The International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) concluded on 13 September with a closing sermon by Rev. Philip Vinod Peacock, general secretary of the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC), who called churches to peacemaking grounded in honest reckoning with irreversible loss and closeness to the wounded.
Jointly convened by the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA), and the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK), the Convocation was held from 9 to 13 September under the theme, “World Peace and the Korean Peninsula: The Church as a Community of Healing, Reconciliation and Peacebuilding.” The convocation brought together prominent church and ecumenical leaders, peace advocates, human-rights defenders, civil society representatives, and communities affected by conflict from around the world. Through theological reflection, dialogue on disarmament and denuclearisation, and discussions on peacebuilding in Northeast Asia, participants explored ways of strengthening the churches’ witness and commitment to Just Peace.
Preaching the sermon titled “Peace built by drawing close to woundedness,” Peacock drew on a personal encounter in North Korea to share the reality of war and the urgent call for peace. Recalling a 2018 visit to Pyongyang, he described standing on a hill overlooking the Taedong River and asking his guide where the old city was. The question was met with confusion. “Then someone explained: there was no old city,” he said. The Korean War had annihilated it, a reality he did not expect.
For Peacock, that missing old city became a parable for the convocation’s work. War does not merely interrupt life; it annihilates memory, heritage, and the continuity of a people’s identity. What is lost cannot always be rebuilt, no matter how tall the new skyscrapers rise. The Church’s peacemaking, he suggested, must therefore be grounded not in sentimental hope but in honest reckoning with irreversible loss. And in the resolve that no other city, no other people, should be left without an old city of their own.
Citing Jesus Christ’s reconciliation work in Ephesians, Peacock asked the Convocation to notice what is not erased. “Christ does not destroy difference. A Jew does not cease to be a Jew, nor a Gentile a Gentile. The wall comes down, but the people do not disappear. Reconciliation is not the erasure of difference. It is the end of hostility.”
A Demilitarized Zone Peace Pilgrimage took place on 12 September, and following the Convocation, the General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea and the Presbyterian Church of Korea are set to convene. These gatherings will carry the Convocation’s call for healing, reconciliation, and peacebuilding into the life of the Korean churches.
