Living Peace Church - 2013 Report

Overview

The Living Peace Church (LPC) call is for every church to live and teach as Jesus lived and taught. Each committed LPC congregation will identify itself as a Living Peace Church, discern at least one enduring service outreach for the entire church body to do together to embody this commitment, and share its stories with the public and other churches. A congregation begins the Living Peace Church journey by going through a discernment process to hear if this call speaks to their faith community. The new Living Peace Church ministry of On Earth Peace accompanies a congregation through this discernment process and throughout its committed life as a member of the LPC community.

Living Peace Church History

Since the 1935 “Conference of Historic Peace Churches” in Newton, Kansas, the Brethren, Friends, and Mennonites have shared the “historic peace church” label. This label served not only as a badge of distinction, but also as a shield of privilege and a form of accommodation with the war programs of the nation. Basically, this label said that these minority faiths were quaint, insignificant, and not a threat to the nation’s war efforts.

With the “New Call to Peacemaking” movement of the 1970’s, the historic peace churches and other denominations put the world on notice that peace churches would no longer be contained within the walls of privilege and accommodation. The Church of the Brethren embraced this direction for our denomination with two Annual Conference Statements: “Peacemaking: The Calling of God’s People in History” (1991); and “Call for a Living Peace Church” (2003). These boldly declared our intent for peacemaking to break out and infuse the entire body of believers in a new Living Peace Church leavening.

The Every Church A Peace Church (ECAPC) project began the 21st Century with an attempt to embody this Living Peace Church vision for all of Jesus’ churches. In 2012, ECAPC gave itself to the new Living Peace Church ministry of On Earth Peace to continue the work of helping to catechize and support a network of local churches who choose to self-identify as living peace churches. We convened a gathering of peace leaders from several denominations and organizations in the fall of 2012, and began preparing resources for this ministry.

This new Living Peace Church initiative represents another wave of peacebuilding that will keep surging onto the shores of the church until it has soaked the entire body of faith with a shared commitment to live and teach as Jesus lived and taught. As we see other denominations and traditions also moving in this direction, we reach out for partnership and unity with all churches and their affiliates at one shared table of peace.

LPC Progress in 2013

In the past year, we have developed a guide for local Leavening Teams to lead their churches and congregations through the Living Peace Church discernment process. This guide is titled The Way of Peace, and takes the church through six sessions of shared Bible study, conversations, and prayer about the call for every church to live and teach as Jesus lived and taught. In preparing this guide, we studied similar materials from other church renewal programs and consulted with professionals who have been shepherding such efforts. This preparation also included careful examination of the seminal book, The Journey Into Peacemaking, by noted theologian and member of the ECAPC leadership team Glen Stassen, written in association with the World Peacemakers movement piloted by the Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. We also focused on the key principles of the organizational transformation practice known as “Appreciative Inquiry” and built these into the structure of this discernment process.

This year also blessed us with the arrival of Bethany Theological Seminary student Angela Finet as an intern dedicated to the Living Peace Church ministry for her field service placement throughout the 2013-2014 academic year. Angela helped us finish The Way of Peace guidebook and to develop a workshop to introduce people to the Living Peace Church initiative, and is actively engaging a number of churches with the Living Peace Church call and discernment process. She is pursuing her Master of Divinity, and has an MBA degree and substantial experience in the small business startup field.

In 2013, we conducted many Living Peace Church workshops at church conferences, leadership meetings, and other venues throughout the Church of the Brethren. These gave us valuable feedback and experience to refine our LPC resource development, along with validation of the appeal of the Living Peace Church call and direction. They also led to interest by several Brethren congregations to be among the first group of churches to pilot the LPC program.

We began an LPC community blog in 2013 (at http://LivingPeaceChurch.org), as a temporary place for sharing information about the development of the program. We also started working with a web developer who will help us build a community website to replace the blog in 2014.

In 2014, we will begin a pilot of Living Peace Church sites with several churches, including some from the Church of the Brethren, and some from other denominations. Our ideal mix would be to have six congregations from the Brethren, Mennonite, or other historic peace church traditions, and six local churches from other Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox faith traditions. ECAPC founder John Stoner has committed to help us connect with non-Brethren churches from the former ECAPC church network. To look into adding your congregation, contact Bill Scheurer, Executive Director of On Earth Peace, at Bill@OnEarthPeace.org or (410) 635-8704.

“The Formation of Jesus: An Advantaged Life” — Sermon title from my recent visit to Elizabethtown Church of the Brethren

It was great to be with the saints this past MLK Day weekend in Elizabethtown, PA — to meet with their youth Sunday school, share the monthly Peace Meal with their Peace Group (which is practically the whole congregation!), preach the sermon, and even attend the Lancaster Interchurch Peace Witness meeting going on at another church.

Besides all the wonderful things they do with disaster relief, youth services, food and clothing banks, housing, refugee assistance, hunger ministries, and other outreach — the thing which most stands out is that their building is being used 24/7 as they host a number of child care and education support services from various community groups. This is the way a church building was meant to be — more of a community center, hopping with life throughout the week and not just on Sundays.

Plus, their Peace Group has expressed a strong interest in possibly serving as a leavening team for the congregation to consider declaring itself one of the first Living Peace Church communities, which makes me happy!

Elizabethtown is also the home congregation for the late Paul Ziegler and the endpoint for Bob Gross’ 650-mile walk as part of the 3000 Miles for Peace campaign in honor of Paul’s dream and memory. They are excited about being part of the event on May 5 when Bob completes his walk.

“Perfect Love Casts Out Fear” - The text for my recent sermon at Hagerstown Church of the Brethren

It was wonderful to gather with the saints last Sunday in Hagerstown, MD. They even let me preach the sermon, visit Sunday school, and eat lunch with their PACEM group to explore the Living Peace Church call together.

It was especially helpful for me to see how they were using the Vital Ministry Journey booklet in their special Sunday school class. The church is going through a renewal process as part of their search for a new pastor (Pastor Ed Poling retires later this year). We had a good conversation about possibly following this up with the Living Peace Church pilot program next.

It was a joy to see their enthusiastic involvement in Micah’s Backpack, which provides weekend food for kids in school lunch programs during the week (they need to update their website to show how it has spread beyond Blacksburg, VA — Go Hokies! — but, who are we to talk?).

To the reader:  Scroll down here, see what’s been posted!

Notes on LPC/ECAPC Conference Call Oct. 10, 2012

The call lasted 70 minutes. 

Present were: Glen Stassen, Bill Scheurer, David Jehnsen, Ken Freeland, Rod Olsen, Rick Stamm, John Stoner, Rob Peters

After introductions there was a review of the history and rational of the merger of ECAPC with On Earth Peace/Living Peace Church. 

Meeting 12 Sept in Baltimore

-have folded name of ECAPC into “Living Peace Church”; elements of ECAPC will be retained. 

Purpose of call to respond to questions and ideas from ECAPC connected people

John said something of his history with ECAPC

Bill recounted 2 thread partnership

ECAPC now merged into LPC

COB connection is important because COB has struggled to keep its peace testimony going

8 or 9 years ago statement of COB intending to reach out ecumenically

ECAPC founded in year 2000

We are whole cloth adopting the ECAPC vision

The living peace church will probably be less appositional, or oppositional

We sort of ignore that appositional start … use our blissful blinders

Ken –future conference calls could be recorded

Rod

website ECAPC .org needs to be renewed. Yes, it will be linked to LPChurch.  

Rick reported we have domain ownership until 2016

Bill

Will open LPC website in December  

Blog, facebook, and youTube now

Glen noted availabililty of Justpeacemaking.org   We will be crosslinking these in the future to get partners  other voices on website

What resources are needed?

Ken:  I see a continuing need also to reach out to those whose theological orientation or religious background prevents them from making the connection to Jesus’ peace message in a religious way, and also (and I fault myself for not bringing this part up on the phone call) educating people on how to apply Christian nonviolence in their personal lives  (some ECAPC videos addressed this question quite directly).  I would summarize this as two ministries that I felt ECAPC effectively pursued via its TV program: 

1) Exploring and explicating the historical and scriptural basis for the peace/nonviolence message of Jesus (as well as spotlighting examplars in the modern world)  and

2) exploring the natural basis and real psychological ramifications of the practice of Christian nonviolence in everyday life (i.e., its practicality and problematics).

The TV programs are the kind of educational material that can reach people of all perspectives, amplifying the message of the noviolent Jesus, it’s scriptural validity etc

Bill   Peace is constitutive of Jesus message

Jehnsen  our church meeting with Catholic group     David will blog on this

Importance of this merger  in the past the HPC’s would be called on to make the peace sermon…this brings things into a crystallization that is very important

Rob Peters

Suggestedf 4 regional gatherings to talk about how to develop resources

Philadelphia   FOR AFST

MWEst  colleges

Fuller   Ched Myers, Elaine Enns et al 

Atlanta   koinonia  Candler  Liz Bounds

2 young quakers working to raise $200 million to build a peace museum in Phila

envision peace   ?? Rob

Bill

I have assumed there will be regional clusters of local networks.  Rob speaks of events.  I’ve envisioned the revival/evangelizing kind of thing.  Rob– Educational or appreciative inquiry.

Leave an infrastructure behind.  Revival plus practicum.  A capacity building process with components for congregations.  

Rick:  feel like we’re beginning all over, have something behind us, concern that we may be reinventing the wheel.  Want to see how it works through. 

Ken:  How we measure our response level to our outreach efforts.  Are we attracting people to the message.  

Rod:  the national registry:  can or will that be revived?  Bill:  Directory of churches will be core,  and directory of program providers.

Rob:   collaborative and presenting  events   Rolling out the new brand in weekend  radical revival tour    Focus on how we get money for this movement.  Will donate $5000 to Tony.  Shane has $700,000 in fund.  On his facebook.

Cornell West might go on the road for us.  His video has the biggest draw on our living peace church channel  800 in a month.  Get a video  Shane and West.

Journey into Peacemaking book revision is underway. by Marian, strong creation care in new edition.

Glen   attended St Paul gathering, and Dallas.  They had a focus on how churches can organize in congregations.  How to do it.  

Notes by John Stoner

Join the live webcast for “A Global Challenge: Creating a Culture of Peace” on Wednesday 10/17 at 2:00-3:30 pm eastern time.

Check out Peaceworks, a kindred new peace movement to bring people from all over the world together for a single purpose … to turn every church into a peace church. Imagine how different the world would be if every Christian actually followed the peace teachings of Jesus.