Building a lasting peace from the ground up

Reflections on how we can all become peacemakers, from Rachel Lampard, Director of Social Justice and Social Action for the Methodist Church.

A church in my local area is hosting a Food and Friendship meal, organised by the local Women’s Interfaith Network. It’s an opportunity to share food together, to swap stories and recipes and to make new friends. It sounds like a great event – but what has it got to do with Peace Sunday?

At the Methodist Conference this year, members were invited to reflect together on where they saw God at work for peace in their communities or in the world. One of the most common examples was of intentional gathering across boundaries, particularly boundaries that some may try to weaponise, with people of different faiths, with those seeking sanctuary, across different world views or opinions.

Conference members described how creating spaces, where people can meet over food, sharing or a common purpose, allowed difficult conversations to take place. Relationships could be built or maintained even when disagreement remained. Peace in these places was frequently described as fragile, incremental and easily overlooked, but nonetheless being created.

Sunday 20 September 2026 is Peace Sunday, the day before the United Nations International Day of Peace. The UN’s theme for this year honours the “everyday architects of peace” – people driving local action, laying the groundwork for stability and building a lasting peace from the ground up.

We live in a world in need of peace. Over 240,000 people were killed in conflict-related violence in 2025. Global powers are increasingly unwilling to be constrained by a rules-based order, and technological developments like autonomous weapons systems are raising new ethical challenges.  In many parts of Britain, tensions are being stoked by extremism and communities feel increasingly fragile.

At a time when powerlessness may threaten to overwhelm us, we can first look to the gift of God’s peace in our own lives, holding daily to the calling to be a peacemaker, and remember that peace is built from the ground up.

Peace isn’t the avoidance of disagreement, it is where “righteous and justice kiss” (Psalm 85). Together in our families, churches and local communities we do the hard work of creating spaces for encounter, relationship and conflict resolution. We can support and pray for peacebuilders in global communities and the world-wide Church. Particularly at a time such as this, we have a responsibility to resist the religious glorification of war or violence.

Nelson Mandela said that peacebuilding was “creating an environment where all can flourish.” Peace is not brought about by just an absence of war, but by all the things that enable God’s creation to become fully as God intended: food, shelter, health, relationships, healing, hope, love.

I wonder whether on this Peace Sunday we can reflect on what we do in the light of God’s call to be builders of peace?  How are we actively building peace through our daily encounters? How might our local foodbank, or pantry, or drop in, be a place where people who are marginalised experience fuller flourishing? Can our decisions about finance, or the use of our buildings, be used to lay the groundwork for peace?

Through prayer, preaching, encounter, solidarity, action and friendship, we can all live as “everyday architects for peace”.

Prayer for Peace

Bishop Samuel Kayinamura of the Free Methodist Church in Rwanda, lived through the genocide in his country during the1990s and shares his prayer for peace.

Prince of Peace, King of Compassion,
you call your people into holiness of heart
and life and send us to be signs of your reconciling love in the world.
We pray for lands like Rwanda, where deep wounds still shape the present
and where the hills remember the cries of the past.
Let your Spirit breathe healing into hidden trauma;
let forgiveness become a daily practice,
and let reconciliation grow into a way of life.
Teach hearts to trust again, to rebuild community from what was once torn apart,
and to find courage in grace where silence once carried unbearable weight.
We pray for places like Gaza, Lebanon and Iran,
where conflict tightens its grip and hope feels fragile.
Let your peace fall like rain on dry land; soften the dust of despair;
shield the innocent; steady the hands of all who long to build rather than destroy.
May hope rise in the cracks left by violence,
and may compassion become the language that outlives the sound of war.
In Christ, our Peace and our Hope.

Amen.