Our leadership cohort forms and equips Christian leaders to mend internal, interpersonal, and institutional divides.
The cohort utilizes live access to leading voices in global faith-based peacemaking, a communal approach to collaborative learning, and personalized coaching and spiritual direction sessions to invite the next-level transformation unique to and necessary for each leader in the program.
The 2025 cohort includes an immersion into Northern Ireland, where we will explore the role of faith leaders in accelerating and disarming conflict. Together with our UK-based colleagues, you will become certified in the proven conflict transformation methodology, Dialogue for Peaceful Change, born out of The Troubles by leaders at the Corrymeela Community. The cohort culminates with a robust synthesis of critical insights, strategy sessions for organizational renovation, program innovation, and local engagement, and a formal invitation to the Global Immersion Fellowship.
We are no longer accepting applications for the 2025 Leadership Cohort. Please add your name to the interest list above to be notified about the 2026 cohort. If you would like to speak to someone about the cohort, please reach out to info@globalimmerse.org.
The Leadership Cohort is a six-month cohort for Christian faith leaders committed to peacemaking and reconciliation in their contexts.
The program features virtual access to leading voices in global peacemaking, peer group sessions, one-to-one coaching and spiritual direction sessions, and a five-day immersion experience into a point of pain, conflict, or injustice around the world. The cohort culminates with an invitation to the Global Immersion Fellowship—a growing community of reconciling leaders committed to ongoing formation and collaboration in the work of repair.
The Leadership Cohort is a journey. It’s a commitment to walk alongside other peacemakers who are committed to seeing our world become a world fueled by love and not hate, seeing us grow in our capacity for conflict resolution, and ultimately seeing us become what Dr. King says is the beloved community. The cohort is a place where we own our belovedness.
Many identify (or have been identified) as leaders based on a common set of metrics. They have charisma, are compelling communicators, and have a sense of vision with enough strategy to move toward it. Some embody (& sharpen) these skills so effectively that large groups of people follow them.
Some never identify as leaders. You don’t claim to hold the skillset that society has deemed critical to leadership gifting. You operate more quietly and with a keen sense of emotional, social, and cultural intelligence. While you use words, you influence more by gentle companionship and contagious creativity.
Whether you identify more with the former description or the latter, our conviction is that you are a leader. In our cohort, we will help you find your voice and hone your unique approach to the kind of leadership that causes peace to emerge within and around you.
Leaders who join the cohort are often uncertain about what to do now and what’s next. How do I bear all the pain in the world? How have my experiences shaped me in the past, and how is that changing now? How do I honor that and show up in my current space as the peacemaker needed here? Many questions arise about personal formation.
There are also many questions about community. Who are my people—who is the community I’m asked to lead and be peacemakers for and with? Who are my peers—those with whom I can be unburdened and unguarded about how peacemaking makes us feel lonely, helpless, and sometimes hopeless?
Through all aspects of the Leadership Cohort—from our cohort time, peer group time, teaching, and writing—we offer ways to build a hopeful alternative.
All modules meet on Fridays from 8-11am Pacific on Zoom, typically twice a month.
Each module includes:
Throughout the program, cohort members will have the opportunity to meet with our facilitators for at least one coaching session (leadership formation, organizational renovation, program development, alliance building with Jer) and one spiritual direction session (interior work and sustaining contemplative practice with Osheta). Additional sessions may be available upon request.
The 2025 cohort will conclude with an immersion into Northern Ireland in early June 2025, where we will explore the role of faith leaders in accelerating and disarming conflict. Together with our UK-based colleagues, you will become certified in the proven conflict transformation methodology, Dialogue for Peaceful Change, born out of The Troubles by leaders at the Corrymeela Community.
The cohort culminates with a robust synthesis of critical insights, strategy sessions for organizational renovation, program innovation, and local engagement.
Upon completing the cohort, you will be formally invited to become a Global Immersion Peace Fellow. Through quarterly online convenings and annual in-person experiences, we will continue to support your ongoing formation, deepen your relationships with Reconciling Leaders worldwide, and resource your collaborations as they emerge.
Dr. Jer Swigart is a faith leader, a nationally recognized peacemaker, a mediator, and a trainer known for forming conflict-competent leaders, teams, and organizations. He is the co-author of Mending the Divides: Creative Love in a Conflicted World and a Bonhoeffer Senior Fellow at Hebrew College’s Miller Center for Inter-religious Leadership. Jer holds an MDiv from Fuller Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Leadership in Global Perspectives from Portland Seminary.
Osheta Moore is a peacemaker, pastor, spiritual director, and sought-after speaker and facilitator. She’s the author of Shalom Sistas, which invites women into the rhythms of everyday peacemaking, and Dear White Peacemakers, written to invite white allies into the work of racial reconciliation. Alongside her husband, Osheta co-pastors Roots Moravian Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The Leadership Cohort is an expansive place for the Christian faith-fueled leader. We try to learn each other’s language for God. We try to learn each other’s stories. What has been harmful to you? What are you still unpacking? And we try to make space when we talk about God so that when we do bring our faith into our peacemaking, we’re saying it in a way that is open and available for all of us to find our way of understanding that and applying that to where we are in our faith.
We’ve found that leaders drawn to the Leadership Cohort have often tried other programs, hoping for a quick solution to the ache within them. However, they discover that the Leadership Cohort doesn’t solve that ache; instead, it deepens it. The cohort helps them build scaffolding and provides an infrastructure for ongoing formation, teaching them to address and navigate the world with that ache in a restorative way.
The leaders who find their way to us are disoriented but recognize the journey is worth taking. They grow more comfortable with discomfort, understanding it as part of their life, love, and leadership of peacemakers. This cohort isn’t for the pretentious; it’s for those willing to put aside pretenses and come as they are, daring to ask big questions, admitting when they don’t know or are wrong, and seeking transformation.
These leaders aren’t looking for a program to solve everything; they’re seeking an accelerant for their formation.
In 2025, the Leadership Cohort tution is $4,000.
This cost includes:
*Cost does not include flights, transportation from the airport to the hotel, and nominal meals during immersion
We understand that the cost can be a challenge, but we’re here to help you overcome it with a proven strategy to fund your tuition.
We recommend a balanced approach: cover 1/3 of the cost yourself, 1/3 from your organization, and 1/3 from a supportive team of funders who believe in your mission as a peacemaker.
To assist you, we’ve created a fundraising letter template. This template has been successfully used by past Global Immersion participants and can help you secure the necessary support.
The Global Immersion Project | 2801 B St. #22 | San Diego, CA 92102 | (925) 289-9684 | info@globalimmerse.org
