Faith Matters

Seventy Times Seven - A Conversation with Chad Ford

Apr 26, 2025

01:03:59

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Quick takeaways

Peacemaking is a courageous engagement that prioritizes compassion and active involvement, challenging the notion of passivity in conflict resolution.

Chad Ford emphasizes the importance of acknowledging personal failures in peacemaking, as embracing our mistakes can lead to deeper understanding and growth.

True peace is redefined as genuine reconciliation that involves emotional effort and mutual willingness to restore relationships beyond conflict avoidance.

Deep dives

The Role of Peacemakers

Peacemaking is emphasized as a vital and courageous pursuit in a world filled with conflict and division. Following Jesus's example, true peacemakers are called not to remain passive but to engage actively, showing compassion and courage in difficult conversations. The discussion highlights that embracing conflict does not equate to meeting harm with more harm, but rather invites healing and reconciliation. This meaningful engagement is seen as critical for transformative practices that can impact individuals and communities at large.

Intro

2min

The Tools of Peace: A Humorous Perspective

6min

Navigating Peacebuilding Complexities

28min

The Third Way: Nonviolence and Empathy

8min

Crisis of Faith in Peace Building Amidst Chaos

2min

Faith, Morality, and Oppression

6min

The Power of Honest Conversations

7min

The Path to Peace and Reconciliation

4min

This week, we’re so glad to be sharing a conversation with our friend Chad Ford.

Chad is a conflict mediator, peace educator, and associate professor of religious studies at Utah State University. He’s spent decades working in some of the most entrenched conflict zones in the world—from the Middle East to South Africa to Northern Ireland. He’s also the author of a new book called Seventy Times Seven: Jesus’s Path to Conflict Transformation, published by Deseret Book. The book explores a question that feels more urgent than ever: how do we follow Jesus as peacemakers in a world so often shaped by fear, division, and violence?

Our conversation with Chad moved from the personal to the global—from tensions in families and faith communities to the devastating conflicts we see on the world stage. And through all of it, Chad points back to Jesus as a radical model for how to live, engage, and help transform the world around us.

Chad reminds us that Jesus’s path is anything but passive. It doesn’t mean disengaging or avoiding hard conversations. It means choosing to engage with both courage and compassion. It means refusing to meet harm with more harm, and instead walking a path that invites healing, reconciliation, and transformation.

That kind of peace doesn’t come quickly—or easily—but it’s the kind of peace that can change lives and communities. Chad offers a vision of Christianity rooted in Jesus’ ministry of reconciliation—not in dominance or defensiveness, but in the slow, often difficult work of restoring wholeness.

He helped us see that the peace Jesus offers isn’t always the peace we want—but it’s the peace we need. And when the way forward feels impossible, he reminds us that part of discipleship is learning to make a way out of no way.

And with that, here’s our conversation with Chad

Seventy Time Seven