Prayers of gratitude and intercession

Wednesday, 1 March 2023

Webinar

08:00–10:00 CST (Winnipeg)
15:00–17:00 CET (Amsterdam)
22:00–00:00 PhST (Manila)

What do we need to know and how can we engage in climate justice work?

We invite you to join the Global Anabaptist Peace Network for another webinar. In this webinar Rebecca Froese will assist us in deepening our ways of understanding climate issues and Sandy Plett will guide us in finding ways to talk about climate justice in our congregations and organizations.

Rebecca Froese is an expert in “social-ecological peace and conflict research” – the subject of her PhD. She holds a Post Doc position at the Center for Interdisciplinary Sustainability Research at the University of Münster, Germany.

Sandy Plett is the new Climate Action Coordinator for Mennonite Church Canada.

Click here to register and receive the zoom link for the webinar.

Dear friends,

We would like to invite you to be part of our upcoming Global Anabaptist Peace Network online gathering on June 27-29, 2022. We are looking forward to meeting all of you. On each of these days, we are planning to meet for 3 hours, starting at 8.00 (Winnipeg/Bogotá), 9.00 (Harrisonburg/La Paz), 15.00 (Johannesburg/Berlin), 20.00 (Jakarta/Bangkok). 
 
The topic for our GAPN gathering will be “Do I stay, or do I go?”. This topic is inspired by the words coming from many in contexts of war struggling with the dilemma of staying or leaving their homes. Each decision, as difficult as it is, holds integrity for hanging on to life and relationships. Many people and communities are challenged with situations of conflict and violence that necessitate difficult decision-making.
 
Our gathering will include: (1) spaces to introduce and get to know each other; (2) contributions from different guest speakers, including Isaac Villegas and Erica Littlewolf (North America) and Lakan Sumulong and Tala Alngag Bautista (Philippines), that will explore this topic, focusing on the challenges and opportunities they identify in their own context and realities in relation to it; (3) spaces for group conversations; (4) devotional times that will include prayer requests. Organizing a virtual gathering poses some challenges, including the differences in time zones and the exposure and energy required to stay tuned in during the different sessions. That’s why we have decided to combine online and offline segments (which will help us to have more detailed introductions), so that there are more and alternative opportunities to exchange, learn from one another, and engage in dialogue. More detailed information will be available soon.
 
Both June 27 and 28 will focus on exploring our theme. June 29 will focus mainly on discernment and decision making regarding the consolidation and next steps of the GAPN. We have proposed this schedule in order to open the invitation to different people and interested organizations to join in the conversations of the first two days but that might not yet be members of the GAPN, while the third day will be for the members of the GAPN.We encourage you to invite your colleagues to join us for the first two days.
 
For more information and to register, please send an email to 
AndresPachecoLozano@mwc-cmm.org 

“How do we amplify voices? How do we nourish acts of resistance already in place?” These questions were raised on 12 October 2021 during “Ubíquese,” a webinar from the Global Anabaptist Peace Network (GAPN). GAPN is an emerging network of peace organizations connected to Mennonite World Conference (MWC).  

“By choosing the name ubíquese in Spanish (which could be translated as “place yourself” in English), the goal of the webinar was to inspire discussion about what it means to witness to peace in times of the COVID-19 pandemic and in contexts dealing with injustice,” says GAPN coordinator Andres Pacheco Lozano. 

The webinar had two focal points: past and present injustices against Indigenous peoples in Canada and the recent national protests, cases of police brutality and implementation of peace accords in Colombia.  

Two peace activists from each context reflected on key challenges for peacebuilding in those realities, on how they were participating in addressing them and on how they envisioned the international community could be in solidarity with these two contexts.  

“Where there is relationship, real reconciliation happens,” says Adrian Jacobs, Keeper of the Circle of Sandy-Saulteaux Spiritual Centre, Manitoba, Canada (Treaty 1 territory). “When you see suffering, you move.” 

“We need to prioritize those who are suffering most, those who are most vulnerable,” says Steve Heinrichs, Indigenous-Settler Relations director for Mennonite Church Canada, an MWC member church. “This is an urgent moment in the climate crisis,” he says, where both international and Indigenous Canadian concerns converge. 

From Colombia, Francisco Mosquera, founder of Edupaz, asked the Anabaptist family for solidarity. He called for a body to monitor the Colombia reality to create a record of action. 

Angélica Rincón of Justapaz called for solidarity in the form of interaction. “Mutually, we can accompany one another, recognizing skills, wisdom and experiences.”  

Both organizations are members of the Global Anabaptist Service Network (GASN). 

The webinar closed with small group discussion about the peace work.  

At Assembly in July 2022, attendees will have opportunity to attend several workshops conducted by GAPN members.  

For more information on the GAPN, including a membership application, click here

Is Christian peacemaking different from other forms of reconciliation? Do Anabaptists work at peacebuilding in ways that set them apart? Several of 223 persons from 36 countries at the 2nd Global Mennonite Peacebuilding Conference in the Netherlands (27–29 June 2019) responded to those questions.

“Many people around the world do reconciliation,” said Prakash Thankachan of India, “but Christians have a different motivation. Jesus said, ‘my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives’ (John 14:27).”

An ordained deacon in the Church of North India, Prakash works with Mennonite Central Committee to train others in peacebuilding skills. He cites the 1569 Dirk Willems prison break story from the Netherlands and 2006 Amish school shooting forgiveness as examples of Anabaptist peace witness that particularly inspire him.

Marcus Weiand, of the Free Evangelical church, director of the Institute for Conflict Transformation at Bienenberg, Switzerland, points to Jesus. “What I learned from Anabaptism is strong emphasis on God coming down to humanity in Jesus Christ to care for the hungry and needy. We are called to follow Jesus now so closely that we get dusty from his feet.”

Civil war is the context of incarnational peacebuilding by Anabaptists in Colombia. Mennonite attorney Katherine Torres, coordinator of Puentes para la Paz (Bridges for Peace), spoke of her efforts to draw Christians from many denominations into the peace process near the end of Colombia’s 60 years of civil war. They initiated risky dialogue with the militia groups. “At one point we were in the middle of a fire fight,” she says.

“Nonviolence is the gift of Anabaptists,” Torres says. “Anabaptists work at peacemaking out of a strong sense of community.”

Ethiopia is an example of Anabaptist peace witness grounded in community. “Christ himself is our peace (Ephesians 2),” says Tewodros Beyene, president of Meserete Kristos (MK) church, an Anabaptist denomination. “It’s because of Christ that we come together as a church.”

To break a cycle of retribution, MK church members provide vocational training so prison inmates can function productively when released. “If you kill someone in Ethiopia,” he explains, “even if you serve a long prison term, you will die from revenge killing as soon as you are released.” The church works to prepare prisoners’ home communities to receive them.

Church members are quick to tell others they do this work because Christ came to reconcile us. “Some 1,200 persons commit their lives to Christ each year through this ministry,” Tewodros says.

“The church’s peace work should have a vision of mission. We have a gospel of peace and need to be evangelists who call others to peaceful relationship with God.”

Grace Carhart, graduate student at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, Canada, sees the church’s potential “to allow ourselves to be shaped in positive ways by community. With a solid base of positive identity, people of the church don’t have to be afraid to interact with those who are different.”

Not Mennonite herself, Grace Carhart sees Mennonites as being open to diverse groups and perspectives. Hector Acero Ferrer of Colombia, who jointly led a workshop with her, said, “The church is a place where people again and again can tell the story of being a victim – or a perpetrator.”

For Anabaptists to sustain the hard work of peacebuilding, Derek Suderman of Conrad Grebel University College in Canada underscores that we must keep our primary language of biblical/theological understanding central. Out of that base emerges our secondary language of human rights and international law. “The survival of the Mennonite peace position depends upon our ability to articulate the primary reasons we do peacemaking,” he asserts. “Peacemaking should be byproduct of our faith, not the thing itself.”

—J. Nelson Kraybill is president of MWC (2015–2021). He lives in Indiana, USA. 

Coffee breaks at the triennial Mennonite World Conference (MWC) General Council, Commissions and networks meetings in Kenya April 2018, allowed Colombia peacebuilder and human rights lawyer Ricardo Esquivia to share with an old friend his desire for the Global Anabaptist Peace Network (GAPN) to build networks to support peacebuilders in the field and to communicate with the broader Mennonite community.

After years of planning and building on the work that has come before, the steering committee of the emerging GAPN met for their first face-to-face meeting 17–20 April 2018, in Limuru, Kenya.

The steering committee representatives come from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe, and different member churches of MWC. Each representative brings a wealth of peacebuilding involvement in their local/regional organizations’ contexts.

The goal of GAPN is to provide the infrastructure to connect the many different peace initiatives and organizations that are the fruit of MWC-related churches working in peacebuilding, active nonviolence and conflict transformation. These organizations are often not known to each other, resulting in duplication of efforts and missed opportunities for mutual beneficial and transformative exchange.

Meeting face-to-face allowed the steering committee to explore more deeply the formation of GAPN and its rationale, mission, potential actions and structure.

The meeting in Kenya brought together GAPN steering committee member Wendy Kroeker and Esquivia. They originally met in the 1990s in Canada when Kroeker helped to organize Mennonite Central Committee events for Esquivia (then director of Colombian Mennonite peace organization Justapaz) to present on his peacebuilding work.

“Ricardo and I stumbled through numerous dinners together and somehow found ways for our hearts and work passions to connect despite the challenges of communication,” says Kroeker.

Now, they connected once again during the meetings in Limuru, Kenya. “There was a difference in our meeting this time,” says Kroeker, who now speaks Spanish more fluently. “Ricardo shared of the continuing challenges of his work. He asked GAPN to consider how we could build networks for supporting peacebuilders in the field and to alert the broader Mennonite community regarding the challenges Anabaptist peacebuilders face in their respective contexts and communities.

“I want to take that request seriously in the context of my work in the Peace Commission and GAPN,” says Kroeker.

The meeting between Kroeker and Esquivia exemplifies the pertinence of a network that enables peacebuilders to meet face-to-face.

GAPN aims to share news and prayer requests, facilitate exchanges (resources, staff, internships, studies, etc.), and create space for mutually transformative relationships between members, and for solidarity and support in political advocacy initiatives. Rather than becoming an organization on its own, GAPN will create, enable and nurture the formation of relationships.

The steering committee plans to officially launch GAPN at the second Global Mennonite Peacebuilding Conference and Festival taking place in Elspeet, The Netherlands, 27–30 June 2019.

—a Mennonite World Conference release by Andrés Pacheco Lozano, coordinator of the Global Anabaptist Peace Network

Every September, the Peace Commission invites churches to celebrate Peace Sunday with the global Anabaptist church.

GAPN steering committee members:

• Andrés Pacheco Lozano (Colombia/Netherlands), GAPN coordinator
• Andrew Suderman (Canada/USA), Peace Commission secretary
• Wendy Kroeker (Canada), Peace Commission member
• Scott Holland (USA)
• Pascal Kulungu (DR Congo)
• Christina Asheervadam (India)
• Fulco van Hulst (Netherlands)

Around the world, Mennonite World Conference (MWC) member churches act out the belief that the Spirit of Jesus empowers us to…become peacemakers who renounce violence, love our enemies, seek justice and share our possessions with those in need (MWC Shared Conviction #5) through local congregations, national churches and related ministries.

“The 105 member churches that form MWC have produced much ‘fruit,’ such as peace related organizations and programs,” says MWC Peace Commission secretary Andrew Suderman. “Finding ways to connect, encourage, and have these Anabaptist peace organizations be in solidarity with one another in our common work towards peace has given rise to the emergence of a Global Anabaptist Peace Network (GAPN).”

Two multi-year grants are providing seed money for this emerging network. The Kindred Charitable Fund from Kindred Credit Union, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, awarded $7,500 in 2017, $5000 in 2018 and $2500 in 2019 [Canadian funds] for MWC’s GAPN. The Anabaptist-rooted United Service Foundation also awarded a significant three-year disbursement to support the peace network’s establishment.  

These grants funded the network’s first steps: appointing Andrés Pacheco-Lozano, a Colombian peaceworker currently studying in the Netherlands, as network coordinator in October 2017 and facilitating the first face-to-face meeting of the newly formed GAPN steering committee at the General Council meetings taking place in Kenya in April 2018.

The Peace Commission hopes to formally launch the network at the Global Mennonite Peacebuilding Conference and Festival in Amsterdam in 2019.

A 2016 proposal identified four potential tasks for the GAPN: sharing prayer and advocacy requests, sharing news/information/stories about peace work, developing a member directory, and creating space – electronic and physical – “where those who are part of the network,” says Suderman, “can meet, connect, and build mutually transformative relationships.”

“To see the GAPN become something that is truly global in nature takes patience and investment,” says Arli Klassen, MWC chief development officer. “We are grateful for donors –individuals, organizations like Kindred, and the family foundation who gave a multi-year grant – who share that vision.”

This network will relate with MWC’s structure through the MWC Peace Commission. “While the Peace Commission focuses on supporting our MWC member churches,” says Suderman, “the GAPN will seek to connect those churches’ peace-related organizations, programs and workers. In this way, we continue to walk with and support one another in the pursuit of God’s peaceable kingdom.”

—Mennonite World Conference release