The Power of the Person of Peace

When I was a missionary with Cru, we were trying to launch movements everywhere. I had a really bad attitude about it. I was very comfortable as a missionary to Illinois State University. Then our leadership mandated a scope change to all of Central Illinois.

I wasn't buying it.

I didn't buy that there was any way that we could be effective as campus missionaries running all over the state of Illinois spending a few hours here and a few hours there focusing on raising up a "person of peace". It didn't seem realistic.

I was right. 

I was right; what we were trying to accomplish wasn't going to work. We weren't going to be able to accomplish the task set out for us because we had a proximity problem.  However, this wasn't the problem I had anticipated.  I thought the "person of peace" concept was silly and didn't make good strategic sense. But our real problem was the distance and the lack of connection to the universities we were seeking to reach.

I was wrong. 

The person of peace concept is legit.  You need a person of peace who will help you network and connect with people in your community. You need a person of peace to help ground and give you insight about the people you are seeking to love and point to Jesus. This person of peace is someone you aren't going to find by helicoptering in and out of a place. You will find them as you begin to be present in your community; they are a person living in the trenches.

We have discovered a person of peace in Ypsilanti and as a result we are seeing a movement begin to roll. The movement is rolling in a pub and not in a church. But it's on the verge of getting messy and wild. It's beautiful!

There are evenings at Doubt on Tap that I leave and have to pinch myself, I can't believe it's actually happening. I can't believe these people are becoming a community. I can't believe people are talking about things that matter every week and like doing it!

Do you want to launch a movement? Then you need a person of peace.

Putting out from the harbor at Troas, we made a straight run for Samothrace. The next day we tied up at New City and walked from there to Philippi, the main city in that part of Macedonia and, even more importantly, a Roman colony. We lingered there several days.

On the Sabbath, we left the city and went down along the river where we had heard there was to be a prayer meeting. We took our place with the women who had gathered there and talked with them. One woman, Lydia, was from Thyatira and a dealer in expensive textiles, known to be a God-fearing woman. As she listened with intensity to what was being said, the Master gave her a trusting heart-and she believed!

After she was baptized, along with everyone in her household, she said in a surge of hospitality, "If you’re confident that I’m in this with you and believe in the Master truly, come home with me and be my guests." We hesitated, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. -- Acts 16:11-15