace, which indicates a picture of human flourishing that is holistic in nature.
Without this essential understanding of peacemaking, the church’s mission in today’s world lacks integrity and power, and too often contributes to the fragmentation. However, when we as the church align our mission with the way of Jesus—to liberate, to heal, and to accomplish a just peace—we have an enormous capacity to impact meaningful change in the world. Indeed, as we rediscover that peacebuilding is our mission, a new paradigm for vocation emerges that is holistic in scope and faithful to God as well as credible and attractive to the watching world (Carey). Ultimately, this paradigm provides a clarity of purpose for followers of Jesus: to collaborate with the God of peace to meet the world’s desperate need for peace.
The Need for Peace
Current Context: Disintegration
Like the men of Issachar who “understood the times and knew what [they] should do” (1 Chron 12:32 NIV, passim), we must honestly evaluate the rapid and large-scale changes that are affecting our world in order to effectively determine how we should respond. Walter Brueggemann asserts that the nature of brokenness in society is evidence of the lack of God’s shalom: “Absence of shalom and lack of harmony are expressed in social disorder as evidenced in economic inequality, judicial perversion, and political oppression and exclusivism” (Brueggemann, 18).
We concur with Brueggemann’s evaluation of the following key challenges:
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Large scale migration and forced displacement of people because of military conflict, economic crisis, environmental changes, and human rights violations leading to an increased flow of immigration and asylum-seeking across the globe.
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Increased conflict and widening ideological, political, and theological divides within communities and families.
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Growing ideological divides between generations, young people feeling increasingly disillusioned at the church’s response, causing p. 9 them to “deconstruct” their faith because of hyper-diversity, globalization, and social media.
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Growing disparity in the wealth gap and increased unemployment, poverty, and lack of access to necessary resources.
In each of these shifts, there is a common element: divisions that cause distance, misunderstanding, conflict, and disrepair in various forms. In a world where people are moving away from one another, how will we respond? Will we move closer or further away? We have been entrusted with the gospel, a message that restores relationship to God and compels those in conflict to be reconciled. As ambassadors of reconciliation and those called to be peacemakers, we have been given the tools to repair and restore the brokenness of our world.
Missional Context: Integration
The church is moving beyond the simplistic dichotomies of word and deed, of evangelism and social action. This dualistic construct often resulted in erecting walls, taking sides, and, worst of all, sharing a gospel that was limited in scope and power.
We are now seeing a movement toward integral mission characterized by:
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An integrated and interdependent relationship between proclamation and demonstration.
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A move from individual salvation to the larger story of restoration (shalom).
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A greater emphasis on praxis, finding ways to integrate and apply the gospel in tangible ways (relationally/experientially) to problems and conflicts in the world.
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A greater openness to local, Indigenous, and marginalized expressions of faith that require a contextualization of the gospel along with a desire to view these people not as subjects but as agents of change.
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A movement from imposing to exposing the gospel. In other words, the posture and role of the missionary is to discover and facilitate expressions of hope, reconciliation, and transformation as they occur in the local context through local people.
This developing understanding of integral mission has helped us to see modern missional models from a different perspective, allowing us to learn from, adapt, and even reject some of its structures and practices. Integral p. 10 mission has also provided new lenses to see the world and helped us to consider what approaches to mission could be relevant and effective.
One strength of the integral approach to mission is that it takes on a fuller understanding of God’s purposes in the world, including a reorientation toward the inbreaking kingdom of God and the idea of shalom that pervades it. As a mission construct, then, peacemaking becomes a means toward this end.
Too often, peacemaking has come to reflect something far less substantive: a benign effort to dissuade, mitigate, or even run from conflict. In terms of the word-deed spectrum of mission, peacemaking has often been relegated to the social sphere and therefore considered to be less important than evangelism, church planting, and caring for the poor.
However, within the larger economy of God’s restorative mission, peacemaking becomes central and offers a construct in which the gospel comes to bear on people’s lives in tangible ways, at once bringing together the polarities of word and deed and providing a substantial interface with a world in need of healing.
Peacemaking as Mission
How does the church embrace peacemaking as mission? Hopefully, the following three points will help to clarify the path toward this essential discovery.
Envisioning Shalom: Tasting Heaven on Earth
The story of Yahweh moves toward true peace: shalom. Jesus taught us to pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. Within God’s mission story, the church is positioned as an active agent of reconciliation, entreating others to be reconciled to God and to one another so that all may join in God’s holistic and just peace.
As we examine the life and teachings of Jesus with this bigger story in mind, our own mission priorities begin to change so that learning to follow Jesus in his work for healing, justice, and peace becomes more central than simple verbal proclamation to the lost. After all, in the New Testament, we see Jesus consistently coupling word and deed, as in Matthew 4:23: “Jesus went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.”
Rather than framing Christian mission simply as looking for the lost that need to be saved, this renewed focus on God’s shalom helps us to think of mission as looking for brokenness in need of Jesus’ repair. When we p. 11 understand the gospel as an invitation to healing and repair, a spectrum of expressions emerges for followers of Jesus to see themselves as peacemakers co-laboring with Jesus toward a complete and lasting peace. The holistic nature of this concept and the breadth of expression for what shalom encompasses cannot be understated. As Anabaptist theologian Stuart Murray asserts,
Peace . . . is multifaceted, especially if we have in view the remarkably rich Old Testament concept of shalom. The biblical vision of universal restoration (Acts 3:21) includes peace between God and humanity, enemies reconciled, disintegrated personalities healed, weapons of war decommissioned and transformed into agricultural implements, injustice and oppression removed, communities flourishing, creation liberated from bondage, and the abolition of sickness and death. “Peace is at the heart of the gospel” because the mission of God is to bring peace to the whole of creation. (Murray, 154)
Jesus is restoring everything (Acts 3:21), and our mission is to join him in this work of repair. This shift of perspective must come to bear on our missional practices. There must be tangible outcomes that can be seen, felt, and tasted by the world. As Brueggemann says, “Shalom is the substance of the biblical vision of one community embracing all creation. It refers to all those resources and factors that make communal harmony joyous and effective” (Brueggemann, 16).
Shalom touches every part of life and makes its claim on every person. As Indigenous scholar and activist Randy Woodley writes,
Shalom is meant to be both personal (emphasizing our relationships with others) and structural (replacing systems where shalom has been broken or which produce broken shalom, such as war- or greed-driven economic systems). In shalom, the old structures and systems are replaced with new structures and new systems. The universal expectation for all humanity to live out shalom has been given. (Woodley, 91)
In this vision of shalom, the church becomes both the sign of God’s reconciliation to the world and the essential agent of that reconciliation. As God’s people, we afford the world this foretaste of heaven. As his peacemakers in the world, we are called to exhibit the beautiful healing power of the gospel in our lives and in our relationships with one another. p. 12
Embracing Conflict: Confronting the Wall of Hostility
We cannot make peace without encountering conflict. There is no pathway to shalom that does not come up against “the dividing wall of hostility” (Eph 2:14) and demand upon us a way through it. As Brueggemann writes, “Shalom of a biblical kind is always somewhat scandalous—never simply a liturgical experience or a mythical statement, but one facing our deepest divisions and countering with a vision” (Brueggemann, 24).
The primary occupation of Jesus was to embody shalom and demonstrate a way into it. This is why, throughout his life, we see Jesus embracing conflict, at times seeking it out and even instigating it. Maybe this was because he was often surrounded by antagonizing and conflictual figures like the Pharisees and the Romans, but perhaps it was also strategic to his mission.
The barrier, or dividing wall, that Paul describes in Ephesians 2:14 is important to understand as we consider the significance of conflict in Jesus’ ministry. In this passage (Eph 2:11-18), we see Jesus’ work of peacemaking beginning with an act of destruction, tearing down the dividing wall of hostility. But what exactly is this dividing wall?
According to Jewish historian Josephus, the Jewish part of the temple was encompassed by a stone wall as a partition with an inscription that forbade any foreigner to enter under penalty of death. The wall represented the enmity and hostility between Jew and Gentile, a reality that stood in the way of shalom and the restoration of all things (Acts 3:21).
For this reason, as Jesus carried out his day-to-day ministry, he maintained a preoccupation with this wall of hostility, confronting it, dismantling it, and presenting a new vision in which two people, Jew and Gentile, would become one. Though this theme of confrontation pervades his entire ministry, it is important to recognize the purpose of that confrontation, which was to make peace.
Whether it was offering a drink to a Samaritan woman, or going to the house of a Roman officer whose child was sick, or touching those who were ceremonially unclean, Jesus was bringing near those who were far off (as cited in Eph 4:13), in preparation to eventually tear down the dividing wall of hostility once and for all.
For Jesus, this wall represents not just an obstacle to overcome but a platform on which his mission was accomplished. The story of Jesus’ encounter with a wealthy tax collector named Zacchaeus is instructive. Found in Luke’s gospel (19:1-10), the story shows how Jesus goes out of his way to locate a man who is complicit in economic oppression and clearly stands in opposition to the values of his kingdom. Instead of just preaching to p. 13 the crowd, Jesus moves toward a personal confrontation with Zacchaeus, knowing there exists an opportunity for restoration.
In the end, Zacchaeus repents and adopts Jesus’ values, resulting in a beautiful expression of shalom whereby relationships are reconciled and justice is restored. What is critical, however, is the process by which Zacchaeus’s mindset is converted. Shalom does not materialize by his cognitive assent to the values of the kingdom. Rather Zacchaeus is, figuratively, met at the wall of hostility and invited to climb over it, effectively moving him from a place of separation into a community of belonging. He is not convinced by any religious tenets or teachings, or even by a stern warning from Jesus. Rather, it is the table fellowship of the “one new humanity” (Eph 2:15) that so captivates his heart.
In the same way, the church is invited to see conflict as an opportunity, fertile ground where the values of shalom can materialize, where the hard work of peacemaking is done, and where reconciliation can take root in meaningful and beautiful ways.
What if human conflict was seen in a similar light? Could global wars, social divides, and ethnic violence be not simply problems to be solved but a platform where Jesus’ love and grace could be manifest and the mission of God be accomplished?
Embodying Reconciliation: Coming to the Table
Not only did Jesus move toward conflict and toward people that society had rejected, offering them a new experience of acceptance and belonging, but Jesus gave himself to these people in an act of presence, embodying the reconciliation that he preached.
To Zacchaeus, Jesus says, “I must stay at your house today” (Luke 19:5). In this simple but radical statement, Jesus turns the world of Zacchaeus upside down and creates an opportunity for the greedy oppressor (tax collector) to be transformed into the gracious and repentant host. Jesus is present and personally engaged in this transformation.
As his ambassadors, we are called to embody reconciliation in the same way. We are called to the margins of our societies to bring the message of peace and reconciliation and to be witnesses to the social and relational transformation that results.
Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice speak further to this radical transformation:
God’s gift of a call to be Christ’s ambassadors of reconciliation intends to unseat other lords—power, nationalism, race or ethnic loyalty as an p. 14 end in itself—and give birth to deeper allegiances, stories, spaces and communities that are a “demonstration plot” of the reality of God’s new creation in Christ. (Katongole and Rice, 53)
In Paul’s classic treatise on reconciliation in 2 Corinthians 5, he places Christ squarely in the center of this transformative experience:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. . . . All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. (2 Cor 5:17-20)
As we cooperate with God in bringing his shalom to the world, our primary tool for doing so is the ministry of reconciliation. According to Katongole and Rice, this reconciliation is all-encompassing:
The end toward which the journey of reconciliation leads is the shalom of God’s new creation—a future not yet fully realized but holistic in its transformation of the personal, social, and structural dimensions of life. A key question must always be “reconciliation toward what?” Reconciliation is not merely about getting along with neighbors or feeling at peace with God. It cannot be reduced solely to the personal or to the social dimension. It must never become a tool of the powerful to preserve the status quo. Rather, reconciliation is always a journey of transformation toward a new future of friendship with God and people, a holistic and concrete vision of human flourishing. (Katongole and Rice, 145)
If shalom is the vision and peacemaking is the mission, how do we animate that mission and take it to the streets? Historically, mission movements have focused on evangelism, church planting, and humanitarian aid. But peacemaking focuses on following Jesus into conflict and seeks to restore broken relationships. As mentioned above, our world is rife with conflict, and it is easy to other people—to divide and to characterize others as different. In the midst of conflict and division, peacemakers bring the way and message of Jesus, our peace. Where division and separation occur, the vision of Jesus is to bring people together. As agents of reconciliation, empowered by the Spirit, we pursue opportunities to repair and restore broken relationships. p. 15
Two Case Studies: Practical Peacemaking
The two case studies that follow will provide vivid descriptions of what peacemaking as mission looks like in today’s world. These practical examples display the power of forgiveness and reconciliation, bringing shalom to broken relationships and creating safe spaces for the peacemaking process.
The Armenian-Turkish Peace Initiative
It was Pope Francis in 2015 who called the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during the time of the First World War “the first genocide of the twentieth century” (France 24). This statement pointed to a difficult and disputed reality in what is present-day Turkey. According to estimates, more than one million Armenians were killed during the period of most intense conflict, with many more fleeing the region to find refuge in other countries throughout the world. While many Turks still try to deny the genocide, and many Armenians desperately want to forget it, the deep-seated hatred that exists between the two people groups is well documented.
In 2013, just two years prior to Pope Francis’s statement, a small group of people in the U.S. began to pray that God would reconcile the Armenians and the Turks. There were encouraging stories of isolated cases where a Turk and Armenian had reconciled but nothing ever of scale. Around the same time, a team of Canadians and Americans from a Mennonite mission agency was forming to go to Turkey as global workers, who added their prayers for this dream of reconciliation. That team included one of the authors of this article, Saji Oommen.
The following year, with some assistance from the team in Turkey, seven Turkish pastors visited Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California, to meet with twenty Armenian pastors, a gathering that became known as the Armenian-Turkish Pastors Initiative (ATPI). A safe space was created where Armenians and Turks gathered around tables to eat, share stories, and build relationships, laying a foundation for reconciliation and peace.
In this space, Turkish pastors asked for forgiveness on behalf of their people, and Armenian pastors, in response, released forgiveness on behalf of their people. It was a noteworthy beginning.
A few days later, three hundred people gathered at an Armenian Protestant church in another California city to hear from a Turkish pastor. This man recounted how Turkish soldiers had massacred Armenian families in his grandfather’s village, saying, “This was the work of our forefathers, but we are also guilty.” The audience was silent. Then the Turkish pastor spread his arms open wide and asked first for forgiveness and then for an p. 16 opportunity to build new bridges of fellowship. Tears of joy flowed as Armenians came forward to hug their Turkish brother and to affirm the gravity of the moment, declaring that the kingdom of God had come on earth.
Later, the Armenians testified that it was cathartic to hear a Turk tell a personal story from the genocide, admit that it had happened, and invite accountability. A year later, in 2015, another group of Armenians and Turks met in New Jersey where a similar reconciliation happened. This led to a landmark gathering in Istanbul where over ninety Armenians and Turks met face-to-face to talk about reconciliation. Out of this event, twenty Turkish pastors and leaders went to Armenia and visited the Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, two weeks before the one hundred year anniversary of the genocide was commemorated. International media covered the event and captured on camera this historic moment as Armenians and Turks prayed at the memorial together for the first time (Baker). During the following week, the Turkish pastors visited several Armenian churches and continued to ask for forgiveness, which was met with hugs and hospitality. At one church, a Turkish pastor took the opportunity to wash the feet of the Armenian pastor, pledging their faith allegiance in accord with the example of Jesus. As the meetings have gained momentum, the pastor’s initiative (ATPI) has now become the Armenian-Turkish Peace Initiative and has flourished now for ten years and counting.
Peace Camps in Conflict Zones
As the civil war in Syria escalated in 2014, one of the authors of this article, Saji Oommen, was living in Turkey and was thinking about how to respond to the rapid influx of Syrians into the country. At the time, another of the authors of this article, Kendra DeMicco-Lovins, was visiting from the U.S., and together they looked at the pain caused by this massive displacement of people and saw a need to open up their arms, hearts, and lives to those in the midst of conflict. They quickly learned that over half of the Syrian refugees were young people under the age of eighteen who had lost everything—their families, their homes, their identities.
“How do we engage? How can we help?” they asked each other. They pondered their response: “As followers of Jesus, we are called to be ambassadors for peace and carriers of the message of reconciliation. How can we answer this call in the face of such horrific human suffering?”
The two friends brought a team to the Syrian border and visited the refugee camps. Their approach was simple: listen to the stories. As they listened, they became convinced of the power of face-to-face encounters—getting in p. 17 the same room together, sharing stories, building friendships, and dreaming about peace. It was out of these encounters that the idea for a peace camp was born: a week-long experience of intentional community where the goal would be to facilitate a third space where people from varied national, lingual, cultural, and religious backgrounds would be invited to come as they are to share their experiences and explore their common hope for peace.
The first peace camp was held in Turkey in August 2016 in the wake of the Syrian crisis. The camp brought together seventy-five young people from the Middle East and North America to engage in building a future of peace together. It was life-changing for participants.
Since that first camp, more have been held in Turkey, in neighboring Iraq, as well as Colombia, India, and the United States. That simple idea, of facilitating a third space in a week-long camp, has grown into a movement of young peacemakers in conflict regions around the world.
The peace camps have been a practical outworking of a social science approach called “contact theory,” which was developed by Gordon Allport in the 1950s. Necessary conditions for positive group interaction according to contact theory include equal status of participants, intergroup cooperation, common goals, and support by any relevant social and institutional authorities (Allport). Brenda Salter McNeil notes the valuable contribution of contact theory in peacemaking:
Relationships between conflicting groups will improve if they have meaningful contact over an extended period of time. This contact must occur in a mutually beneficial learning environment and involve multiple opportunities for the participants to have cooperative interactions with one another. According to the theory, this type of contact will likely decrease the hostility between groups because the animosity is typically fueled by stereotypes that result from limited exposure. (McNeil, 33)
At peace camps, participants are able to talk openly about peace and reconciliation. Participants are encouraged to bring their whole selves “to the table,” inviting a space where people from different ethnicities and different cultures can come into contact with each other and shed the media-driven misunderstandings that are so prevalent. The goal is an atmosphere of love and acceptance where people embrace each other as they really are. At these camps, diversity is key. Participants from different backgrounds (Muslim, Christian, Yazidi, Hindu, etc.) eat together at tables, play games, ask questions, and share their stories. These spaces are containers where the Holy Spirit is free to move, to speak, and to transform. p. 18
The story of Alma (not her real name) is an example of the transformation possible at a peace camp. As a young Syrian Muslim, she had fled her country during the civil war. Living as a refugee in Turkey, she heard about the peace camp and decided to take part despite the fact that she carried with her a heavy burden: her father had been killed in the conflict in Syria, and she was holding on to anger and bitterness in her heart.
As others in the camp began to share stories of releasing forgiveness to those who had hurt them, Alma could not imagine forgiving the pilot who had dropped the bomb that took her father’s life. One young man, a follower of Jesus from Muslim background, talked about how he had learned to love his enemies and to embrace the forgiveness that Jesus taught.
Alma told the story of losing her father, an ambulance driver, who had been killed while he was treating the wounded on the street in a city that was under siege. The loss of her father had been overwhelming for her and sent her into a downward spiral of hate and resentment. “Allah may forgive the pilot, but I will never forgive that man,” she told everyone at the camp. And no one could tell her otherwise.
However, Alma stayed at the table and continued to hear story after story from others who forgave despite trauma and heartache. They each testified how they experienced freedom and peace as they released forgiveness. Alma began to feel something new and different in her heart. As fellow participants prayed for her, she found courage and began to feel empowered. In the safety of the peace camp, Alma began to grapple with new realities of forgiveness and reconciliation. Eventually, she asked the camp leaders if she could share something with everyone.
The leaders gathered all seventy-five of the camp participants together and gave the microphone to Alma. With tears streaming down her face, she announced to everyone, “I want to let go of my hatred, my bitterness, and my fear, and I want to receive freedom and peace. I want to forgive the pilot who killed my father.”
Alma’s story brings hope to everyone who struggles with forgiveness. Despite intense loss and deep hatred, Alma chose the path of peace. And now she has become a significant peace leader among her people.
These Peace Camp spaces began in Turkey in 2016, and the sparks from that initial camp have traveled and have set fire in Iraq, Colombia, India, and the U.S. They will continue into new contexts in these regions and into Southeast Asia in 2025. p. 19
A Note on Prayer
For those who believe in prayer (as do the authors of this article), the events that these two case studies describe did not happen randomly. Rather, we believe they were the result of prayer. Jesus was invited to the table. The Holy Spirit was invited to move among us. The prayers of people prepared the way. Prayer acknowledges that God’s gracious initiation went before it all. Yet prayer also allows us to be privy to God’s acts of mercy and grace. Prayer is the divine force that magnifies and multiplies our efforts to make peace. Prayer softens hearts. Prayer creates the spaces where change is possible. Prayer thins the walls between the natural and the supernatural, offering opportunities for encounters with the Holy spirit into peoples’ lives—people like Alma who want to be free but cannot find the path of peace alone, people like the Turks and Armenians who are trapped in cycles of hate until they discover the way of love and reconciliation.
Prayer is the necessary beginning and sustaining force of every peacemaking process. Indeed, no lasting peace is ever experienced in this world without sincere and sustained prayer. Through the power of prayer God invites us to witness the hostility of this world transformed into hospitality. Through prayer, we are included in God’s program to bring hope to the hopeless. Through prayer, we are called to embrace our role as peacemakers, as ambassadors of reconciliation, as bearers of his shalom.
Conclusion
The world is waiting for us to make our declaration: peace is possible. Our mission, then, is peacemaking, and we have much work to do in order to overcome the world’s penchant for war, hate, and greed. Too many relationships are broken, too many lives are lost. We follow a God who desperately wants to bring his shalom to heal the hurt of this world. Therefore, as his people, we need to find new alignment with the way of Jesus—to liberate, to heal, and to make peace.
As we have outlined above, this will require a refreshed vision of God’s shalom, a courageous embrace of conflict, and a self-sacrificing embodiment of reconciliation. As we commit ourselves to this basic model of mission, we can expect the same beautiful transformations that were described in the case studies above, with the most radical signs of heaven breaking through the world’s most despairing hell. We do this for the glory of Jesus, who himself is our peace (Eph 2:14).
Bibliography
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