Why Give to Peacemaker Ministries?
How Your Gift Helps
This year we are trusting God to provide $2.1 million to fulfill our mission of equipping and assisting Christians and their churches to respond to conflict biblically. The revenues we receive from our seminars and conciliation work simply do not cover the cost of all our ministry activities. While income from training events, conferences, and resource sales are significant, donations from friends like you are critical—accounting for over one-third of our ministry's income, as you can see below:
Sometimes people ask why Peacemaker Ministries does not generate all of its revenue through sales and fees. The reason is that we are a ministry, not a business. God has called us to serve his people and to build up his church, not to take over the church's peacemaking responsibilities and manage them for a profit. As we seek to serve the church and advance the Kingdom of God, many of our activities can only be accomplished through the support of ministry donors:
We call the church to change. God calls his people to resolve conflict by remembering who they are in Christ, taking responsibility for their wrongs, confronting and forgiving others in love, and submitting unresolved differences to the church (see Matt. 7:3-5, 18:15-20; Phil. 2:3-4; Eph. 4:32; 1 Cor. 6:1-8). Unfortunately, many Christians do not respond to conflict this way. Therefore, our staff spends hundreds of hours every year respectfully urging church and denominational leaders to accept their responsibility to equip and assist their people to respond to conflict biblically. It often takes a great amount of time to see significant progress, but it is coming. After years of patient sowing, we praise God that entire denominations are embracing the ministry of peacemaking and radically changing the way their people respond to conflict.
We make training affordable and accessible. Most of the people we train as conciliators serve their own churches and denominations as unpaid volunteers. Therefore, unlike professional mediators, they cannot afford to pay high fees for Peacemaker Ministries' training. Recognizing this limitation, we have kept the price of our training programs far below the cost of comparable professional training. Your gifts make this possible, and they encourage more churches to train reconcilers.
We multiply and mentor. Our focus is not on earning fees, but on equipping and assisting Christians and their churches to respond to conflict biblically. Although we could intervene in many more conflicts (and be paid for our conciliation work), we are convinced that God has called us to equip the church. So we work to ensure that disputes are solved within the local church, if at all possible. Giving paying work away seems foolish in the world's eyes, but we gladly do so in order to more quickly multiply the number of people who are available to serve the church as peacemakers.
 |
Gifts of Stock |
|
| You may find it to your advantage to give a gift of stock or some other non-cash item to Peacemaker Ministries. Gifts of appreciated assets (like stocks, real estate, or bonds) have the potential to greatly benefit you and the ministry of biblical peacemaking.
For more information, contact Eric Foley at (406) 256-1583, ext. 130, or email him at efoley@Peacemaker.net
|
|
|
We develop and produce new resources. One of our main contributions to the church is providing biblically sound resources, seminars, and training programs. But it takes months and sometimes years to research and develop new materials, especially when our staff is occupied with so many other responsibilities. Your gifts enable our staff to develop these badly needed peacemaking resources and to cover the initial production costs of the materials.
We serve people with limited funds. Many people call us seeking help with life-shaking conflicts. Mothers of small children call in the midst of divorce proceedings. Prison inmates write to ask for resources and advice on how to deal with conflict in the cellblock. Grandmothers call for advice on how to reconcile with their children who will not let them talk with their grandchildren. Many of these people are financially burdened before they call us and are unable to pay our standard conciliation fees. What they need is encouragement, peacemaking resources, prayer, and biblical advice... not another price tag. Thanks to our generous donors, our staff provides initial conflict coaching advice regardless of whether someone can pay for our services.
We respond to requests for help from around the world. Every week we receive pleas for materials, training, and advice from Christians in other countries:
- Persons from over 100 different countries have visited our web site.
- We have responded to specific peacemaking inquiries from 85 countries.
- Peacemaker Ministries programs have been conducted in 16 nations.
- Peacemaking resources have been translated into approximately 20 languages.
 Often, the cost of even one modest resource exceeds a weekly or even monthly wage in developing countries. Much of our international outreach is funded through the charitable giving of friends like you. Peacemaking is touching Christians and their churches in the farthest corners of the globe.
Your gifts allow us to do all this and more. By contributing to Peacemaker Ministries, you are playing a vital role in "equipping and assisting Christians and their churches to respond to conflict biblically."
Donate Now
Your gifts also make possible True Stories of Reconciliation.
|
Print-friendly Version
