Prayers of gratitude and intercession

Peace (English) – Paix (French) – Amani (Swahili) – Mirembe (Luganda): children at a Uganda Mennonite church wrote “Peace” in multiple languages. (See photo below.)

Each year, the Peace Commission prepares a worship resource for Peace Sunday. Organized around a new theme each year, the package includes a Scripture focus, prayers, an activity and a teaching resource.  

Congregations around the world select useful portions of these resources to adapt for their own worship. 

CEM congregations from the Mbujimayi district gathered at Sangilayi parish for a joint service of reconciliation. “Our joy was all the greater because CEM members have been happily living in the peace of the Lord after a long period of leadership conflicts,” says Jean Felix Cimbalanga, president of CEM (Communauté Évangélique Mennonite). 

In small groups, members of Iglesias Hermanos Menonitas in Soacha, Colombia, interceded for each of the prayer points found in the worship resource package.  

(Pictured, l-r) Reverend Pastor Jean-Pierre Muya, general secretary and legal representative of the Communauté Mennonite au Congo (CMCo); Robert Irundu, administrative and financial secretary of the CMCo (blue suit); and Mozart Muzembe, church cantor; planted a mango tree on the church grounds. “It’s a symbol of peace and unity, because we’re all part of God’s family.” says Simon Kashal Tshiey. “This tree will soon unite everyone through its fruit and shade.”  

“Through the celebration of Peace Sunday, we got encouragement to become a witness of God’s peace in our daily life,” says Ashish Milap, pastor of Bethel Mennonite Church, Balogdogan, India.  

International Mennonite volunteers Elizabeth Joy Nalliyah from the USA (SALT) and Luyando Munangobe of Zambia (YAMEN) were special guests at Bethel’s service. “This has surely united and encouraged us to know that we are one large family,” says Ashish Milap.  

Mr. Amos Ganjboir along with Rajendra Masih, Shoshanna and some church youths worked on a tree poster for the worship service. Attaching their leaves to the branches helps the congregation understand that “everyone in this family is important and connected to each other. And their family is bigger than they may think,” says Ashish Milap. 

Wincy Wan of Hong Kong Mennonite shared stories from the Global Mennonite Peacebuilding Conference of “how our righteous father is using MWC to transform injustices”. A member of the Peace Commission, she challenged the congregation: “How do we share peace and love to our neighbours? Can we be alert to trauma around us? Can we walk in companionship with suffering people”? 

On Peace Day 2023, Rev. Maira Benjamin Migire, a pastor from Kanisa la Mennonite Tanzania, joined a dialogue with Christian and Muslim leaders about peace in Zanzibar, Tanzania.  

BIC congregations in Nepal celebrated Peace Sunday with their usual worship service on Saturday. They took a special offering and prayed for peace in family, church, neighbourhood, the wider community, the nation, and the global Anabaptist community, especially for Ukraine and Myanmar.  

Peace – Paix – Amani – Mirembe: children at a Uganda Mennonite church wrote “Peace” in multiple languages.  

At Maytalang Mennonite Bible Church in the Philippines, “Nanay” (mother) Juana, the oldest participant (83 years old) and Aya, the youngest participant (1 year old), pasted a golden leaf on the peace tree of family connections.  

Creator God, Brother Jesus, reconciling Spirit, teach us to build peace each day. Help us to see your image in every person we meet – including our enemies. Help us to recognize our interconnectedness. Give us courage to stand up for others by recognizing our interconnectedness.  

Page edited 8 November 2023

“There’s something in the water among Mennonite theologians and peace building scholars and practitioners…around the decolonial project that people are drinking from now that is interesting and quite good,” says Andrew Suderman.

The Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) professor and secretary of Mennonite World Conference’s Peace Commission organized the third Global Mennonite Peacebuilding Conference and Festival (GMP III) in Virginia, USA. “Coming Together: The Journey of Faith and Peace” was the theme of the 15-18 June 2023 event organized by EMU and endorsed by MWC.

The four plenary speakers included Tigist Tesfaye, MWC Deacons Commission secretary, and César García, MWC general secretary. Some 160 participants from 20 countries participated in 10 presentations of papers, 15 workshops, a panel discussion, an art installation and four theatre and music performances. Difficulties obtaining travel permission prevented some international guests from attending.

Scholarship and worship came together at the conference. “We unabashedly housed the conference within worship,” says Andrew Suderman. Each plenary session opened and closed with a time of prayer and singing.

César García urged participants bring together church and peace work despite the former’s past mistakes: “Creating structures that are completely independent and separated from the church is an unnecessary detour that affects the impact of our peace witness…. The need of peace work that is theologically and biblically grounded is an ongoing reality in many of our churches and institutions.” 

Art and performance also came together with theology and theory. “The idea for this GMP was to bring together academics, practitioners, pastors and artists to share with one another what they’re working on, how they are working toward embodying peace,” says Andrew Suderman. “Musicians and a theatre group help give expression to these values, to this journey…to connect head, hands and heart.”

Music and peace also come together says Juan Moya, member of La Repvblica, a band from Colombia that performed. “[Music] depends on vibrations, rhythms and poetry to convey a message. It is a universal language.” The barrier-crossing, peacebuilding capacity of music was demonstrated as MWC president Henk Stenvers from the Netherlands joined the Colombia band on the drums.

As a global conference, the event also brought together voices from around the world. “I appreciated the emphasis on listening to and involving people from the Global South, who shared how peace is not only taught as a concept but also suffered, demanded and – for some – becomes a call to action in order to survive,” says Juan Moya.

A compilation of papers from the previous GMP in the Netherlands in 2019 were recently published as A Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace: Global Mennonite Perspectives on Peacebuilding and Nonviolence.

Resource highlight: Statement of solidarity with Indigenous Peoples

We exhort the Church at all levels – ecumenically, denominationally, and globally – to reject erroneous interpretations of the Bible that justify the mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples. We renew our commitment to embody the spirit of Jesus as indicated in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9). 

“Indigenous solidarity hits the heart of what we do in the Philippines with Coffee for Peace,” says Joji Pantoja, chair of the Peace Commission (2015-2022). The Peace Commission drafted a Statement of Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples that was accepted by the Mennonite World Conference General Council in 2018. 

“The statement is there now, but the hard work is to use it: to admit that unless we are Indigenous, we are likely the colonizer; to amplify the voice of people whose voice we didn’t hear at the time; and to accept the truth when it hurts,” Joji Pantoja says. 

The statement was formulated after 2015 when MWC leaders visited La Iglesia Evangélica Unida Hermanos Menonitas de Panamá, an MWC member church comprised of Wounaan and Emberra peoples.  

“When I was invited to join the delegation in Panama, I said yes. I wanted to see if the plight of Indigenous people [in Panama] would be the same as Indigenous peoples here,” says Joji Pantoja. 

“It’s so sad when you hear of a community getting their resources stuck because they are controlled by government. This was visible in Panama. Even some leaders in tribal communities were the ones selling the cocobolo trees to [commercial interests] and allowing to cut more.”  

While in Kenya for General Council meetings in 2018, Joji Pantoja was also able to meet with Indigenous peoples. “They don’t have a say or they don’t know what to say. As long as the government allows them to use the land, they keep quiet.  

“When I was living in Vancouver, Canada, in 1986, my husband and I saw First Nations [Indigenous] people living outside. How can this be possible that I’m in the developed world while in their backyard there’s this kind of living? That’s when my heart got pinched in terms of marginalized First Nations. 

“Observing that in other countries made me thankful how the Philippines are well advanced in educating Indigenous people in the right to self determination as written in the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).”  

UNDRIP “isn’t perfect,” she says, “but there are systems.” 

Joji Pantoja hopes the MWC statement will help member churches advocate for and stand with Indigenous peoples who are oppressed.  

“Where we are part of settler communities, our churches should be asking for forgiveness.” 

“This is all related to the doctrine of discovery. Even though we (our ecclesiological ancestors) were not the ones who persecuted Indigenous peoples through the Doctrine of Discovery, we should respect them because they are human beings created by God.  

“I hope we come to that level wherein the churches recognize that our ancestors did these things. We are now trying to rectify this. The MWC solidarity document has passed in the General Council but it hasn’t sunk in in the minds of the colonized and the colonizers.” 

“With the world issues happening right now, this document is useful for people in our churches to start dialogue so we can really reconcile and correct the page.” 

Through dialogue, churches can learn to see from the perspective of Indigenous people. “How can we help them without creating another conflict? How can they voice out what they are feeling, what they could not say before? That takes wisdom too,” says Joji Pantoja.  

“Read the document, become aware. See how God talks to you. Then be ready to use it to amplify the voices of marginalized people when they need help… So they have something to fall back on and say, ‘oh, thank God, the Mennonites are behind me!’”  

“Realization is a journey. Acceptance is a journey. Once it hits you in the head or the heart… you need to act.”  

Like the chambers of a heart, the four commissions of Mennonite World Conference serve the global community of Anabaptist-related churches, in the areas of deacons, faith and life, peace, mission. Commissions prepare materials for consideration by the General Council, give guidance and propose resources to member churches, and facilitate MWC-related networks or fellowships working together on matters of common interest and focus. In the following, one of the commissions shares a message from their ministry focus. 

Reading: Matthew 5:3-20

In June 1981, our family moved to Cochabamba, Bolivia, where my parents were to teach in a Baptist seminary that wanted more Anabaptist input.

We arrived at a particularly raucous point in Bolivian history. In July 1980, Luis García Meza, a commander of the Bolivian army, led a coup d’etat, initiating a brutal Pinochet-style regime. Meza only ruled for about 13 months: due to pressure from the international community, he was forced to resign in August 1981. His friend and fellow army general, Celso Terrelio, succeeded Meza with almost an equally repressive rule.

Like other dictators, García Meza introduced a “banned book list.” This move was an attempt to squelch that which could potentially influence people’s thinking, which could also then challenge his rule. Interestingly, Meza included Matthew chapters 5-7 – the Sermon on the Mount – in this “banned list” of books.

The problem, of course, was that my father was supposed to teach the book of Matthew. This led to many significant conversations within the seminary. Would they listen to the government and therefore focus on another book of the Bible? Would they plan to teach Matthew but skip over these three chapters?

They eventually decided to ask the foreigner to teach the course (including the Sermon on the Mount)!

But this came with risks, especially as Meza’s government actively silenced the voices of those whom it perceived as challenging the narrative that it sought to instill. In fact, Meza’s chief repressor Colonel Luis Arce who served as the Minister of Interior cautioned all Bolivians who opposed the new order by saying that they “should walk around with their written will under their arms!”

Why would a dictator want to ban these three chapters? Why did he find these chapters threatening?

There have been interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount that do not challenge power.

When my wife and I served as youth pastors, The 700 Club, a weekday American television program made its way onto televisions screens in our little area of southern Ontario (Canada). Airing since 1966, it describes itself as “a news/ magazine program that has the variety and pacing of a morning show…. It also features indepth investigative reporting…[and] covers major events affecting our nation and the world.”

One day, out of curiosity, I watched a program that focused on Matthew 5:13-16.

What I found striking about the host’s explanation was the way in which he interpreted the categorical statements of Matthew as though it was speaking to American Christians.

You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world…

Americans, he suggested, had an obligation to share about the American way of life. This Godordained American way of life, with its emphasis on freedom, economic prosperity and of course democracy provides an example to the rest of the world, according to the host. It offers, the host suggested, American hope that provides flavour and light for the rest of the world.

This program demonstrated how easy it is to interpret the Sermon on the Mount, and the biblical story in general, as an expression of Manifest Destiny, which is itself a product of nationalism. The Western missionary enterprise, notes the late South African missiologist David Bosch, assumed the superiority of Western culture and that God has chosen Western nations as standard bearers.1 “The nation-state,” he argues, “replaced the holy church and the holy empire.”2

Kelly Brown Douglas – a Black, womanist theologian in the United States – depicts this mindset as “American exceptionalism,” grown from seeds of the white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon myth. “The ‘city on the hill’ that the early Americans were building,” she says, “was nothing less than a testament to Anglo-Saxon chauvinism,”3 that shaped democracy though a particular perception as to how the country should be structured defined by race;4 the repercussions of which we continue to see today.

Part of the issue – as my students at university hear often – is the tendency to not take the socio-political context or the literary context into consideration when reading and interpreting Scripture. The host of The 700 Club, for example, assumed the “you” in the “you are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world…” to refer to him and/or American Christians as Americans.

But, if we pay attention to the text and the flow of Jesus’ words, the “you” refers to the final Beatitude: “you who are persecuted for my sake” (Matthew 5:11). It is those “you” who will function as salt and light in this world.5 It turns this passage into a revolutionary and subversive tool.

Jesus is very clever in his preaching style. Note how Jesus highlights a different logic. Those who are “blessed” are the ones who typically would not have mattered in society (the poor, the meek, the merciful). They are the ones who do not first come to mind (those who mourn, those who are pure in heart, those who are the peacemakers).

Remember that the type of blessing Jesus talks about is not something passive that one simply receives, but rather is active and impels people to get up and move. The Beatitudes highlight an alternative logic that moves away from the desire toward seeing ourselves as “exceptional” precisely because that would then replace God who is the very source of exceptionality, salty flavour and light in our world

It doesn’t seem as though Jesus encourages us to determine who is salt and who is not, or who is light and who is not. Rather, Jesus makes these categorical statements as a way to describe when someone serves as salt and light; when someone embodies Jesus’ alternative logic.

What’s more, Jesus’ use of “you” – “you are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world…” – moves away from an individualized understanding and highlights the corporate nature of this claim. As New Testament scholar Douglas Hare notes, “You are salt, yes, but for the earth, not for yourselves. Likewise you are light, but for the whole world, not for a closed fellowship.”6

The “community as a whole is challenged to fulfill its corporate mission of serving as salt and light for the world…. It is one we must work at together.”7

When we adopt Jesus’ alternative logic as our vision and embrace our communal walk to participate in it, we liberate ourselves from narratives that destroy, demean, exploit and exclude. In other words, we listen to the voices of those who are oppressed, poor and marginalized precisely so that we may hear God’s cry. Things are not as they should be; we must continue to struggle to make things right. Jesus’ logic challenges the clamour of other narratives that seek not only our attention, but our allegiance.

In standing up to these other narratives, narratives that seek to maintain “exceptionalism,” cause injustice, and create systems of oppression we embody an emancipatory politics. This term from Jacques Rancière (a French philosopher) means a form of politics that ruptures and disrupts the “what is” with the “what can be.” In other words, it challenges systems that perpetuate death, exclusion and violence, exposing the contingencies on which they rest, and reasserts an alternative political agency that embodies the future God desires in and for this world.

At the end of teaching the book of Matthew at the Baptist seminary in Bolivia, my father asked whether Luis García Meza, the Bolivian dictator, was right in banning Matthew chapters 5-7. The students all responded with a resounding “yes!” These chapters provide the seeds of a revolutionary logic that would challenge Meza’s – or any dictator’s – rule.

Jesus invites us to participate in a community called to resiliently embody Jesus’ subversive and revolutionary logic of liberation in our world.

—Andrew G. Suderman is secretary of the Peace Commission, Assistant Professor of Theology, Peace, and Mission at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Pennsylvania, and the Director of Global Partnerships for Mennonite Mission Network.

1. David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2004), 298.
2 David Bosch, Transforming Mission, 299.
3 Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2015), 10.
4 Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground, 10.
5 Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew: Interpretation (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 44.
6 Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew, 44.
7 Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew, 44.

Resilience in the face of the pandemic

When we look back at what happened in the last two years all throughout the world, one could just offer a sigh. We were never prepared for this.

Being locked down for several months in the Philippines forced us to reconfigure our social life. We tend to look at each family member from a different angle; the pandemic has made us realize that our families are treasures that we should nourish.

Everyone was worried about getting simple colds or a little sneezing, as this could be interpreted differently. When you went to the hospital for a check -up, there was a chance that you would be put in an isolation room with no relatives near you.

Panic and loneliness are our worst enemy.

Simply not having control over the situation and feeling disempowered makes us feel lost.

One good thing that happened during this disruptive and challenging situation was that our creativity was squeezed.

In our country, movement of goods stalled because of lock down. People were hungry. Agricultural products need to move.

This caused a new concept to emerge: “Produce Peace Plus” was born. Produce Peace Plus was a way of moving produce from the farm to the consumer’s table while providing a solution for products discarded because of lock down. We were able to deliver food to people in need.

Creativity comes from our great Creator.

As human beings, we submit to the one who created us, we say, “Not my will, but your will be done.”

Although we enjoy God’s creation, we must not worship Creation itself rather than the Creator. When we trust God, the creative Creator provides imaginative ways to respond to the challenges that emerge during the pandemic and beyond.

—Joji Pantoja is chair of the Peace Commission and founder and chief executive officer of Coffee for Peace in Davao, Philippines.

The power of resilience

A Peace Sunday 2022 testimony

“The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him” (Jeremiah 18:4).

This theme has been discussed a lot recently, especially since the pandemic, while some of us may be struggling with health concerns, loss of hope, and so on. What exactly is resilience?

During my training with Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute in 2018, I met a Palestinian Christian woman who shared about her life within a war zone. My biggest question is how can they have such a resilient, strong character, endurance, in the midst of their chaotic, and horrific place to live? How has she and her family managed to live her entire existence in the middle of persecution, hostility and even bomb explosions? She revealed that one of her closest friends was killed in a bombing. I’m not sure how she manages to survive in such a setting.

Resilience is defined as the ability to bounce back from adversity, adapt, move on and, in certain cases, even flourish, writes Eilene Zimmerman. Genetics, personal history, environment and situational context all play a role in an individual’s resilience.1

I believe that resilience may be built in individuals and societies via crisis, challenges, calamities, tragedies, hardships and sufferings where they can make peace with the situation and adjust to uncertainty. This is the strength of internal resilience.

Viktor E. Frankl, in his legendary book about his time in a concentration camp, says, “one could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.”2 This is a powerful thought borne out by real experience about the ability to achieve resilience amid adversity.

During my Psychosocial and trauma healing class at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), I learned about the art of kintsugi. Kintsugi is a wonderful skill of restoring shattered objects by lacquering the cracks and meticulously dusting them with gold powder. The golden flaws, according to the Japanese tradition, make the pieces even more precious. It’s lovely to think of this technique as a metaphor for our life, to imagine our damaged, challenging, broken or painful aspects radiating light, gold and beauty.

Kintsugi teaches us that broken parts of our bodies make us stronger and better than we were before. When we think we’re broken, we can pick up the pieces, put them back together, and learn to appreciate the cracks.³

In the Old Testament, God the Jehovah – also known as the potter’s hand – makes Israel into a new vessel (Jeremiah 18:4). I like the word “reworked” here. I believe this is a process of becoming a new creation, a new person, that only God and us can make happen.

It is a journey of our encounter with God and, at the same time, our practice of self-awareness, self-discovery, self-healing or self-transformation to be a new vessel in the hand of the Creator for God’s purpose and glory.

This Peace Sunday, as we remember many hardships, wounds, traumas, challenges, suffering or pain in whatever season we are in, with God’s help and loving hands, we can be reworked as a new person and a new community of God.

Are we willing to embrace our brokenness, vulnerability, and scars to be transformed into a more resilient community of God so that we might empower those around us?

This is the power of resilience: working with God to co-create a newness in ourselves; to be more prolific, alive; to be a new human being; and to be a new people of God in this changing world. Let’s make peace with our broken pieces!

—Andi O. Santoso is a member of the Mission Commission. He is an ordained minister in the GKMI Mennonite church in Indonesia, currently studying at AMBS.

“As followers of Jesus, we follow his example and work to bring peace in the midst of chaos.”

Member churches around the world celebrated Peace Sunday 2021 using Mennonite World Conference’s Peace Sunday worship resource: “Finding hope and healing in crisis.”  

Amos Ganjboir and Rajendra Masih at Bethel Mennonite Church, Balodgahan, India, worked for three days to paint a backdrop and prepare wave cut-outs for the Peace Sunday activity. Sankalp Jurri and Darshit Dadar helped them finish the job.  

“I thank God for these youths and the talent God has given them,” says pastor Ashish Kumar Milap. 

He used the Peace Sunday materials in all parts of the service.  

For the activity, youth volunteers distributed wave shaped cut-outs and pens to church members. who wrote down things that stole their peace. The cards were collected and pasted around the boat painting.  

“Some wrote that worry for their children’s future is like a storm; some wrote their bad habits are like a storm, some wrote that not having good relations with [a spouse] are like storm for them, etc.,” says Ashish Kumar Milap. 

Deacons Divesh Dadar, Dr. Vinay Joseph, Dr. Shasheed Milap and Mrs. Madhulika Johnson shared their testimony of when they were comforted by peace of God in the time of physical illness, mental stress and surrounded with COVID-19 fear.  

Bishop Dr. V.M. Jurri led the congregation in prayer for peace amid all the “waves” of life. After the service, the congregation was invited to pray for the “storms” fellow members had written on the wave cut-outs.  

“We thank the MWC Peace Commission for leading us in such a wonderful blessed Peace Sunday. This has surely united and encouraged us to stand firm in the time of crisis by having faith on Christ Jesus, who has authority to calm all the storms that steal our peace,” says Ashish Kumar Milap. 

How does your congregation celebrate special events and pray for the global church? Tell us your stories and share your pictures.  

Amos Ganjboir and Rajendra Masih at Bethel Mennonite Church, Balodgahan, India, worked for three days to paint a backdrop and prepare wave cut-outs for a congregational activity. Sankalp Jurri and Darshit Dadar helped them finish the job before Sunday.]  Photos: courtesy Bethel Mennonite Church 

Emmanuel Chapel, a BJCPM member church in Kolkata, India, invited MWC regional representative Cynthia Peacock to share at their Peace Sunday service.The youth and Sunday school children at Mennonite Church Rajnandgaon helped prepare the “Boat in the midst of the storm” activity and performed the readers theatre. Agus Setianto’s testimony was read in Hindi, after which the congregation shared their experiences of God’s peace in difficult times. “It was a blessed time hearing those living testimonies, and we praised God for them,” says pastor Vikal Rao.  

Iglesia Evangelica Unida Hermanos Mennonitas de Panama  Photo: courtesy Jacobo Piraza  

Le Voie du Salut congregation in Conakry, Guinea. Photo: Guilvogui 

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