In late June, Joe and Janet Campbell began wrapping up three decades of mediation and peacebuilding work, more than half of that in partnership with Mennonite Mission Network in Northern Ireland. On Sept. 23 they will take the knowledge and experience gained from that work and embark on a four-year assignment through the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and United Mission to Nepal. The Nepalese political upheaval shares some important similarities with Northern Ireland’s. Despite a recent peace cease-fire and some political progress in Nepal, an uneasy calm reigns. For the Campbells, the new assignment is a logical extension of the work they have already accomplished.
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (Mennonite Mission Network) – Through the glass-paned dining-room doors that lead out into their garden, Joe and Janet Campbell can see the peony roses and white heather in full bloom, the camellias and yellow poppies just getting ready to open. Plums promise a bumper crop this year, while the tomatoes in hanging baskets should ripen shortly.
What they accomplished In January 1997, Joe Campbell was named a Member of the British Empire for outstanding community service in peacemaking among Catholics and Protestants for Northern Ireland. Among the chief gains in peace work in Northern Ireland, Campbell cited: • The establishment of a peace process that brought the Irish Republican Army and Protestant loyalists into political negotiation Campbell played a significant role in getting Mennonites involved in organizations and communities that were on the cutting edge of reconciliation efforts in Northern Ireland. In turn, Campbell said, Mennonites have provided a crucial role model for outsiders working for peace. “We have been inspired by the many Mennonite volunteers and staff workers who have supported Ireland in its peace and conflict transformation work,” he said. “Resisting the temptation to give quick answers, they have walked with us and supported us in a humble way through some terrible times.” by Ann Graham Price |
The entire garden is planned so that something is always at its peak at any point throughout the blooming season.
“Gardening is important because you can see the results of your work,” Joe Campbell said. “Sometimes in mediation you don’t see the results for a while.”
He would know. Beyond the peace of the garden lies a city still divided by a system of so-called “peace walls,” built some 30 years ago to keep Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods apart. Ever so slowly, trust is beginning to emerge where violence was once a daily fact of life.
Joe and Janet Campbell have quietly worked in the midst of this conflict, forming relationships, clarifying issues, fostering understanding. It has not been quick or easy work. It has unfolded slowly, painstakingly, over the course of many years.
One might reasonably wonder, then, why they would want to begin the work all over again somewhere else, at a time in their lives when most people are thinking about kicking back and letting someone else take over.
But that’s precisely the point. Others are able to take over here in Northern Ireland now, leaving them free to take the knowledge they have gained here and apply it in a new context where it is needed.
“Our family has grown up,” Janet Campbell said. “It seems to be a window of opportunity, and one that probably has to be taken now rather than later. The other thing [is] Joe feels his mediation work network can be handed on to others, many of whom he trained.”
According to J. Robert Charles, Mission Network’s director for Europe, one such person is Tim Foley, pastor of the Green Field Community in nearby Portadown and coordinator for short-term mission assignments through Mission Network.
“We’re in the process of defining what his role will be, but he’ll be stepping into some of the roles Joe and Janet had,” Charles said. “When they said they were taking this new assignment, everyone’s first thought was, I can’t quite imagine what we’re going to do here without them in Ireland.”
Describing the Campbells as “wise, insightful people who have guided and provided personal support for many Mennonite volunteers,” Charles said they gave excellent guidance as Northern Ireland’s program coordinators for both Mission Network and Mennonite Central Committee. They served in that role since 1992.
But their influence with Mennonites began even before that. Joe Liechty, a North American Mennonite assigned to work on reconciliation issues by a predecessor agency of Mennonite Mission Network with wife, Linda, met the Campbells in the early 1980s.
“Joe Campbell has been involved in so many areas,” Liechty said. “He did a lot of work with contentious [Orange Order] parades. He was always looking ahead to what were likely to be the hot spots.”
Liechty recalled one particularly difficult situation Campbell and a colleague tried to mediate. It became clear at a certain point that the mediation efforts would be unsuccessful at that time.
“They had worked hard at establishing relationships on both sides,” Liechty said. “Yet it was clear that it was going to be volatile.
“The natural thing would have been to move on,” he added. “What Joe and his colleague did instead was to continue to cultivate those relationships so that in the aftermath of that failure, they could try again in the future.”
“Long-term conflicts don’t get resolved without people like that,” Liechty said. “He’s willing to talk to anybody.”
What Liechty most vividly remembers about Janet Campbell is the unqualified welcome he felt whenever he visited their home.
“I never sensed, Oh, you’ve been here too often. You’ve stayed here too long,” said Liecthy, now associate professor of Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies at Goshen (Ind.) College. “There was always a steady sense of warmth and welcome from her.”
Those gifts will serve them well in their new assignment, where they will need to nurture good relations among a very large network of people.
Specifically, Joe will move from his role with Mediation Northern Ireland to serve as Conflict Transformation Advisor for United Mission to Nepal. This will entail mentoring a small team of Nepali UMN staff in conflict transformation skills focusing on the regions of the country where UMN personnel are working.
Janet as a nurse will be involved with Health Care Professionals, likely working on HIV/AIDS and woman’s health in the UMN work areas.
“It’s a mentoring position for both of us,” she said. “There’s a lot already happening in peace work. We will be supporting and encouraging Nepali people who are already involved.”
The Campbells said their years in Northern Ireland have prepared them well for the challenges ahead in Nepal.
“We have learned a lot through the ups and downs of the Northern Ireland peace process, the need to hold the vision for peace, not to lose hope, and the real role the church can play in supporting people to think and act differently,” Joe Campbell said.
As they prepare for their departure, they are experiencing a genuine sense of journey – an awareness that God will be teaching them new things through the people of Nepal.
“We’re learning to travel lighter, to let go of a lot of things we think we need for comfort,” he said.
One of those things may well be a garden. There’s a water shortage in Kathmandu, and they’ll have to think very carefully about whether they should be using limited water supplies for watering flowers. They have already been looking ahead to other pastimes, such as woodcarving for him and watercolors for her.
But garden or no, their friend Joe Liechty has every confidence they can bring forth good fruits from their labors.
“In a situation of long-term conflict, when peace comes, there are people who have things to make peace possible who will be largely invisible to the history books,” Liechty said. “By their persistent actions over many years, they cultivate the ground in a way so that peace can actually grow.
“Joe and Janet Campbell as a couple are cultivators supreme,” he said.