The last couple of weeks have been busy for Waymakers.
In the span of eight days, we helped host Peacemakers Needed in Washington, D.C., led eight REPAIR-themed workshops at Faith Matters’ Restore:Connect gathering in Orem, and hosted our first Waymakers Founders Evening in Provo.
There is a time to lament our current divides. A time to engage conflict differently in our families, congregations, communities, and public life. A time to believe in peace. And a time to start building peace.
We tried to lean into the all of these ideas in our last few events.
Peacemakers Needed — Washington, D.C.
We started in Washington, D.C., with Peacemakers Needed, a collaborative event with Utah State University’s Heravi Peace Institute and the Washington, D.C. Temple Visitors’ Center.
About 150 people joined us for a day focused on exploring pluralism, democracy, religious difference, and how the work of peacemaking could potentially unite us.
Patrick Mason and Thomas Griffith opened the day with call for us to consider a Fourth American Revolution centered on pluralism and peacemaking. Ravi Gupta helped us think about what genuine interfaith dialogue requires. Jim Ferrell talked about how to combine different elements (make water) in ways that make our relationships larger than their parts. Maybree Spillsbury talked about working across political differences.
I closed the gathering with a speech about the need for wonder in peacemaking.
Thought it all we emphasized the importance of acquiring the skills of a peacemaker while also becoming convinced that some of the deepest work of peacemaking requires more than skills. Peacemaking requires a belief in things that we can’t always see. It requires, as John Paul Lederach refers to it, an igniting of the moral imagination. Wonder reminds us that the impossible is sometimes possible. It makes a way out of no way.
Restore:Connect — Orem, Utah
A few days later, we moved from Washington to Orem for Faith Matters’ Restore:Connect gathering.
This was a different experiment for us.
We combined forces with Faith Matters’ annual Restore conference to bring Waymakers workshops inside their larger annual gathering of over 2000 participants. Over two days, we offered eight workshops, filling approximately 1,275 workshop seats!
The workshops ranged the gamut from intrapersonal work with Amanda Ford and Melissa Mason; how to reconstruct your faith after deconstruction with Pastor Jamie White; Peacemaking 101 skills with Patrick Mason; and two 100-minute sessions on how people who are trying to be disciples of Jesus might navigate their own conflicts and how to then lead others to a place of peace.
The two-day event ended with Ravi Gupta, his family, and the Vaishnava community in Cache Valley sharing the peacemaking resource of kirtan. The Guptas’ kirtan event was the emotional highlight for many as we learned how to find focus, joy, and surrender in an age of distraction to better prepare ourselves for the work.
Our First Founders Evening
On Friday, Patrick, Katie, and I gathered a group of friends at the Covey home in Provo for our first Waymakers Founders Evening.
When Patrick, Katie, and I started Waymakers, we were inspired by President Nelson’s call for more peacemakers. But we also believed that people of faith need more than a call to make peace. They actually need practical tools to develop peacemaking skills.
The response over this first year has been overwhelming.
REPAIR brought 397 people together in Provo. Interfaith REPAIR sold out at 200 people in Salt Lake City. Peacemakers Needed brought another 150 people together in Washington. And our eight Restore:Connect sessions filled roughly 1,275 workshop seats.
And clearly some of you are really determined to get as many peacemaking skills as you can. More than a hundred of our participants who participated in at least two different Waymakers events attended an average of 4.43 workshops each. That’s a lot of workshops in the past year!
We received great feedback from our Founding Circle event with a strong invitation: how does Waymakers deepen the experience and help participants gain more confidence and tools of peacemaking? That’s got our brains churning and we have some exciting announcements to make soon about the future of Waymakers.
A number of generous people donated over $30,000 to help Waymakers continue its mission. We’d love your support too.
Patrick, Katie and I want to thank all of those who have contributed financially and with service to Waymakers in our first year!
Tier: Building Bridges ($5,000+)
Roger Allen
Brittany Larsen
Greg & Annie Waddoups
Tier: Repairing Relationships ($2,500+)
William & Brandi Kilmer
Chris & Debbie Wallace*
Anonymous
Tier: Closing the Distance ($1,000+)
Jeff Axson*
Pamela & Stephen Caine
Caprene Curtis*
Jay & Jane Griffith
George & Amy Handley
Holly Richardson, PhD*
Scott & Kandee
Making a Way Supporters (up to $999)
Eric & Jennifer Pack
Jennifer Preece
Brett & Shenley Puterbaugh
Anonymous*
Anonymous
Anonymous
In-Kind Support
Jeri & Stephen Covey
Earliest Supporters
Those who gave before Founders’ Evening
Jeff Axson
Rebecca Burnham
Jan Marie Cannon
Marlowe Dayley*
Christina Felt
John Graham
Melissa Hardman
Dustin Hepworth
Andy Johnston
Molly Jorgensen
William & Brandi Kilmer
Brittany Larsen*
Nicholas Raichart*
Cindy Ray
Brent Searle*
Natalie Schreyer
Yvette Wilkes
Craig Winder
Rachel Wright
Anonymous
* Recurring donors
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If you want to get started with professional certification training now … consider joining one of USU’s Transformative Mediation Certification Programs a 40-hour training for a select group of Utah’s leading mediators, attorneys, social workers, educators, and change agents:
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