Our Ethos
WE ALL HAVE A PART TO PLAY IN BUILDING BRIDGES TO THE MIDDLE EASTERN WORLD
Our ethos in fostering everyday peacemakers is formed in both inspiration & partnership with The Global Immersion Project, a group who's purpose is to, "Form Everyday Peacemakers & Reconciling Leaders to mend divides. Peacemaking is not an add-on to the Christian faith — it’s the essence of our movement. Peace is a practiced way of life and the very adventure that we’ve been invited into." Our name "Ahlan" comes from the Arabic word, "Welcome".
Global Immersion Project's framework in fostering everyday peacemakers is broken down into 4 equally simple & profound steps: see, immerse, contend, & restore. These steps are deeply attached to a story that Jesus told about a Samaritan (a Jewish ethnic enemy that lived then & now in the Holy Land) that took a beaten Jew to the hospital & paid for all of his bills. That Samaritan had to SEE that his Jewish neighbor was made in the image of God, he had to IMMERSE into that Jewish man's problems make the Jew's problems his problems, he creatively CONTENDED for his flourishing (meaning, he did more than necessary for his ethnic enemy to have medical care & his expenses paid, & RESTORE, we hope through our Father in Heaven to have restored & healed relationships with our neighbors of both the same and different religions to foster peace as neighbors and truth peace that can only come from our Father in Heaven.
Building bridges between peoples of differing cultures & religions & difficult history to build trusting friendships requires immersive experiences. That is why our mission is to help create immerse experiences between Westerners and Arab & Persian Muslims & Christians. We will do that through creating media content, planning immersive events in Chicago, & planning immersion trips in the Middle East with the goal to develop a muscle for "listening longer than comfortable". Making a friendship always starts with listening. We have many narratives in the world of what is happening today and what happened yesterday. Can you listen longer than comfortable to something that you do not agree with, learn from a different perspective, offer respectful disagreement without burning the relationship, & have an ongoing, lifelong relationship with someone from any background from that world? This is what we hope to invite you to do with us.
SEE
Our SEE initiatives will be mainly to create audio and video content that interviews Chicago, N. American, Levantine, & Persian Muslims & Christians. We're going to capture their stories in podcast & YouTube interviews. The goal of our SEE podcasts is to help our audience see the complexity of that world through the personal stories of our friends & connections around the world.
IMMERSE
Our IMMERSE initiatives come in 2 ways. The first is to create immersive events here in Chicago that help Arabs & Persians foster better and closer relationships with Westerners. Additionally, we will be taking immersion trips internationally to practice our "listening muscles" to build friendships and see that world through the eyes of the new friendships (both Muslim & Christian) that we learn from.
CONTEND
We cannot creatively CONTEND for the flourishing of our local & global Arab & Persian neighbors without first SEEING & IMMERSING. Therefore, after we've done the first two steps in the process (mostly listening in a variety of ways), we will in the future start projects with our Arab & Persian neighbors that we meet through our first two steps in our peace building journey.
RESTORE
The work of RESTORATION is a work of God that he allows His people to participate in as we all try to figure out together how to SEE, IMMERSE, & CONTEND. We pray for a pure reconciliation between each other & with our Father through these efforts.
