As we wade into 2025, the chaos around us is intensifying. In my community, deportations have begun. Despite their legal status and lack of criminal record, several neighbors have been abducted. Migrant and refugee children are terrified to go to school and many wonder if their workplaces are safe. Thousands of refugee families in my city are at risk of going hungry and homeless within days due to the uncertainty of federal funding.
The same is happening in your community too. You feel it—the erosion of rights, the dehumanizing rhetoric, the overwhelming weight of it all. Maybe you’re angry. Maybe you’re blaming others. You want to do something, but you’re unsure what the next right thing is.
We anticipated this moment. We are not surprised by it. In this New Year, Global Immersion is here to companion you as you find your footing in the work of mending divides. Here’s how:
- We’re hosting unfiltered conversations about conflict and how we deal with it. Our 2025 podcast season features conversations with folks who think carefully about the conflicts that we all encounter. Stay on the lookout for the new Mending Divides Podcast (formerly The Everyday Peacemaking Podcast), launching in the coming weeks.
- We’re training the Practices of Everyday Peacemaking. Our first quarter is fully booked with speaking, workshops, and intensives that will equip local congregations for the work of peace and justice. Email maggie@globalimmerse.org to learn how you can host a training in your context in 2025.
- We’re guiding the formation of faith leaders into Reconcilers. Next week, we launch our 2025 Leadership Cohort with nineteen leaders from diverse communities. On pilgrimage together, we’ll deepen the soul, awaken the imagination, and grow the capacity of these leaders for reconciliation.
- We’re companioning our Peace Fellows who emerge from our Leadership Cohort. Through quarterly convenings, spiritual direction sessions, skill-building intensives, and an annual retreat, we’re equipping our Peace Fellows to cultivate communities of Everyday Peacemakers throughout the country.
This morning, we held a conversation between our Peace Fellows and Bonhoeffer scholar, Dr. Reggie Williams, author of Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus. Comparing our moment with the era of Bonhoeffer, Dr. Williams offered this: “The most glaring similarity between then and now is that too many well meaning people of faith stared evil in the face and did nothing.”
My friends, Global Immersion is here to guide us on the journey from sympathy to solidarity. It’s a slow journey and one that is worth our lives.
P.S. The work of Global Immersion is possible because people just like you refuse to believe that conflict of any kind gets the last word. I invite you to invest in peace through Global Immersion this year through a one-time or monthly sustaining gift.