Perhaps it’s time to review the funding sources of those who work for justice and peace in the name of Jesus.
We’re learning that the old notion of community-based, regenerating approaches (such as social entrepreneurship — Coffee For Peace in our case) to support our ministries are once again more sustainable than funding from governments and other institutions.
Monks and nuns in the past have practiced these self-regenerating ministries.
Now, even a mixed community of married couples, single parents, young people (PeaceBuilders Community in our case) can live with each other five days a week, eat together, pray daily together, worship weekly together, and earn our living together while serving God together in demonstrating peace and reconciliation in the historical contexts of our people and our land. And we can enjoy RestDays as families and individuals during the weekends.
Yet, we still need our global community — individuals and families — who want to invest from their own pockets in our social entrepreneurial initiatives.
We can also return to community-to-community partnership like what Paul of Tarsus facilitated between Macedonian communities and Jerusalem communities. So the local-global partnership (koinonia) can still be practiced and even be nurtured!
It is still an exciting time to be assured of the acts of the Spirit in spite of, and in the midst of, these dark days of the 21st Century Empire.
We thrive! We don’t merely survive.
VISION 2020
BY FAITH, WE SEE AT LEAST ONE PAR COMMUNITY IN EACH PROVINCE BY 2020
Imagine. By December 31st, 2020, each of our provinces will have a circle of leaders called Peace and Reconciliation (PAR) Communities! They would serve as the catalysts to organize PAR Teams in their municipalities or cities. These PAR Teams, in turn, would serve as radical transformation volunteers in their respective families, churches, neighbourhoods, barangays, cities or municipalities. The PAR Teams would also get involved in PAR Programs that are relevant to their specific context.
We are operating in 33 out of 81 provinces in the Philippines as of January 2016.
20 in Mindanao. 4 in Visayas. 09 in Luzon.
A NON-VIOLENT, RADICAL TRANSFORMATION
God willing, the Peace and Reconciliation Communities in all the provinces of the Philippines would advance as a Peace and Reconciliation Movement with an integrated framework for peace-building, who are organized in partnership with various parts of the People of God, who are mobilized to do ministries of justice and peace in the name of Jesus, and who will lovingly serve all the peoples of our land unconditionally regardless of religion, ethnicity, or political ideology, to the end that our land will experience holistic, radical transformation!
Using an integrated framework for peace-building, PBCI will serve each PAR Community to be equipped in spiritually-energized social discernment and analysis.
1. We will serve each PAR Community by equipping them with certain spiritual discernment skills and social analytical tools to help them understand the issues causing the crises they are facing in their particular province. By having a clear discernment and analysis of their situation, they can make relevant and effective crisis intervention.
2. We will encourage them to look beyond their current crises and to envision a future when there is genuine peace and reconciliation in their particular province. This vision is characterized by the kind of social structures and relationships they would desire. Such long term vision will help them discern the root causes of the crises they are facing and will also help them look through the taken-for-granted facades of social realities that keep the cycle or recurrence of their crises.
3. We will walk with them, in each ‘level of response’ and through ‘the time frame of activity,’ as they move from their crises to their desired change. We will offer how our understanding of shalom transformation (spiritual, psycho-social, socio-political, and economic-ecological) would guide their journey towards their desired future.
May this vision be counted as one of the many prayers for the transformation of our beloved country. May God bring genuine peace and reconciliation among our people and in our land!
