The possibility of peace

If Alan Kreider's essay on becoming a peace church impacts you as much as it did me, it will be worth the effort of reading. Here's a sample.

For the church to make a contribution to the healing of the world, we must allow God to change us, its members. God longs for us to be a people who believe that the Gospel is true, and hence who are becoming a people of peace and forgiveness. God invites us, in Christ, to accept his peace and to learn how to be peacemakers....

We won’t do this by avoiding conflict. We will do it by developing...reflexes that enable us to deal with conflict positively and hopefully. Through Christ God has made peace with us; and he wants to equip us to make peace with each other – and through this to become peacemakers in the world. The church has nothing to offer to the world other than what it has learned to live in its own “domestic” life.

If that excerpt piqued your interest, the whole article might well knock you flat.