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Dwelling in the World  
with People of Peace
Missional Discipleship within the Missio Dei

Nick Ladd
Nick Ladd has been an Anglican minister for 37 years, during which time he has 
served in six parishes of very different social makeup. For eight years he was 
Director of Ministry, Formation and Practical Theology at St John’s College, Not-
tingham, and has also spent time overseeing the training and support of curates 
for Birmingham diocese. At present, he serves with his wife in a parish in Birming-
ham and works freelance, supporting churches in their missional development, 
teaching, researching, and offering spiritual accompaniment to clergy. He has 
recently submitted a doctorate on Christian community formation and maturity.  
Contact: nick.ladd57@gmail.com

Abstract

Dwelling in the World is a practice designed to help churches 
to form a public shared identity in the mission of God with people 
in their wider communities who want to work with them—their 
“people of peace”. Grounded in the missio Dei, this practice offers a 
concrete example of missional discipleship. How does this work in 
practice? And what happens between church members and their 



Nick Ladd—Dwelling in the World with People of Peace 

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people of peace? Based on research conducted in 2020, this article 
presents that research and its findings, paying close attention to the 
lived experience of those involved. It argues that an exchange takes 
place which is relational rather than transactional where the part-
ners are drawn together into the life of God as they join together 
in God’s mission. This is a disturbing and transforming public 
journey, which decentres discipleship from the private, individu-
alised world of church and, by means of attention to the “other,” 
re-centres it in God and God’s agency in mission. Therefore the 
outcome may be appropriately named as missional discipleship.

Introduction

At the International Research Consortium (IRC)1 in Wellington, 
South Africa, in June 2019, I was asked to conduct research on the 
practice of “Dwelling in the World” (hereafter DitW). This practice 
is one of six “faithful disruptive” missional practices of the Part-
nership for Missional Church Process (hereafter PMC).2 It involves 
congregational members forming public relationships, on behalf of 
their church with “people of peace,” who they connect with in their 
wider community. PMC is a three-year journey of spiritual discov-
ery for clusters of congregations who learn together. It began in 

1. The IRC is an invitation-only annual international conference that has 
been running since 2004 which aims to offer a theologically rigorous approach 
to inter-disciplinary research on the practice of mission in the local church. 
Academics and practitioners are invited to present their research and reflec-
tions on missional practice in an atmosphere of positive critique and mutual 
learning. Specifically, but not exclusively, it has been where research and evalu-
ation of the Partnership for Missional Church process has been shared. Some 
of the members are also founders of this journal and their institutions have 
sponsored the journal. No financial transactions were involved in enabling this 
research. 

2. The others are (Rooms and Keifert, 2014):
• Dwelling in the Word
• Corporate Spiritual Discernment (and a personal version of this)
• Hospitality
• Announcing the Kingdom
• Focus for Missional Action



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North America in the 1980s and 1990s through the Church Inno-
vations Institute and has become established elsewhere—notably 
in South Africa and the UK (Church Innovations Institute, 2021). 
In the UK, the Church Mission Society partners with Church 
Innovations to offer the process to local churches. This research 
took place in participating churches from four Anglican Dioceses 
across the country.

PMC, as a relatively long-term process of missional accom-
paniment, enables Christian congregations to form partnerships 
with their wider communities within the mission of God—form-
ing a public and communal Christian identity in ways appropri-
ate to the pluralist context of a post-Christendom world (Keifert, 
2006; Rooms and Keifert, 2014). It does this through inculcating 
communal spiritual practices, one of which, DitW, involves engag-
ing in one-to-one conversations with people in the wider com-
munity who are perceived as people of peace—people who share 
something of the church’s values and aspirations and may then 
become partners in a shared missional experiment (Rooms and 
Keifert, 2014: 20–24). The early formation of this practice drew 
on the one-to-one methodology found in Community Organising 
(Alinsky, 1971). This was revisited in the UK from 2012 through 
connection with Citizens UK (Citizens UK, 2021) in Nottingham.

The data in this research points to a re-drawing of the pa-
rameters of discipleship within the mission of God—a concrete 
example of what the missio Dei looks like in practice.

People of Peace as a missional concept within the “missio 
Dei”

In PMC, the attention to people of peace arises from one of the 
six spiritual practices; Dwelling in the Word with Luke 10.1-12 
over a period of up to a year. Dwelling in the Word is a practice 
of attending to the voice of God through Scripture in community. 
People listen in pairs to what each other hears in the passage and 
then give voice to what their partner says to another pair or to the 
others in the group. The group then reflect together on what they 



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are hearing from the passage through each other. Dwelling in this 
passage led to the idea of seeking people of peace to partner with 
God in mission. Grounded in the missio Dei, the idea that God is 
already at work in the person of peace leads to a mutual recogni-
tion which is expressed in the verse, “And if anyone is there who 
shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person” (Lk. 10.6). 
Literally the first part of the verse reads, “If there, there is a son of 
peace” and thus arises the concept of the “person of peace.” Dwell-
ing in the Word is thus an embodiment of the missio Dei and leads 
to the focus of this research: does this exchange actually happen in 
practice? What is happening when peace is exchanged and it rests 
on another who already shares in it? 

The concept of people of peace does not have a wide usage 
elsewhere in missional practice. Where it does, it is employed in 
substantially different ways to PMC. 

Some Church planters use this methodology, seeing people 
of peace as those chosen by God to be receptive; they are people 
of influence who act as a bridge to the community. Furthermore, 
a person of peace cannot be a person of faith as they are by defi-
nition someone who is “lost” (Matthews, 2019: 188–191). The 
Church planter’s task then is to form relationship with persons 
of peace in their own world and await opportunities to bring the 
lost to faith (Breen, 2010). Their strategy is to seek out receptive 
and responsive people of reputation and influence in a community 
(Baumgartner, 2011: 398–400).

Matthews is critical of this person of peace approach both in 
terms of the indeterminacy of waiting for a response and the pre-
scription to move on when there is none. Moreover, he is uneasy 
about the propensity to seek people of influence and forget the 
poor and the outcast. The potential down-grading of education, 
community development and medical care is also a concern (2019: 
191–197).3

3. Matthews also has an exegetical critique of using Luke 10 as a mission 
strategy. However, as the task at this point is to explain rather than defend the 
approach to people of peace in PMC, I will not be addressing this aspect of his 
critique.



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PMC configures the approach to people of peace differently. 
First, DitW sees the encounter with a person of peace as a mu-
tual exchange in which both bring something to a potential mis-
sional partnership—“partners in God’s mission NOT objects of 
ministry”(PMC UK, 2019: 4). This creates a relationship in which 
there is an intersubjective discovery of embodied knowledge rath-
er than a one-way evangelistic transaction (Yong, 2007: 60).4 This 
decentres the church as the bringer of hospitality in a practice that 
is grounded in the hospitality of God (Yong, 2007: 62). This seems 
appropriate for a pluralist context (Suurmond, 1994: 198–203); 
evidence is that this practice gives Church members a way to ex-
press faith publicly with integrity. Because this is a partnership in 
mutually discerned action, the need to wait passively for response 
from the person of peace is removed as is the temptation to ma-
nipulate them to reach this point. This is a further connection to 
the missio Dei: the reception is the discernment.

Second, rather than being a strategy driven by the practitio-
ner, DitW encourages a practice of listening and discernment of 
the presence and activity of God. The aim is to be led by the Spirit 
to shared action in God’s mission, to experiment together and then 
reflect together on what is done. To move on where no shared con-
nection is discovered is not then abandoning the strategy or failing 
to persevere; rather it is the recognition of the need to respond to a 
God-given moment where our “peace rests” on another (Lk. 10.6).

Both of these perspectives are grounded in PMC’s commit-
ment to the missio Dei—mission as participation in the mission 
of the Triune God; an approach which adds to the classic doctrine 
“another ‘movement’: Father, Son and Holy Spirit sending the 
church into the world” (Bosch, 1997: 390). It is perhaps unsurpris-
ing that a concept such as the missio Dei that has been embraced 
so widely has many faces—from those that are deeply rooted in 
Trinitarian theology to others which offer a secularized vision of 
mission or one where the “ecclesial nature of mission might be 
seen as trivial or unnecessary” (Bevans and Schroeder, 2004: 304).

4. See also Barrett, 2020; and Barrett and  Harley, 2020.



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PMC draws from the missio Dei the formative conviction that 
God is already present and active in God’s world. This does indeed 
decentre the Church’s agency in mission. Resisting colonising ap-
proaches, DitW proceeds with the assumption that God is at work 
in people of peace, who will have something to bring to the mis-
sional partnership, making this a transformative spiritual journey 
for all involved. 

However, the vision of mission remains ecclesial and Chris-
tological, as can be seen by the choice of Scriptures for communal 
reflection via Dwelling in the Word in the three-year process.

• Year 1: Luke 10.1-12 focuses the congregation’s listening and 
discovering of partners on Jesus’ sending of the disciples.

• Year 2: 2 Corinthians 4.1–12 grounds the missional experi-
menting in the death and resurrection of Christ.

• Year 3: Acts 6.1–7 positions the congregation’s discernment 
of its missional vocation in the struggle of ecclesial formation.

In seeking people of peace, PMC places spiritual transforma-
tion in Christ at the heart of the missional journey. However, it 
removes the control of that journey from the hands of the church 
and trusts that God is nevertheless at work in ways that will be 
transformational for all partners in the relationship. In biblical 
terms, this can be seen in the way that both Peter and Cornelius 
are transformed by their encounter in Acts 10—a transformation 
that is the initiative of God throughout. 

Over time, this practice has a profound impact on the way 
people perceive and express their discipleship, specifically en-
abling them to lay down a privatised approach based around the 
perpetuation of their own congregation and set sail on a more 
public journey with unfamiliar others, centred on the mission of 
God.



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Methodology, demographics and analytical 
approach

The Research Question

To enable the research to be grounded in lived experience, the 
decision was taken to focus on the story of what took place in the 
relationships between the interviewees and their people of peace. 
The focus was on the interviewees’ experience, which we have 
first-hand. What we know of the partners is only through the in-
terviewees’ reporting.

The research question was shaped in two parts:
What is the exchange that goes on when our “peace” rests on 

another?
How are people formed and changed by this practice? Spe-

cifically in:

• Relationships with others 

• Relationship with God

• Understanding and practice of discipleship

• Vision of mission and the gospel

Methodology

The research project worked with the methodological assumption 
that learning happens as people reflect on their experience and ar-
ticulate that reflection. Furthermore, this learning is best arrived at 
not by direct question but through encouraging people to tell their 
stories and then reflect on them. So it uses a semi-structured inter-
view approach developed for the listening exercises in the Congre-
gational Discovery interviews in the first year of PMC (PMC-UK, 
2018). But in addition to facilitating story-telling, the interview 
guide of five questions was designed to encourage reflection on the 



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experiences that interviewees described. In the same document, 
research ethics protocols for the interviewers were articulated.5 

Whilst recognising the reflexive component in all such re-
search, the desire was to honour the voices of the interviewees as 
fully as possible and ensure that they were recorded well. Inter-
viewers summarised the interviewees’ responses to each question, 
using the interviewees’ words, and then checked their summary of 
the interviewees answers, either question by question at the time 
of the interview or by providing the interviewees with a draft of 
the transcript to comment upon. The agreed summaries were then 
sent to me.6

The approach of this research is akin to appreciative enquiry. 
The positive nature of the picture presented here is due to the fact 
that the purpose was to understand church members’ experi-
ences of people of peace and how this experience had shaped and 
formed them. However, one question did focus on obstacles and 
constraints; the purpose of this was to give the opportunity for 
interviewees to talk about the discomfort and disruption of the 
missional journey. However, there is a more complex and conflic-
tual account to be written about how churches journey with mis-
sional transformation in PMC, something that I have done in my 
recently completed doctoral research (Ladd 2021). 

Demographics

14 interviews were conducted in the UK across four Anglican 
dioceses between 25th February and 27th April, 2020. The four 
dioceses chosen were Durham, Leicester, Southwell & Nottingham 
and Oxford, each of which has been involved with PMC for at least 
two 3-year missional journeys and in most cases for more than 
this. Such a time-frame is realistic for assessing the embedding of 
new practices.7

5. Interview guide and research ethics protocols available on request.
6. I completed 2 of the interviews myself; the other 12 were carried out by 

4 other interviewers.
7. Some interviews were conducted face-to-face and others on Skype due 



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A cross-section of people was interviewed in terms of age, 
gender and ethnicity, reflecting the make-up of the congregations. 
Those interviewed had been involved with DitW as one of the 
PMC spiritual practices for between three and eight years.

The interview base also represented a wide cross-section of 
roles within the church: one clergy, a number with a range of lead-
ership roles, some with no role and some with roles that they had 
taken on through the PMC process.8

Analytical approach

Each of the five questions were analysed in turn involving:

• Numerical grouping of the data

• Stories and quotations to give a more embodied sense

• My reflective comments and questions

Numerical

I employed a content analysis approach to the data. This revealed a 
lot of common themes, which led me to conclude that it would be 
valuable to group the themes numerically according to frequency 
of occurrence. This was not statistical sampling, but grouping the 
data revealed the recurrence of certain experiences and the impor-
tance of certain themes across the data. 

Stories

Though there was much overlap of themes, the stories that il-
lustrated them were diverse. Therefore, alongside the numerical 
grouping, I included quotes and stories of slightly fuller length, 
staying close to the language of the interviewees, to strengthen the 

to COVID-19 restrictions.
8. Full analysis of demographics available on request.



Nick Ladd—Dwelling in the World with People of Peace 

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embodied flavour of the analysis. Because of the scale and nature 
of the project, it was neither possible nor desirable to adopt a 
grounded theory approach. However, the approach was still in-
ductive with the aim of letting the interpretation arise from the 
interviewees’ narratives rather than trying to shed the narrative 
skin in the cause of theory-generation.

What did I notice?

Once I had completed the above process with each question, I add-
ed a further section on what stood out to me immediately from the 
data. I felt it was important to allow some interpretation to arise 
before focusing more deliberately on the research question. In this 
way, I tried to include myself as researcher in the exploration—
given my own experience both as researcher and practitioner in 
the PMC process in other contexts. It would be disingenuous to 
imagine that my experience was not at play here, but it can also be 
used to correlate this research with other research and experience 
of the process that I have.

In the next section, I will present the findings focusing on 
the first two stages of the analysis before continuing in the next 
section to correlate with my observations and to explore how this 
data answers the research question.

Findings9

Question 1: 

Tell a story about how you first met a “person of peace” and the 
journey to get there. 

Reflect on: What encouraged this journey, gave it life? What con-
strained or was an obstacle in this journey?

9. Full findings available on request.



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Some ran one-off “plunging” events to build relationships and con-
versation around a possible missional challenge. Others found the 
courage to talk to people that they already knew but with whom 
they had never had an in-depth public conversation. Others found 
that shop keepers, school teachers and members of groups in the 
community were interested in having conversations about shared 
interests and concerns.

The range of experiments that were developed was extremely 
broad. Here is one example of the discovery of a person of peace 
and what they did together:

I met someone with shared love of woodland and art: we 
created an art-based Act of Remembrance event; they are 
giving time freely, connecting church people and outsid-
ers; they have become an occasional attender at church 
who offers honest feedback! 

Encouragement came from the recognition of God’s prior 
involvement in their communities and the call to discern rather 
than create interest—this was a new way for them of responding 
to God. They met with responsiveness and hospitality and the mu-
tual recognition of the value of doing things together. The wonder 
of the journey is captured here: “From not knowing a person to 
Dwelling in the Word with them in your own home.”

They valued the church’s prompting, owning and sustaining 
of this journey, but personal change was important too. Freed from 
“bashing people over the head with faith”—as one interviewee put 
it—they stepped into the public space; the PMC process built con-
fidence and empowerment.

But there were constraints, too, like failures to deal with 
conflict in church and community alike. For example: “Church 
hospitality only goes so far . . . and there was frustration when the 
missional experiment impacted on church time and space in the 
building.”

There were personal constraints too; people spoke about the 
significant level of fear and uncertainty they felt about making 
first steps towards those in the community. They mentioned their 
own shyness and lack of confidence and uncertainty about being 



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received as a stranger. Most of all was the fear of their reception 
and wariness about approaching people; one person spent three 
weeks of anxious anticipation before summoning up the courage 
to speak to someone. She commented that she was not “a person 
who went out and talked about my faith a great deal.” Another 
spoke of realising that their faith existed in a private space and not 
“out in the street.”

Question 2: 

How would you describe a person of peace?

Reflect on: What experiences have shaped the way you see this?

Here are some of the ways they described their people of peace:

• Mutuality—purpose, connection, partnership and working 
together

• Shared values—care, love and respect

• Receptivity—people who see you and want to know you

• Desire for ongoing and growing relationship

• Make connections for you and the church in the community

When asked to reflect on the experiences that shaped this, 
most evident was the participation together in the missional ex-
periment: “In our ‘bridge community’10 I met new people who 
were people of peace—I just didn’t know them before—people 
who have energy and ideas and enthusiasm.”

People reflected on how they began to see God in their new 
partners and how the process helped to recognise that God was 
already at work in people in their wider community before they 
had reached out to them. There was genuine reciprocity; they dis-
covered people who wanted to give something to them without 

10. The “bridge community” is formed of members of the church and the 
community who work together on a missional experiment.



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thought of gain. This subverted their habitual picture of disciple-
ship as involving them in doing all the giving. 

Question 3: 

Think of some of the “persons of peace” you have connected with; 
what did it mean to you and to them to “share in peace” together?

Reflect on: The Luke 10 passage says that if we meet a “person of 
peace” our peace “rests on them.” What has this looked like in your 
experience?

They described their experiments as shared spiritual journeys. By 
sharing in Dwelling in the Word from the beginning, the members 
of the “bridge community” learned to listen and receive from each 
other as they attended together to Scripture. Being open about 
faith meant that it was not seen as the church’s project but rather 
a journey of discernment to which all contributed. This led to a 
growing spiritual engagement for all: the Bible came to life in dia-
logue with the people of peace and they found themselves “living 
the story.”

People of peace moved from passive acceptance of prayer to 
an openness to the Spirit and began to make their own prayer re-
quests. They were able to embrace partnering with Christians and 
shared a sense of God being in the journey. For some, the church 
became their church. Christians learnt from their people of peace 
and valued their reading of Scripture and discernment. They de-
scribed this as “immersing yourself in God and trusting.”

This was a spiritual journey because it was a relational jour-
ney. The experience of God was mediated by mutuality and sharing 
of life described in question 2. Here they mention again: support, 
relationship, sharing gifts and acting together.

In terms of Luke 10, for those who “go,” their courage was 
rewarded by discovering people who welcomed them, showed 
hospitality and wanted to work with them in fulfilling their aims; 
they saw this as “peace resting.” Those who “received” discovered 



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they had something to give that was wanted and began sharing 
in a relationship that made faith accessible. They in turn became 
people who brought others to share in what the “bridge commu-
nity” was doing. Together they went on a journey from suspicion 
to trust, participating in a corporate discernment of God at work.

Question 4: 

Tell a story of how a “person of peace” became a “partner” in 
mission.

Reflect on: How did you know when someone became you part-
ner? What happened between you? What helped it to happen?

PMC uses the word “partner” to describe a person of peace who 
becomes someone who shares fully in the missional experiment. 
The easiest way to illustrate this is with a story:

We met C. She seemed very enthusiastic and I was not 
surprised when she said, “I want to join your team.” We 
run a fortnightly drop-in for people as a mental health 
support and she is a partner in that. We have had to 
switch this to Facebook (COVID-19) and she is running 
this. Because she has suffered in mental health herself 
and in her family, we listen to her and look to her for 
guidance; we are learning from her. We could not have 
done this without her, she is the voice we needed to listen 
to. That’s why it feels like a partnership—it’s a two-way 
thing; not just the church, it’s theirs as well.

The fundamental mark of partnership to them was where 
people began to take initiative and responsibility in the missional 
experiment, because they had connected with the shared agenda 
and values. This meant that they were actively involved in shaping 
the experiment. A further mark was that they were able to inte-
grate other community groups and people into the journey.

Partnership happened because they took time building re-
lationships especially with Dwelling in the Word. Honouring the 



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other’s culture, being real and learning to listen, whilst receiving 
their hospitality; learning that God is calling their partners.

Question 5: 

Thinking about your whole experience of relating to people of 
peace, which words from this list best capture how this practice 
has enabled you to grow as a disciple of Christ? If none apply sug-
gest your own words that express your growth through meeting 
people of peace.

Prayer, worship, community involvement, evangelism, discernment, 
hospitality, Bible knowledge, listening, fellowship, awareness of God

Tell a story about each word you have chosen.

Reflect on: How is your choice influenced by your experience with 
people of peace?

The heart of this research was to understand how this journey with 
people of peace had affected the interviewees’ discipleship. As they 
responded to the words, they told stories substantially through the 
lens of partnership: 

• Listening to others who were different or not usually listened 
to who challenged them and shaped their learning

• Prayer—expressing active dependence on partnership with 
the God who had gone before them

• Community involvement—enabling participation in the 
mission of God with partners in the public space

• Hospitality in which relationships were formed, possibilities 
emerged, stretching them beyond their past approaches to 
being missional; changed mindset

• “People of peace changed our awareness of God in everything”

With more “traditional” words like the Bible and fellowship, 
their comments showed the influence of their journeys with people 



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of peace. They focused on transformational encounter rather than 
developing biblical knowledge. They reflected on how God used 
surprising people in the Bible—like Rahab—and that they had 
learned much from their people of peace reflecting on Scripture. 
On fellowship, they moved away from the closed language of the 
“family,” speaking about how the other who is different is truly 
welcomed in. 

Interpretation in the light of the research 
question

Introduction

The use of the concept “exchange” owes something to social ex-
change theory whose roots lie in behavioural psychology. Here, 
I want to side-step the more instrumental language of profit and 
loss and focus on the way this theory attends to interpersonal re-
lationships—what it might mean to “love and be loved in return.” 
A further step proposes that “outcomes for the two participants 
are jointly determined by their actions” (Hogg and Vaughan, 2008: 
501). How do people give and receive as “persons of peace,” what 
makes them decide to make this mutual “investment” and how is 
each changed in the process? 

What is the exchange?

The interviewees were not used to forming a public identity as a 
church in the community. They noted the private nature of their 
faith and were candid about the fears and anxieties they experi-
enced at the thought of taking such steps. This experience is mir-
rored strongly in my research of this process in other contexts 
(Ladd, 2021). Taylor’s concept of the “buffered self ” conceptualises 
this experience. In contrasting this with the “porosity” characteris-
tic of earlier ages, he argues that the “buffered self ” is a boundaried 



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and autonomous self, grounded in disengagement; a mind-cen-
tred personhood, which is self-referential (1989: 25–54). Such 
“disengagement” may not be “hospitable to a sense of community” 
(Taylor, 1989: 42). Living in such a privatised and individualised 
culture, means that steps towards the other in the public space are 
fraught with anxiety and uncertainty and need to be handled with 
care (Rooms, 2019: 16). 

Though this research focuses on the positive experiences 
of partnering with people of peace, full weight should be given 
to their honesty about the struggles with this, recorded in their 
answers to question 1. “Talking about God in practice” is a com-
plex and unnerving experience in contemporary western culture 
(Cameron et al, 2010: 7–17). Longer-term research on these 
practices reveals just how difficult this is in a post-Christendom 
context (Ladd, 2021).

However, the energy with which they tell their story of jour-
neying outwards suggests that the desire to do this eventually 
overcame their fear. Whilst the PMC process and DitW provided 
the vehicle to carry them forward, the energising power came 
from God—something they increasingly grasped (1 Cor. 12.4-6).

What they experienced was mutuality borne of a deep sense 
of connection with their people of peace through the discovery 
of shared values and desire for community transformation. At the 
deepest level, it was about forming a relationship—being known 
and valued, “They see you, they want to see you, want to know you. 
They don’t talk over you; they allow you to speak and listen to you.”

It was a two-way exchange in which both parties gave and 
received. The interviewees discovered people who wanted to work 
with them and who grew to value them. The people of peace dis-
covered ways to be involved and use their gifts in ways that trans-
formed their communities. Both interviewees and people of peace 
saw the work they did together as genuine partnership. This was 
a profoundly relational journey described as a movement from 
neighbors to friends. But it is a different kind of friendship to that 
which we normally look for in life and in church. They were seek-
ing a language to describe the growing of relationship not in the 



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private world of family but in the public space of the community, 
“Really connecting—becoming friends who have similar objec-
tives: not necessarily people to invite home for a meal or go on 
holiday with—but much more than just acquaintances.”

Is this simply an experience of sociality? Or are the partners 
being drawn into the life of God together? What I have described 
so far is a very human connection; but in our incarnational faith, 
the human mediates the divine (Jn 1.14; 2 Cor. 1.3-4; 1 Jn 4.7-12). 
Indeed, it was the commitment to the relational journey that made 
the journey with God possible as they shared life together. And 
there was real awareness of a spiritual journey. The interviewees 
did not disguise their faith, but were transparent about it through 
encouraging the shared practice of Dwelling in the Word (2 Cor. 
4:2-3). But they did not approach this as a one-sided transaction, 
but learned to be genuinely open to the spiritual insights and dis-
cernment of their partners. Their partners in turn also saw this 
as a journey of spiritual discovery and some drew closer to the 
community of the church.

It was engaging with the spiritual practices—DitW, Dwelling 
in the Word and hospitality—that enabled these public communi-
ties of faith to develop. A further practice—Announcing the King-
dom—is evident in the way the interviewees talk about and reflect 
on their experience; this is the practice that encourages church and 
community members to notice and name the presence of God in 
each other’s lives. So, what is happening here may be understood 
more as an exchange of God, or an exchange within God. When 
Christians let go of the assumption that they are called to manage 
the process of bringing others to faith, they may be drawn into the 
flow of the mission of the Trinity and become participants, along 
with their partners, in the mutual indwelling love of Father, Son 
and Holy Spirit (Jn 17.20-26). The miracle of ordinary human rela-
tionships being caught up into this divine conversation is perhaps 
the root of the awe and amazement that can be seen as they share 
their story.



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How were people formed and changed by this practice?

The questions were designed to focus on understanding what hap-
pened to people’s relationship with God and with others through 
sharing life with people of peace. However, the interviews also 
generated comments on the relationship with the church and with 
the self.

The word “God” appears at least as much as the word “church” 
in the data. For those who have worked on missional accompani-
ment with Anglican Churches, and probably most churches, this 
is something that has significance in understanding the interview-
ees’ journeys with God.

Instead of being a passive receiver of their worship, God be-
came active, an agent and leading partner in the missional process. 
God prompted and called them to this. God’s leading challenged 
their busyness and control. God was already present an active in 
the wider community, so their call was to discern what God was 
doing and to be intentional about and alert for “God moments.”

This new experience of God was mediated to them through 
the experience of people of peace. They saw God in people of peace 
in their actions and words. They saw God in the spiritual journeys 
that they took. They discerned together with people of peace. They 
saw God in the way people of peace brought in others—continu-
ing the Luke 10 journey. They met God as they did Dwelling in 
the Word with people of peace, learning to receive insight from 
unexpected people.

Not only were relationships with people of peace central to 
this journey, but those relationships were also changed by this 
experience.

First, they learnt to see the “other” outside the church not 
simply as a focus for mission but as a partner and a gift of God’s 
presence and activity. If God was to be found active in the wider 
community, then Christianity could not be a private thing that 
they invited people into. Instead it was a vulnerable relationship 
in which they depended upon the hospitality and welcome of the 
other as well as offering hospitality themselves.



Nick Ladd—Dwelling in the World with People of Peace 

119

Moreover, they learned that relationships were an end in 
themselves and not an instrumental tool for making disciples. And 
therefore that it was in long-term growing relationships that God 
was encountered in the mutual giving and receiving of missional 
experimenting.

The church played an important role in sponsoring and sup-
porting the process but did not handle well the conflict that arose 
through the changes that the missional experimenting wrought—
often leaving the interviewees feeling like “piggy-in-the-middle” 
between two groups. Though the interviewees found that the 
partnerships changed them from wariness and anxiety to confi-
dence and empowerment, the same is not true of the church as a 
whole. Individuals were changed by the experience of partnership, 
but the church community as a whole was not experiencing the 
same journey. The implication therefore is that there is a journey 
of maturation for communities as much as for individuals, which 
is easily lost in an individualised culture.11

What happened to their understanding and practice of 
discipleship and mission? 

When I constructed the final question, I chose five words (prayer, 
worship, Bible knowledge, fellowship and evangelism) which I felt 
encapsulated traditional understandings or practices of Christian 
discipleship and five (listening, discernment, awareness of God, 
hospitality and community involvement) which I felt reflected 
PMC discipleship practices.

Of their top four choices, three were from my “PMC” group; 
the fourth, prayer, could be argued as a PMC priority and people 
certainly gave it a missional shape. Of the other four, two were 
from my “PMC” group and two from the other. All were read 
through the lens of partnership with people of peace.12

11. This is the focus of my recently-submitted doctoral thesis; something 
that I will write more about in due course.

12. See the summary in Question 5.



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In Christendom mode, though the forms may vary, the focus 
of discipleship is on drawing people into church and developing 
their understanding of the faith and their socialisation within the 
Christian community. The focus is on the personal formation of 
the individual centred on the church community. In the process, 
people speak of losing touch with their “non-Christian” friends 
and the task then becomes an uncomfortable and unnatural one of 
going “out there” to bring people “in here.”

The data shows how discipleship was formed less around the 
individual’s agenda and more in relationship to the “other.” The 
primary “other” in this was God and therefore discipleship became 
a way of life which took God as agent seriously and in particular 
his prior presence and action in the wider community.

But the focus was also on the human other—proximate and 
distant—placing the wider community as the locus of discipleship, 
because this was where the God of mission was to be found. Their 
discipleship was shaped in the crucible of relationship with others 
in the community, through shared practices—people who became 
their partners within God’s mission.

This mutuality of partnership in mission meant that they 
viewed the communication of the faith differently. They were not 
trying to provide something that was absent (although they recog-
nised that they did have things to share that could add to people’s 
apprehension of God), rather they approached others with respect 
and with the knowledge that it was God who was at work and that 
their task was to notice and name God’s activity. Moreover, their 
partners were deeply involved in bringing others into the orbit of 
the missional challenge; in terms of Luke 10, those who received 
peace became also the givers of peace to others.

Conclusion — missional discipleship

The use of the language of “exchange” to speak about the inter-
viewee’s journeys with people of peace draws attention to the 
mutuality of the relationship and what each gains from the other 
in the formation of these relationships. Seeking people of peace 



Nick Ladd—Dwelling in the World with People of Peace 

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was a way of forming relationship in the public space in which a 
journey together with God could happen which worked in their 
communities.

Because of the mutuality of the relationship, it was not a mat-
ter of one seeking to implant their truth in the other, but rather 
forming a kind of “third space” in which people formed knowl-
edge together with genuine openness to the other (Irigaray, 2000: 
51, 62–67). These relationships were not only with the human 
“other,” but with the otherness of God who was mediated through 
this complex of relationships—seeing God through the impact of 
one person upon the other (1 Jn 4.12), rather like the unseen wind 
of the Spirit of which Jesus speaks in John 3.5-8. In this case, both 
partners may be experiencing re-birth as they are drawn together 
into the mission of God.

The relationships with people of peace generated what might 
be described as missional discipleship in which the ecclesiology 
of the interviewees was redrawn with its centre in the mission of 
God. 

Along with the parish council, we brought a bus-based 
youth ministry to the village. One [young person] said to 
me, “This is fantastic! Why can’t we do it every night?” I 
told him of the cost and that other people were paying. 
He replied, “Why don’t you sell the church building so 
you would have money to do this for us?”
His question had a profound impact on me. We need 
lots of money to fund a building where a relatively small, 
aging group come to worship. But this effective mission 
activity was only funded up to a small level. Does the 
church generate money for mission, or absorb money 
that could have gone to mission? 
We are protective of our domain, this becomes our focus; 
it becomes a reason not to do stuff. The bus work started 
with 6 young people and grew to 30, but it was not about 
numbers, it was about engagement. A penetration into 
unreached areas of the community on God’s terms. 

Through working with people of peace, this interviewee sees 
the church, discipleship and mission differently. Through sharing 



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spiritual practices—Dwelling in the Word, DitW, Hospitality, 
Discernment, Announcing the Kingdom—in the public space, 
the focus of discipleship has gradually shifted from the church to 
the mission of God. The challenge then is how to lead the whole 
church community on the same journey.

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