Our New Mission and Vision: How We Do It

This article is the third 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 and part 2, Our New Mission and Vision.

Our Peacebuilding Learning Journey

We see our program categories as part of a learning journey with an arch and a goal. We equip and mobilize Christians for peacebuilding so that we can learn to collaborate with our neighbors toward God’s shalom. Peace Catalyst staff live as embodied peacebuilders in their own communities, engaging in an iterative, reflective process of Understanding, Connecting, and Collaborating across divisions - our Peacebuilding Learning Journey. 

Although these program emphases are consistent with the work we have always done, we are now framing them as components of this learning journey into the work of peacebuilding. We are excited to invite friends and program participants to join us in this work to move from understanding, to connection, and deeper still into ongoing collaborative relationships with diverse members of our communities. 

                  Our former Program Categories → Our Peacebuilding Learning Journey

Teaching & Training → Understanding

Experiential Learning → Connecting

Community Service & Activism → Collaborating

Intentionally framing all of our programs as components of the Peace Catalyst Peacebuilding Learning Journey makes explicit the fact that our programs do not stand alone: increasing in our understanding of the ‘other’ can and should lead us to cultivate relationships, and investing in these relationships leads us to collaborate around mutual goals. Likewise, collaborating across differences and investing in diverse relationships inevitably increases our understanding of others. 

Working Groups

In order to invest in our own learning journeys and to be most effective in our programs, our staff are forming Working Groups to 1) share best practices across the organization, 2) coordinate multi-city projects, 3) affirm our core areas of work to the general public, and 4) to show organizational impact in specific areas. Initially, our Working Groups include Peace Theology, Racial Justice & Healing, and Christian-Muslim Relations, the last of which equips staff with Christian-Muslim resources and facilitates continued fruitful collaboration with our Muslim partners.