Kirk Peacemaking Program

Peacemaking is a central declaration of the Gospel. Though we all sin and are separated from God, God restores our relationship and has granted us the gift of grace through Jesus Christ. We experience God's grace as peace. God's peace restores, sustains, and heals.

The Scripture describes in depth God's gift of peace and our response as peacemeakers. The Bible makes it clear that only God grants peace. God's peace is a rich concept, encompassing wholeness, well-being, harmony, stewardship, and justice. The Bible claims that there will be peace on earth only if there is justice for all God's children. Therefore, passages that describe God's peace might no use the word peace, but using other words and images, these passages tell us about God's special gift.

In response to this good news, Christians go into the world to point to and become a part of God's peacegiving. In this way we becaome peacemakers. As Christians we are called to do peacemaking whenever we encounter brokenness, whether it be in our own lives, in our families, congregations, communities, the international arena, or with the environment.

From The Biblical Witness to Peacemaking: 2001-2002, Presbyterian Church (USA)

The Kirk subscribes to the following Commitment to Peacemaking offered by the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Commitment to Peacemaking
Presbyterian Church (USA)

God's covenant with creation is given as grace and peace. Peace (shalom) is the wholeness and community in which human beings are meant to live. Although all people are sinners, God continually renews the Covenant through our Lord Jesus Christ. God's peace heals, comforts, strengthens, and frees.

Responding to this good news, the church goes into the whole world to point to and become a part of God's peacegiving. God's peace is offered whenever there is brokenness--in individual lives, families, congregations, communities, nations, and creation. In God's Covenant, the world and the church experience wholeness, security, and justice.

The General Assembly has affirmed in "Peacemaking: The Believers' Calling" that God's peacegiving in a broken and insecure world is central to the message of the gospel. Therefore people of faith engage in peacemaking, not as a peripheral activity, but as an integral part of their congregational life and mission.

Responding to God's Covenant, the session of the Kirk of Kildaire, Presbyterian, commits itself to peacemaking. In fulfilling this commitment, we will do peacemaking through:

• Worship--help to provide worship that points to the reality of God's peacegiving.

• Prayer and Bible Study--encourage the members of the congregation to receive God's peace in their own lives and, through prayer and Bible study, to seek it for today's world.

• Peacemaking in Families and in the Congregation--enable and equip members of the congregation to grow as peacemakers in their families, in the congregation, and in the community

• Community Ministries--help the congregation to work for social, racial, and economic justice, to confront racism and all other forms of prejudice, and to respond to people in the community who are caught in poverty, hurt by unemployment, or burdened by other problems

• Study and Response to Global Issues--encourage the congregation to support human rights and economic justice efforts in at least one area of the world, such as Central America, Southern Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, East Europe, or Central Asia

• Global Security--help the congregation study global security concerns, work for worldwide arms control, and support alternatives to military solutions to international and civil conflicts

• Making Peace with the Earth--involve the congregation in efforts to protect and restore the environment

• Receiving the Peacemaking Offering--support financially the churchwide peacemaking effort by receiving the Peacemaking Offering and through other means

The session will lead and support the congregation in this peacemaking response to God's Covenant. We appoint a member of the committee to be a contact with the Presbytery Peacemaking Committee and with the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program to receive and distribute information and resource materials which will help us to fulfill this commitment.