Faithful Peacebuilding

A letter from Doug Baker serving in Northern Ireland

March 2015

“Who came up with that title?” was the question I was asked at the Management Committee for the Irish Churches Peace Project (ICPP).  When I replied, “Jacqui,” there were looks of pleasant surprise and approval.

I have been chairing a planning group for a major conference bringing together nearly 200 people from the Irish churches to lift up positive examples of faith-based reconciliation work that have been supported by the ICPP over the past three years, to learn from practitioners engaged in similar work in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and to challenge and equip participants for similar work into the future. With such a broad agenda we had been struggling to find an appropriate title!

The planning group was made up of representatives of the four largest denominations in Ireland and others members of the ICPP Steering Committee, including Jacqui, who is the Chief Executive Officer of a secular community relations body in Northern Ireland.  It has been a requirement of the European Union body that has provided major funding for ICPP that the Steering Group include individuals from outside the churches who will bring wider perspectives and a sharp challenge to our work.  Jacqui has taken that role very seriously and offered to join the conference planning subcommittee.

Doug with planning subcommittee

Although the ICPP has been funded and staffed for a limited three-year period that is about to end, the task of reconciliation in this still deeply divided society will need to continue for decades.  Keeping this in mind, I suggested at one of our planning meetings that perhaps one seminar at the conference should focus on spirituality for the long haul.  Jacqui’s ears perked up and her face showed intense interest.  She invited me to say a bit more about what I meant.  After I did she shared with us her perception that the churches have something special in the foundation upon which they engage in reconciliation that is not often found in other bodies doing similar work.  She described it as having something to do with motivation and persistence and hope.

At our next meeting we had to settle on a title for this event, and it was Jacqui who immediately suggested “Faithful Peacebuilding.”  She felt it would honor the efforts that have been made by churches in a difficult calling, lift up the challenge of continuing on this journey, and allude to the fact that our peacebuilding is filled with and informed by a faith perspective.  Wow!  Little did our European funders know how valuable it would be to have on our Steering Group someone who could not only bring a greater awareness of community relations work outside the churches but be able to reflect back to us an essential component of our particular contribution.

When it came time to assign planning group members to chair each of the seminars Jacqui offered to do so for the one on spirituality for the long haul.  I approached two friends, a Catholic priest and a Presbyterian minister, to be the speakers and as part of my briefing to them sent two sermons I had written in the past on this theme. When she heard that I had done so, Jacqui asked if she also could have copies of the sermons.  Assuming she just wanted to be prepared for her role, I duly forwarded them.  An hour after forwarding them to her I received an e-mail back thanking me.  In it she wrote, “I have read both and I feel nourished!”

A visioning exercise with interchurch group of clergy I was facilitating as part of the ICPP’s work

I hadn’t thought that perhaps this was an area of particular need for Jacqui, although I shouldn’t have been surprised.  Over the past 20 years the European Union has been a major funder for much of the reconciliation work in Northern Ireland.  A major part of Jacqui’s role has been processing grant applications for this and determining which projects receive funds. Now in 2015 much of the funding that has flowed through that particular pipeline is coming to an end. Many community relations groups are having to cut back program work, reduce staff, or even stop their operations altogether. No one is more conscious of that reality than Jacqui. What she has shared with us is that she is also very conscious that the churches are one of the clearest examples of groups who will continue to exist and be well placed to engage in reconciliation work whether there is outside funding to support it or not.  That is, IF they understand it as central to who they are, what they are called to do, and how they can integrate into their existing structures and ministry.

Both she and I pray that they will.  After all, it was not Jacqui who came up with the concept of “faithful peacebuilding.” It was God and it is a calling that is lifted up for all of us time and time again in Scripture.

PC(USA) congregations and individuals have faithfully supported our ministry of reconciliation in Northern Ireland both financially and with their prayers for over 35 years now.  We cannot say thank you enough!  We ask that you continue to partner with us in these ways so that Jacqui and others can continue to witness God’s persistent work of reconciliation.

Faithfully yours,
Doug

The 2015 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 322