WHAT IS THE PEACE PLAN?
The PEACE Plan is focused on reclaiming the church’s role as the center of mission. It’s modeled after Jesus’s ministry and put into action through ordinary believers loving their neighbors—no matter where God places them. Ordinary people, empowered by God, doing what Jesus did, wherever they are.
WHAT MAKES THE PEACE PLAN UNIQUE?
Lets ordinary believers lead
There simply aren’t enough professional doctors to heal all the world’s diseases, or enough preachers to start all the churches that are needed. At the same time, every believer across the globe was designed by God to make an impact. The PEACE Plan is about raising up and equipping ordinary believers with practical skills, unleashing them to create grassroots change right where they are.
Promotes, plants, and partners with the local church
The PEACE Plan is about reclaiming the primacy of the local church in its role in global missions. So often, when we work cross culturally, we enter a community and step around the local church – the very organization designed and best positioned to meet the challenges of their community. When we help the believers of the local church become equipped with tools and training, everyone learns, and the transformational work continues long after visitors leave.
Works top down and bottom up
The PEACE Plan brings together churches of different denominations and cultures to team tackle the largest issues facing the globe. While government, the private sector, and NGOs have a role to play, on their own, they can’t mobilize the exponential force of ordinary church members serving their community. When churches do what only they can do – love their communities in practical ways – sustainable transformation begins to take place.
Imitates Jesus’s model
In Matthew 10 and Luke 10, Jesus laid out instructional missional principles to his disciples. Among them was the idea “Don’t take a purse.” Missions doesn’t have to be costly – it was always meant to be about making disciples, not simply about bringing resources. When we partner to raise up and train other believers, focusing on their spiritual as well as their practical needs, our missional efforts are no longer limited by the size of our purse.
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PEACE PLAN: LOCAL VS. GLOBAL
Local
The local church is designed to be a family that welcomes in the community and reaches out in practical ways to meet their felt needs. The church is the only organization that cares for the whole person and their whole family, for their whole life.
When we reach out using the PEACE Plan principles through the local church, we focus on several key things:
Transformation over Transaction
How can we help meet all the needs of the hurting in our communities? Focusing on physical needs is not enough. We want to go beyond their tangible needs to their intangible needs.
Drawing People into Deeper Discipleship
Beyond giving “stuff,” PEACE Plan style outreaches focus on creating discipleship opportunities that bring people into our church family and help them take their next step towards Jesus and community.
Unleashing Ordinary Believers to Create Solutions
Often, when someone is hurting, they need care on multiple levels. Through the PEACE Plan, any member can be equipped to meet needs – all they need is a willingness to step up and reach out. As every member lives out the unique call God has placed on his or her life, the local church becomes a place where many needs are met in practical ways.
Focus on causes, not symptoms
If we want to create real, sustainable change, that means going after the tough stuff. It’s not enough to medicate the symptoms of the problems in our communities, as the church we are equipped to tackle the relationships, hurts, and systemic problems driving the challenges of those in our neighborhoods.
Global
When working cross-culturally in missions, it can be tempting to enter a community and meet needs directly. The problem with this approach is that it side-steps the local church. Local believers are experts on their communities – and they will continue to live in that community long after cross-cultural visitors leave!
The PEACE Plan takes a different approach to working cross-culturally:
Go to serve the local church
For many Christians, we’ve thought the best we can do to serve globally is pay for missions efforts, pray, and stay out of the way. However, we believe that when Jesus commanded us to go in Acts 1:8, he actually meant go! We live in a unique time in history when it’s never been easier to serve in our neighborhood or around the globe. Every believer has something they can contribute to the body of Christ.
Bring ourselves, not “stuff”
It can be tempting to focus on giving resources, but as Jesus modeled, the greatest transformation comes from relationship. We each have much to learn from each other cross-culturally in the body of Christ.
Foster local ownership of local problems
When we shift our focus on empowering local believers with tools and training, the outputs of cross-cultural work are sustainable and reproducible. When they become the hero in their context, the local church is seen as the source of hope for that community and God gets the glory.
