Introduction: Ministry in a Divided Society
Ruth Hutchinson

Comment: Conscientious Objector
Adam Turkington

From the Director
David Porter

Christian Perspectives on Reconciliation
Norman Taggart

Ministry in a divided society
1. Pastor John Dickinson
2. Priest Ken Clarke

The Laughing Minister
Graham Cheesman

Forgetting to Remember
Peter Stevenson

Ministry in a divided society
3. Prophet Derek Poole
4. Peacemaker David Porter

Review: A New Start
Heather Morris

< Past Issues Archive

MINISTRY IN A DIVIDED SOCIETY
Part 4: Ministry as Peacemaker
How will this century be judged by history? Some commentators are already referring to it as the dark century. While there has been progress in many areas the last one hundred years has witnessed violence on an unprecedented scale. From the slaughter of the Western Front to the gas chambers of the Holocaust; from nuclear killing zones in Japan to the killing fields of Cambodia; from ethnic cleansing in the Balkans to tribal purges in central Africa. Behind the headlines of war are the millions of ordinary people who have suffered the trauma and grief of broken lives and relationships.

For the Christian Church this century of turmoil has been a period of great decline and great advance. Despite the challenge faced with its potential to overwhelm, we have been witnesses to the growth of the global Church. Building on the foundations laid through the nineteenth century missionary movement, the Holy Spirit has nurtured into being, often in the most difficult of circumstances, a truly international community of believers.

Together we are a people whose identity is as citizens of the Kingdom of God and whose primary allegiance is to Christ. In our search for meaning we have been captured by God’s grace and invited to share a life of faith in the living God who has dealt with us in mercy. The potential exists for this community of peace, justice and reconciliation to transform our divided world, where questions of acceptance and affirmation, justice and equality lie at the root of the many conflicts.

Credible Future

The question must be faced. How credible will the witness of the church if we fail to address the issue of contested identities that so threatens the stability of our human community. It is surely in this context that the living proclamation of God’s peaceable kingdom takes on a relevance and potency that is too easily ignored in our mission and evangelism.

Peace with God is central to our faith. It is offered to us through our relationship with Jesus. It is this security of the embrace of God that transforms all our other relationships both in the church and the wider community. But often we forget that peace is as much a journey as a gift, a process of rebuilding and remaking what has been destroyed, a task complete only when Jesus returns. Of necessity we now struggle to make peace in our human communities, fractured as they are by selfishness and hatred.

Yet we dare not set aside peace as the unobtainable goal. If the coming of Jesus means anything to us then we must live striving to represent the values which mark the rule of God in our lives and in the world to come. That demands of us a commitment to peace, however flawed the project we still pursue and make peace.

Essential Nature

Unlike the church’s obligation to mission the requirement of peacemaking is not based on any explicit command. This is a good thing, for mission has long suffered from a shallow understanding based on simple obedience to an external command rather than its essential foundation in the nature of God. It is God’s character that is replicated in us as we grow in worship and service. There can be no escaping that peace and its pursuit is the fruit of any meaningful relationship with God. The fruit of the Spirit is … peace (Gal 5:22).

As Christians we worship a triune God, a holy community of three persons. The implications of this belief for our understanding of peace are often overlooked. At the heart of our faith is a dynamic relationship, three persons with their distinct identity yet in perfect unity. The ongoing relational activity at the heart of the Godhead is the source of the peace we share, forged not in isolation but in community.

It is this that gives meaning to the purpose of God for humanity — Shalom. This is the wholeness that God desires for the whole created order, reconciled in Christ and living in social and economic balance where peace and justice reign. It is to this end that God acts in history providing us with the very model that we ourselves are to follow, a model that has the cross at its centre as the place where peace is made.

Equally there can be no escaping that peace is essential to any activity that proclaims the gospel. Ours is a message of good news of peace for all people. Sharing our faith is to introduce others to Jesus, the Prince of Peace. It is to declare that the rule of peace is now the radical alternative for a world in turmoil.

‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns”’. (Isaiah 52:7)

Peacemaking is the family character of the people of God. It is peacemakers who will be blessed by being called the children of God. It is peacemakers who will truly come to appreciate what Jesus demanded when he called his disciples to take up their cross and follow him.

Living Witness

If the church as peacemaker is at the heart of its credible future, based on the essential nature of our faith, then it becomes a necessary part of our living witness. But what will this mean? Firstly it has to transform the way we relate to others. For long we have allowed ourselves to excuse the inexcusable. The Christian church, and evangelicals in particular, has often fostered a subculture in which the unsaved world exists in a parallel universe. The shared humanity of the created order is conveniently overlooked.

We are to live at peace with all people and not only the household of faith. The God-given value of every person, whoever they are and whatever their condition, demands of us a commitment to them that challenges the boundaries and barriers of our fallen world. And central to such relationship is the command of God — no killing.

Secondly it has to impact the way we behave as the church. The gospel is offered to every people without fear or favour. In Christ we are a new humanity, bound together in a new covenant expressed in a new loyalty to this community of faith. If one part of the body suffers we all suffer.

Both of these spiritual realities have remarkable implications for how we live. Yet they are so easy to subvert in the name of loyalties to state and tribe. In a world where the material power of land and nation have dragged Christians into wars for territory and to preserve the tribe, it is a greater tragedy still that we have too easily embraced the violence of this world for the sake of religion and defending our God.

The cost of a witness as peacemaker, particularly in Northern Ireland, will be high as it brings us into dispute with the dominant culture where our group’s identity must be secured at all costs. Precisely because our identity as Christians is secure in Christ we are those who for the sake of his gospel are called to lay down our lives. The experience of reaching out to embrace the enemy only to be met with hostility and rejection is often the price paid by the Christian peacemaker.

Relevant Practice

How will this in turn translate into practice in our churches? It is almost too obvious to state that it must begin with a willingness to embrace the role of peacemaker. Both the individual Christian and the church community must see themselves as having a divine mandate to put this at the centre of our ministry. It is only then that we can unlock our understanding and release the creative skills that will equip us for the task.

When this happens we discover that we are better prepared to address the credibility gap in our witness to a fractured world than we realise. All of us are constantly dealing with conflict, in our relationships in family and church, in our friendships and in our workplaces we all clash as we exploit each other's insecurities and vulnerability. The skills we develop by being peacemakers in these contexts are transferable when it comes to address the conflict in wider society. Then it is the task of the church to be the vision keepers. No one ever said that making peace would be easy. It is a long and arduous journey with many set backs. We must constantly keep alive the reality of a vision of what a society living at peace with itself would look like. It is such a vision that gives us the insight and confidence to also know what is possible at a given stage. For it is too easy for the peacemaker to aim high and discredit the cause of peace with unrealistic expectations. But keeping the vision allows us to find resting places on the journey — places we know are not the final destination, but stops where our capacity for the next stage is developed by the relationships we build there.

Finally it is the task of the church to be the bridge builder. In conflicts where the hurt and trauma makes it hard and difficult to find the ability to reach across the divide, it is the people of God who must become the bridge. Not that we are immune from the pain or the temptation to revenge and bitterness. But because we draw on the resources of the grace, mercy and forgiveness of God we can break the barriers of hardened hearts and find the capacity to engage, and to do so with an understanding of our own side and an openness to the hurt and pain of the other.

The church as peacemaker is demanded of us by our world and by our God. To take this role seriously will transform how we live, confronting the failings of this century and equipping for the challenges of the next.

David Porter - ECONI's Director