Peacemaking and serving

Nathan Hosler leading an Insight Session at the 2017 Annual Conference.
Photo by Donna Parcell

By Nathan Hosler, director of the Office of Public Witness

If all politics were controversial before, they have gotten even only more so in the past year. We may ask, “How do we advocate—engage in policy debates with our distinctive voice—when our own body also experiences many divisions?” The Office of Public Witness as a ministry of the Church of the Brethren is guided by Annual Conference decisions. While these decisions are never unanimous, they do represent important markers of collective discernment. 

In the last few years, Joshua Brockway, director of Spiritual Life and Discipleship, and I have been doing joint workshops at Annual Conference. In these discussions, we have worked alongside one another as an experiment in spiritual discernment and public witness. While public witness is often thought to trade in certainties and strategy and attempts to bring change, spiritual life and discipleship are typically seen as contemplative, personal, and private. While these generalizations may be somewhat accurate, it is our hope that our witness be built in discernment and theological reflection, and that our spiritual life outwardly reveals the peace of Christ.

As Brethren, we remain committed to following the way of Jesus and serving those in need. As a child and young adult, I was quite familiar with service: workcamps, work days at our local camp, making apple dumplings to sell at the disaster auction, and a number of other opportunities. I also learned that following Jesus meant being against war and for peace. In college and then serving with Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria, I grew to understand that service and peacemaking are both local and individual, but also at many other levels of communal and global living. I now call these acts of faith done in the world “public witness.” The desire to serve and work for peace is part of our shared worship, prayer, and Bible study, and is both local and global. The Office of Public Witness is not the denomination’s group of little politicians but simply an extension of the work of service and peace that can be found throughout the Church of the Brethren in the United States and around the world.

We pray that you will be blessed as you connect faith and public witness in your own life and community. Thank you for partnering in this important work and for supporting the Office of Public Witness.

Learn more about the Office of Public Witness at www.brethren.org/publicwitness. Support this and other ministries of the Church of the Brethren at www.brethren.org/give .

(Read this issue of eBrethren)

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