Peace Catalysts: Resolving Conflict in our Families, Organizations and Communities

Rick Love
Downers Grove: IVP, 2014, 207 pp., $13.21

If you have the desire to become more like the Prince of Peace, then Peacemaker must be on our agenda. Evangelical Christians sometimes avoid this conversation, fearing that being a peacemaker means they are liberal, new-age hippies! Written by the former CEO of Frontier Missions, Rick Love includes deep cross-cultural experience in his book about becoming a peacemaker. He discusses our CQ (cultural quotient) and provides guidelines in dealing with cultural conflicts. Love cites N.T. Write who said, “When God wants to create peace, He doesn’t send tanks, He sends the meek.” Those who push back with the sword reference (Matt. 10:34), he said this was the effect of Christ’s coming, not the purpose of His coming. Peace Catalysts is filled with fascinating illustrations and speaks about the powerful peacemaking skill of narrative storytelling. Sometimes we better can understand a term by defining its opposite. Love does this with peacemaking by explaining that it is not peacekeeping, peace achieving, or peace building. The pillars of peacemaking include: taking responsibility, lovingly reprove, accepting reproof, asking for forgiveness and forgiving others. The five appendices are worth the price of the book. They provide concrete steps in preparing for conflict, reproof, balancing grace and truth in confrontation, and guidelines for meditation. Love addresses some uncomfortable contexts for the peacemaker, including Muslim, terrorists and LGBT. Peace between those who have fundamental differences is difficult, but not impossible. If you seek a handbook for dealing with conflict, this book is filled with practical principles for peacemaking.