Our annual Leadership Cohort is designed around the question, “Who must we become?” Rather than providing tips, tricks, and scripts, we companion faith-fueled leaders as they become conflict-competent reconcilers with an impulse for repair.
The 2025 cohort will culminate with an immersive experience in Northern Ireland.
Our first three days will be spent in Belfast where we’ll immerse into the lives of legacy and contemporary peacemakers who were (and are) on the front lines of The Troubles. Our training will explore how a politicized and weaponized Christianity accelerates violence and how a Jesus-centered faith fuels us into the work of repair.
Then, we’ll head to Ballycastle on the north shore of Northern Ireland for a four-day training at the retreat center of the historic Corrymeela Community. Together with colleagues from the UK, we’ll certify in Dialogue for Peaceful Change, a world-renowned approach to conflict transformation.
Speaking to the power of this experience, Global Immersion Peace Fellow Lin Preiss (2022 Cohort) says, “There is no better teacher than stepping foot into spaces of conflict like Belfast and listening to those who lived the stories of making a tenuous peace. The lessons such an experience provided have continued to transform me long after returning to my everyday life. Doing so alongside a community of companions who know and wrestle with me in my identity and calling as a peacemaker is priceless.”
In the six months leading up to the immersion, our formation involves live access to leading voices in global peacemaking. They come to us unscripted and responsive to both the moment at hand and the aches of those in our cohort.
The cohort experience will also grow your skills and capacity for:
- Conflict transformation
- Renovating organizations or congregations into instruments of peace
- Innovating programming and resources that train others for Everyday Peacemaking
If you’re stirred by the idea of being part of the Leadership Cohort that culminates with the Northern Ireland immersion, we welcome your presence at our upcoming information session on October 15 at 9am Pacific (RSVP), where you’ll meet the facilitators, Osheta Moore and Jer Swigart, and hear about the experience of the cohort from Global Immersion Peace Fellow, Lindsay Knox (2024 Cohort).
You may also be interested in listening to our special “From the Field” podcast episode focused on the power of immersive experienced, recorded following a previous Cohort’s Deep South immersion.
Enjoy access to the application and help us spread the word by sharing this email with the faith leaders in your world.