Greetings from Ohio! This week, Peace Team was able to spend time with the Senior High Worship Arts camp at Inspiration Hills. Since we had to lead two Bible Studies each day, we had to think pretty fast on our feet and come up with some new ideas about what we could do.

One way we did this was by creating a whole new session, specific to their camp: Peacebuilding Through the Arts. We talked with the group about how performance can be used to transform conflicts and violence, and we practiced it by creating situations of conflict that the group got to act our and resolve by using “tools” of peacemaking, like understanding, listening, and love.

The session went super well, but the best part didn’t come until the next night at the all-camp campfire session that we led on bullying. Each family group was instructed to intervene in and try to end a scene of bullying that Peace Team acted out. Most groups tried separating Hunter and Molly or having them talk out the conflict. We had predetermined which groups were doomed to fail and which were going to succeed. The Worship Arts kids were supposed to fail, but none of us were prepared for what they were going to do. When they got up, their group had one member act as a German foreign exchange student who felt like getting ice cream would solve the problem. The hilarity of it took all of us aback, and the conflict that had been occurring completely diffused! It was so awesome to see the Worship Arts kids use some of the tools that we had talked about before, and to know that our last minute session truly made an impact!

Peace–Katie