Persons of Peace: What Are They?

When we enter a new area, we often wonder, “Where do I start? I don’t know anyone here, and who am I to come into their world and start teaching them?”

Jesus prepared his disciples for this by giving them a strategy

When Jesus was sending out His 12 disciples on a missionary training trip in Matthew 10, and when He was sending out 72 of His followers on evangelism training in Luke 10, he gave them each some special instructions. This command was to be part of their strategy for reaching those areas. Jesus told them to find a “person of peace” (CSB) or “someone who promotes peace” (NIV).¹ See Luke 10:5,6. In Matthew, Jesus calls them “worthy” people. Jesus told them they were to look for these kinds of people who would help them reach the towns they were going to. They were outsiders, but these people of peace would be insiders. In fact, he told them that if they didn’t find any such people, they ought to move on to another place.

What is a “Person of Peace?”

In Matthew 10:11-14 Jesus tells us that these worthy people or persons of peace are people with the following characteristics;

1. They are from that area and are connected to people there. 
2. The people of peace welcomed Jesus’ messengers.
3. They listened to their words.
4. They were supportive of the messengers and their ministry, relationally and even financially.
5. The people of peace were “worthy.” That could indicate that they would be respected and connected in the community. Or “worthy” could refer to their respectful welcome of Jesus’s messengers.
6. They accepted the disciples into their households.

The Greek word used here for house or household is “oikos,” usually referring to more than the building, and including the family network of all who live or work in that place. It would infer that they introduce the messenger into the home and family where they were staying.  They welcomed the message and the messenger and introduced them to their network whom they could more easily reach than outsiders could.

We used to refer to these kinds of people as POPs: Persons Of Peace, or Prepared, Open People. Jerry Trousdale in his book, Miraculous Movements: How Hundreds of Thousands of Muslims are Falling in Love with Jesus says, “Persons of peace are God’s pre-positioned agents to bring the gospel to their family, their friends, or their workplace” (p.90).

So, here are some key descriptors for the kind of people we would be looking and praying for as we enter a new area. These people of peace are prepared, open people. They are connectors, door-openers, well-networked in the area, providing relational bridges to the community, and respected in that community. Furthermore, they are welcoming and receptive to the message and messenger.

Examples of people of peace in the New Testament

Here are some biblical examples of people of peace.

• Levi (Luke 5:27-29) who introduced Jesus to the tax-collectors and to his family.
• Cornelius (Acts 10) who connected Paul to his family and to the military.
• Lydia (Acts 16:14-15) who introduced Paul to her family and business connections.
• The Philippian jailer (Acts 16:27-34) who opened the door for Paul to his whole household and the prison staff.
• The woman at the well (John 4) who introduced Jesus to her whole town.

Paul would often go into new places and publicly share the gospel with a large number of people. Before long he would take those who responded and then focus on teaching and training them. His evangelistic work would then focus on reaching their oikos groups, their households or networks. These people would often become a base for reaching their whole communities.

Examples of people of peace in our ministry

Tarlac City

When I arrived in Tarlac City as a new missionary, I didn’t know how to begin or how to connect with the people.  I was there with my Filipino co-worker and neither of us knew a single soul in the city and there were very few followers of Christ in that place.

So, I decided to take 2 approaches simultaneously. I would use the friendship approach to build relationships through common interests  and look for opportunities to speak of Christ. Secondly, we would share the gospel widely, going door to door, sharing the gospel in a certain part of town, looking for open people. 

Biking club

So, I joined a tennis club in my subdivision. But I was so bad a player that no one wanted to play with me. Then I started biking and found a biking club I could join. Through those friendships and much time together in a common interest, I was able to befriend two of the influential people in the group. That led to them suggesting to the whole group that we take a little time halfway through the ride to have Bible meditations together. By connecting with these respected members, the door opened to the whole group. One of the two influential leaders never came to Christ in my time there, but he was my person of peace that opened the door for the whole group to hear the gospel.

Two couples

At the same time, after three months of going door to door five days a week with no results, we came to a house where 2 young couples were visiting with each other. When I shared the gospel with them, all four immediately received Christ and were willing to start a weekly Bible study together. When we started the Bible study, they had invited other neighbors  together. That study led to our first baptism of 12 people. This became the beginning of the church in that city. 

When I found these two couples, my persons of peace, I stopped the door-to-door work. Instead, I focused on discipling them and training them to share with others. When I came back after 20 years, they were still passing it on to others in the same way I had brought the gospel to them. We had discipled them and trained them to pass it on and we had moved on to other places. But now many years later, that group of 12 had grown to more than 600 believers. Many of them I had never met personally and never could have reached.

Both friendship evangelism and broad spreading of the gospel had led me to find persons of peace.

John 

In one city, my son and I were out in the street throwing a football in the subdivision. A neighbor, a Chinese businessman, came out and started chatting. He asked me what I was doing in the city. I told John, “I’m a Bible teacher.” To my great surprise he replied, “Can you teach me the Bible?” 

It turned out that he had been asked to lead a Catholic small group of young business people. But John was struggling because he knew nothing of the Bible. So, I started meeting with John. We worked through a passage of the gospel of John each week together. Then I would help him prepare to do the same with his small group. After several months, John came to receive Christ personally. 

I met some of his groupmates and none of them knew I was meeting with John. It came up in the conversation that “John has become a really good Bible teacher.” Later John was asked to speak at one of their Catholic retreats to hundreds of young adults.  We worked on his talk together, bringing the gospel of grace clearly, and then John presented it to his group. They never knew that I was teaching John.  They never would have invited me as an outsider to speak to their group.

John was a person of peace. He was a POP, a prepared open person. God had prepared him by giving him a task that he was not able to fulfil. So, John had a felt need  to learn the Bible. He was also an insider and he was connected. John received me, the messenger, and the message. He was the bridge to his oikos.

Danny

I rode a mountain bike as a way to connect with the many mountain bikers in the city.  I had started riding occasionally with a group named COMBAT. Danny, one of the group members had lived a wild life in the past, but had recently come to Christ. He had been trying to figure out how to share Christ with his very lost groupmates.

When he found out why we were there, Danny came and asked if I would teach a Bible study to his group  of about 12 young men. He said he would invite them to his house for dinner each week and he would provide the food. All I had to do was teach the Bible study. Through that, several of the guys became followers of Christ and were baptized and discipled. Danny didn’t know how to teach them, but Danny received me into his oikos and recommended me to His group. In this way, he prepared them to receive the message I brought.  Danny was a new Christian and served as a person of peace.

Roy

One of the guys in the COMBAT Bible study with Danny was Roy. Roy had lived a godless life. I had ridden with Roy previously and found out he had no interest in God. But when his wife had a stroke, his self-sufficiency was shaken. Previously he had said he didn’t need God. God was for sinners and he was a good person. But now in his time of need, he heard the gospel from a friend, and started to come to the Bible study to learn more. 

As a result, Roy’s life was completely changed by Christ. He asked me if I could come to teach his family. This included his siblings, his mother and her sisters and a number of cousins and other relatives. Roy convinced them all to join the Bible study. All of them came to faith in Christ. Along the way, Roy asked me to show him how to teach so he could keep teaching his family. Later Roy became one of the elders of our church. Roy had become a person of peace. God had prepared him through his wife’s stroke and his sense of need and brokenness. He brought me into his oikos and, through him, the group accepted me and the message. The whole family was changed. 

Consolacion

This town was our fastest church plant. One of the primary factors or the speed of growth was this principle of entering the town through persons of peace. Together with a small group of missionaries, we had planted a church in nearby Mandaue City. We knew no one in Mandaue and it took us years to get a breakthrough. When the church was finally established, we felt God was leading us to start a new church in the next town. However, at first we weren’t able to find other missionaries to go with us. We didn’t want to start alone. As we prayed, about 10 of the members in our Mandaue church asked if they could go with us to start the Consolacion church plant. They were from there and had been praying for a church to come to their area.

I told them they could come with me if they would let me train them to help us reach the people there. So, they came and we trained them to reach their already established networks of relatives, friends and neighbors. For almost a year we met with them, discipled them and trained them. Meanwhile they were reaching out to their networks. When we started that church officially after one year of planning, praying and training, we had more than 80 people start coming. All of them had been reached through those who were originally from that town. The original group of local believers were our persons of peace. We never had to do cold-turkey evangelism in this church plant. Our total focus from the beginning was to equip local people to reach their already established networks.

What have we learned about persons of peace?

They can be unbelievers, pre-believers, new believers or established believers. They are local, networked people. God has prepared them in very different ways – through sickness and a sense of need, through a sense of inadequacy or through their own lives being changed.

These people of peace reduce significantly the amount of time it takes to penetrate a new area. Since they already know the people and the culture we are trying to reach, the people we are targeting will listen to them. They will gain a hearing, either because they are so changed, or because they are respected and “worthy” people.

In our next blog post we will look at the question “How do we find Persons of Peace?”. We will look at examples of unexpected persons of peace. Take some time now to consider persons of peace who have opened doors in your ministry. Begin thinking and praying for ways to discover more such people.

This blog post was originally posted to the TEAM church planting blog at Persons of Peace: 1. What Are They?. It is republished with permission by the author.

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