Hate groups will continue to poison hearts, stir up violence, and polarize people in 2018. So to gear up for these challenges I began re-reading Martin Luther King Jr.’s Strength to Love. Peacemaking is not for the faint of heart. It demands an uncompromising rejection of the unloving ways of the world and a radical embrace of the enemy-loving way of Jesus.

I want to address several reasons why evangelical believers in the Middle East—and particularly in Palestine and Israel—are upset with Trump's declaration. My critique is from an evangelical perspective and it is a plea to my brethren across the water.

You can help us set the table for peace in 2018! By bringing Christians, Muslims, and others to the table, you help create peace in our world by dissolving stereotypes, bridging divides, and turning fear into friendship. Here's how...

Never hosted a peace dinner before? No worries! Follow these 5 practical steps to prepare the table for peace between Christians and Muslims.

From the perspective of Israelis, in recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, "United States president Donald Trump is to be commended for finally correcting the painful and unjust slight and doing justice to the Jewish State. But that is only a part of the truth. There is another truth as well, and there will never be peace as long as we hang on to only part of the truth as if it were the full truth."

I am much better at praise than I am at lament. Yet one third of the Psalms are laments. Prayers of lament are an important part of my spiritual heritage as a follower of Jesus.Yet I struggle with lament because I want to ignore and stay away from pain. I realize this is a natural tendency in all people. But peacemakers engage conflict. So we need to learn how to enter into the suffering of the world.

On an early mid-August morning, my wife and I began our day long journey to Sandpoint, Idaho to conduct a training for people interested in learning more about the current refugee crisis. But when we arrived we found protesters outside and 170 people inside, almost all of whom were also there to protest. Here's what happened next.

Jon Huckin and Jer Swigart wrote, Mending the Divides: Creative Love in a Conflicted World to help   followers of Jesus become “everyday peacemakers.” I think they have succeeded in their peace mission. Mending the Divides is now one of my top ten books on peacemaking.

Today is International Religious Freedom Day, and today we reaffirm our support for the protection of this right for all people, Christian, Muslim, or other.