Mission and Vision Change: FAQs
This article is the fourth in a four-part series articulating our Mission and Vision change. For more, read part 1, Our Mission and Vision Change: The Story and Rationale, part 2, Our New Mission and Vision, and part 3, Our New Mission and Vision: How We Do It.
1. Is this a change or a continuation?
For Peace Catalyst staff, our updated mission and vision more accurately communicates the work that we’ve already been doing as individuals and as an organization. We understand this to be both a change and a continuation. The change is that we will no longer explicitly focus on peacebuilding “with Muslims” as the center of our work. This means that our work has officially changed to be broader in scope beyond “Christian-Muslim peacebuilding.”
Instead, our central focus is forming Christians for peacebuilding, which is both a change of organizational mission while also being a continuation of what our staff have always been doing. For our partners and the general public, our broader scope allowing for staff to more directly engage in topics beyond “Christianity and Islam” may appear as a significant change. However, our staff have long been engaging in other topics such as race, history, socio-economic inequality, immigation, and political divisions as interrelated parts of “Christian-Muslim” peacebuilding. Our Mission & Vision change now explicitly names the broader scope of our work and allows Peace Catalyst as an organization and Peace Catalyst staff to be clear with our constituencies that our peacebuilding work can and will include these other elements that drive conflict. We’re excited to continue equipping and mobilizing Christians for peacebuilding both with our Muslim friends and partners and beyond as we more directly address the interconnected issues that contribute to division and conflict in our communities.
2. Will you continue your work with Muslim partners?
Absolutely. Our Muslim partners are some of our closest friends and strongest allies, and we look forward to continued collaboration. A central part of our motivation for more explicitly focusing on Christian formation as the center of our work is to help Peace Catalyst become a better ally for Muslim communities. Oftentimes, misunderstanding and conflict between Christian and Muslim communities are not primarily about religion; other factors such as race, socio-economic inequality, and status contribute as well. Our peacebuilding work must also allow for staff to focus on other interconnected issues such as these in order to help Christian communities connect with others with increased awareness of root issues and with empathy for core needs. Our staff look forward to continued collaboration with our Muslim partners as we do so.
3. Peace Catalyst “equips and mobilizes Christians.” Will your work always include Christian communities?
An important part of our work to equip and mobilize Christians for peacebuilding work is modeling the work of understanding, connecting, and collaborating across differences. Even when Christian communities are not yet involved in the work we are doing, Peace Catalyst staff engage in collaborative work across differences by identifying common goals and working together for the flourishing of all. In so doing, we strive to model what collaboration across divides looks like to Christian communities, and we invite them into such friendships and partnerships as we have the opportunity to do so.
4. What does “equipping and mobilizing” Peace Catalyst’s audience look like concretely?
“Equipping” is about our own learning and growth as Chistians and as disciples, including a greater understanding and practice of peace theology, peacebuilding theory, and peacebuilding skills. “Mobilizing” is providing locally accessible opportunities for people to act on what they are learning by connecting with others across divisions or barriers and collaborating toward common goals for the flourishing of all. In other words, “equipping” draws attention to our own learning process while “mobilizing” focuses on the need to take action steps. Our staff help equip and mobilize Christians as part of our Peacebuilding Learning Journey, where we engage in an iterative, reflective process of Understanding, Connecting, and Collaborating across divisions.
5. What makes Peace Catalyst International’s peacebuilding work different?
We are surrounded by, influenced by, and even have the privilege to partner with many organizations that are doing amazing work to bridge divides and reduce misunderstandings and violence in our societies. We often collaborate on projects that share the same or similar goals, and we are grateful to be learning from the experience and expertise of organizations that have been doing peace work effectively for much longer than we have. In fact, we see collaboration with other peace organizations and sectors of society (art, science, education, etc.) in multi-sectoral initiatives as one of the most effective ways we can connect people across divisions to work towards the common good.
On the other hand, there are a few aspects of our work which make Peace Catalyst unique. As a Christian peacebuilding organization, we approach peacebuilding theory, tactics, and skill sets using the biblical-theological lens of shalom. We apply this theological lens to the great work of other organizations, social scientists, neuroscientists, and peacebuilding practitioners. We work to use this shalom-lens to interpret their work for Christian audiences so that we and our Christian communities can deepen our learning about peacebuilding and put those learnings into practice. We also recognize that our dual focus on collaborative local peacebuilding work and equipping and mobilizing Christians to join in this work is unusual, and holding the tension between these two foci sets us apart.
Lastly, our crowdfunding model makes a professional peacebuilding vocation more available to a wider range of peacebuilders. By supporting new staff in crowdfunding their salary according to their own capacity and need, we are well situated to equip, empower, and mobilize a growing movement of peacebuilders, catalyzing grassroots projects in local communities across the world.
6. Why do you focus so much on the Biblical word shalom?
Peace Catalyst International’s founder, Rick Love, described the biblical concept of shalom as human flourishing in all dimensions of life. Shalom can simply mean peace, wholeness, or well-being, but it also implies that what is broken is restored and what is disconnected is reconnected as part of a larger flourishing whole - in our personal lives, our relationships, our communities, and our world.
Shalom is a vision of the future that God intends and is working to establish. Jesus came preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, which was characterized by an eschatological vision of the freedom, healing, and blessing of God’s shalom. Put simply, God’s kingdom or reign is characterized by shalom, and God’s mission is to reconcile all things and make all things new - a restoration of interconnected wholeness in relationships with God, others, creation, and self
We put so much focus on the concept of shalom because we believe it is the ultimate vision and hope toward which we aspire. If God’s mission is to establish the holistic just peace characterized by shalom, then the Church is called to follow Jesus in the work of shalom-building in all relationships, in all dimensions of life. Read our Shalom paper here.
7. Why do you assert that the essence of Christian discipleship is peacebuilding formation?
We believe that God’s mission is to establish the holistic just peace characterized by the biblical concept of shalom. If that’s the case, then the Church is called to peacebuilding, co-laboring with God toward shalom, the reconciliation of all things, as its central work. The Church is called to live out and embody God’s shalom “now” while living with eager anticipation and hope for the “not yet” of God’s ultimate shalom, the Church’s eschatological vision.
Christian formation or discipleship, then, is about equipping Christians to be part of God’s reign by shaping our lives and world around God’s shalom and living with an expectant hope for God’s final reconciliation of all things. Discipleship is a holistic formation process to help us live out shalom personally, become people who work to contribute to God's shalom-building mission communally, and live with a vibrant hope that God will ultimately make all things right, establishing the shalom of God’s reign.
This means that in our spiritual formation and discipleship journeys, we can use the concept of shalom as a lens to discern what God is doing and a guide to shape how we might participate. Whether that’s in our prayer lives, service work, personal relationships, jobs, or relationship to the environment or public institutions around us, shalom guides our internal dispositions and external actions so that we might become people who contribute to God’s shalom-building mission. Christian formation or discipleship is a holistic formation process to help us shape our lives around shalom personally, to become people who contribute to God's shalom-establishing mission communally, and to live with hope in God’s ultimate shalom when all things are reconciled and made whole.
8. Do you have any particular religious or political aims for program participants?
We affirm and support all people’s religious, political, and ideological freedoms. Although there are and will be instances when we publicly advocate for specific policies, we do not generally focus on policies or positions. We do not expect, nor is it our goal, that program participants would agree religiously, politically, or ideologically. Our aim is to connect groups from across social, cultural, and religious divisions so that they might understand each other’s core needs and driving narratives, in order to collaborate together for their collective good. While that collaborative work may at times include social action in pursuit of policies that our partners deem necessary, our primary concern is the conflict transformation process of understanding, connecting, and collaborating, rather than specific political outcomes. We believe that all people have the capacity for empathic understanding of those who are different, and we believe that forming connections across lines of difference and identifying common goals toward which we can work are the best ways to transform relationships and build flourishing communities.