Mending Divides

What happens when the community that shaped you can no longer hold the convictions you’ve come to embrace? Steve’s story takes us into a painful season of conflict within his church, where questions of inclusion, belonging, and faithfulness collided. It’s a story about grief and loss, about choosing to step aside rather than coerce a community, and about what happens when the doors we expected to stay open finally close.

Mending Divides is a production of Global Immersion.

Hosted by Jer Swigart

Produced by Andrew Brumme

Audio post-production by Great Feeling Studios

Every story this season features a leader from Global Immersion’s Leadership Cohort. Consider becoming a more conflict-competent leader through this six-month journey for Christian leaders. Applications for the 2027 cohort are open through December 31:

globalimmerse.org/cohort

Learn more about Global Immersion:

globalimmerse.org

Read our free Substack: Hopeful Alternative:

hopefulalternative.substack.com

Support this show and Global Immersion’s work forming leaders who mend divides:

globalimmerse.org/donate

What if control, the thing that once made you feel safe, is keeping you from the freedom you actually want? Growing up in a family shaped by addiction, Katy learned to manage the people and circumstances around her in order to survive. Her story explores what happens when we begin to recognize our own patterns, release what was never ours to control, and discover a different way of showing up in the world.

Mending Divides is a production of Global Immersion.

Hosted by Jer Swigart

Produced by Andrew Brumme

Audio post-production by Great Feeling Studios

Every story this season features a leader from Global Immersion’s Leadership Cohort. Consider becoming a more conflict-competent leader through this six-month journey for Christian leaders. Applications for the 2027 cohort are open through December 31:

globalimmerse.org/cohort

Learn more about Global Immersion:

globalimmerse.org

Read our free Substack: Hopeful Alternative:

hopefulalternative.substack.com

Support this show and Global Immersion’s work forming leaders who mend divides:

globalimmerse.org/donate

What happens when your work, your identity, and your sense of belonging become entangled in conflict? Rahn’s story takes us inside the experience of a Black leader navigating a DEI role at a predominantly white Christian university in the midst of extreme national tension around the politics of diversity, equity and inclusion . It’s a story about leadership, courage, and the challenge of remaining present when your convictions and your humanity are being contested.

Mending Divides is a production of Global Immersion.

Hosted by Jer Swigart

Produced by Andrew Brumme

Audio post-production by Great Feeling Studios

Every story this season features a leader from Global Immersion’s Leadership Cohort. Consider becoming a more conflict-competent leader through this six-month journey for Christian leaders. Applications for the 2027 cohort are open through December 31:

globalimmerse.org/cohort

Learn more about Global Immersion:

globalimmerse.org

Read our free Substack: Hopeful Alternative:

hopefulalternative.substack.com

Support this show and Global Immersion’s work forming leaders who mend divides:

globalimmerse.org/donate

Jen had never known what it feels like to become the villain in someone else’s story. When she found herself on the outside of a community she had come to serve, she had to navigate the unfamiliar territory of being misunderstood, betrayed, and afraid. Her story explores what it means to become known, to believe the best about people who see you differently, and to let conflict become an incubator for our own formation.

Mending Divides is a production of Global Immersion.

Hosted by Jer Swigart

Produced by Andrew Brumme

Audio post-production by Great Feeling Studios

Every story this season features a leader from Global Immersion’s Leadership Cohort. Consider becoming a more conflict-competent leader through this six-month journey for Christian leaders. Applications for the 2027 cohort are open through December 31: http://globalimmerse.org/cohort

Learn more about Global Immersion:

http://globalimmerse.org

Read our free Substack: Hopeful Alternative:

hopefulalternative.substack.com

Support this show and Global Immersion’s work forming leaders who mend divides:

http://globalimmerse.org/donate

Mentioned in this episode:

Leadership Cohort

More than a decade after her husband was killed, Andrea’s daughter asked to meet the man responsible. That moment opened a door Andrea had spent years keeping closed, inviting her into a difficult journey of grief, forgiveness, and seeing the person she had made an “other” in a new way. What happens when we move toward the person at the center of our deepest pain?

Mending Divides is a production of Global Immersion.

Hosted by Jer Swigart

Produced by Andrew Brumme

Audio post-production by Great Feeling Studios

Every story this season features a leader from Global Immersion’s Leadership Cohort. Consider becoming a more conflict-competent leader through this six-month journey for Christian leaders. Applications for the 2027 cohort are open through December 31: globalimmerse.org/cohort

Learn more about Global Immersion: globalimmerse.org

Read our free Substack: Hopeful Alternative: hopefulalternative.substack.com

Support this show and Global Immersion’s work forming leaders who mend divides: globalimmerse.org/donate

Mentioned in this episode:

Leadership Cohort

How do you handle the real-world conflict in your life? Most of us were never taught how. So, this season, Mending Divides isn't a show about conflict. It's a collection of stories from people who were actually inside it. The moment their convictions got tested, their fears got exposed, and something in them had to change. These aren't polished success stories. They're honest accounts of what conflict costs, what it reveals, and what becomes possible when you do the slow, courageous work of healing instead of winning.

Season 7 begins September 2nd. Follow Mending Divides wherever you listen.

From the Holy Land and US Prisons to our very living rooms, this conversation reveals how proximity, humility, and courageous tenderness make enemy love—the radical way of Jesus—possible, disarming fear, confronting injustice, and transforming our own hearts in the process.01:53 Two Stories - The call to enemy love

05:36 Grappling with enemy love

10:19 Tent of Nations - refusing to be enemies

11:29 How to build our capacity for enemy love

14:33 Creativity in refusing violence

17:30 Personal wrestling - who is my enemy?

21:25 Different versions of Jesus

22:11 The state of our hearts towards our enemies

23:17 Thank God I’m not like those people...

24:51 Speaking ill of others

29:28 Story from death row

34:03 Am I condoning my enemy’s behavior?

40:18 Loving individuals while resisting harmful systems

44:13 Closing

Mentioned in this episode:

In a world of division, your support fuels peace, courage, and connection. Help us keep going. Donate Now.

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Rev. Harold Good—Protestant minister, contemporary of Desmond Tutu, and key figure in Northern Ireland’s peace process—reflects on what it means to pastor through division. Having played a pivotal role in bringing Catholics and Protestants to the same table, Rev. Good shares hard-won wisdom for our polarized age, inviting us all to lead pastorally with courage, compassion, and the hope of reconciliation.

Mentioned in this episode:

In a world of division, your support fuels peace, courage, and connection. Help us keep going. Donate Now.

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Conflict is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to divide us. In this episode, Enneagram coach Rob Yackley joins Jer to explore the Enneagram and how each of the nine types tends to show up in conflict. Together, they explore each type’s default responses, the unique gifts and traps they bring, and practical ways each can move from reactivity to resourcefulness. Whether you’re new to the Enneagram or fluent in this resource, join us as we discover how the Enneagram can help us show up more fully, more compassionately, and more peaceably when things get hard.

02:00 Opening

02:43 The Dynamic Nature of the Enneagram

05:45 Enneagram and Conflict Navigation

06:53 Intro to Enneagram in the Context of Conflict

11:10 Core Desires and Fears of Each Type

16:30 The Two Tasks of Life

21:53 Virtues and Vices of the Nine Enneagram Types

36:08 Conflict and the Enneagram

41:44 Belly Breathing and Re-growing our Fuses

43:37 Practical Tips for Each Enneagram Type

50:24 The Importance of Otherness in Enneagram

52:12 Conclusion

Mentioned in this episode:

Become an Ember

EMBERS is our community of investors and partners committed to igniting and fueling the Everyday Peacemaking movement. Through their continued monthly support, EMBERS members accompany us in our work of forming Everyday Peacemakers and Reconciling Leaders to mend divides.

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2026 Leadersip Cohort

Discover the 2026 Global Immersion Leadership Cohort! Join a community of leaders, receive coaching from global peacemakers, take part in an immersive experience in Northern Ireland, and earn certification in Dialogue for Peaceful Change. Applications are open until October 31 at globalimmerse.org/cohort

In a time of exhausting division, what we need isn’t a new moral majority—it’s a faithful remnant. In this timely conversation with Latasha Morrison of Be the Bridge, we explore what it means to follow Jesus into the hard and holy work of repair. We talk about the habits that shape bridge builders, and name the biblical and historical illiteracy at the root of so much of our current brokenness. We also reflect on the need for lament and explore prayer as the seedbed for the work of justice.

Mentioned in this episode:

In a world of division, your support fuels peace, courage, and connection. Help us keep going. Donate Now.

Donate