Our 2026 theme is Shalom: All Found. All Home. All Free. All Loved.
“For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” – Luke 15:24
This fall, at the Christian Community Development Association conference, our team heard a song by Common Hymnal called “Shalom.” It was powerful. Comforting. Hopeful.
The chorus described shalom like this:
All found.
All home.
All free.
All loved.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
What Is Shalom, Really?
We often translate shalom as “peace.” But in Scripture, it means so much more than the absence of conflict.It’s the kind of peace God imagines for His people:
- Thriving
- Justice
- Fullness
- Tranquility
- Restoration
- Wholeness
- Flourishing
When the angels announced Jesus’ birth, they didn’t proclaim a temporary calm. They proclaimed the arrival of heaven’s peace:
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace…” – Luke 2:13-14
In Jesus, the Kingdom of God broke into our world. And that Kingdom is a kingdom of shalom.
If that’s true, then what does shalom look like in our neighborhoods?
Maybe it looks like this:
Every person is found.
Every person is home.
Every person is free.
Every person is loved.
Let’s imagine that together.
All Found
In Luke 15, Jesus tells three stories: a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son. He tells them to religious leaders and to the “sinners” standing nearby.
Each thing is lost for a different reason.
- The sheep wanders.
- The son chooses to leave.
- The coin? It’s lost through someone else’s carelessness.
Isn’t that how it still works?
Some people drift.
Some people run.
Some people are lost because someone failed them.
But in every story, the same thing happens: God goes looking.
He doesn’t wait politely. He pursues. He searches. He celebrates when what was lost is found.
So what do “lost” people look like in our communities today?
They might look isolated.
Invisible.
Buried in addiction.
Crushed by debt.
Ashamed.
Like the wounded man in Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan, they can be easy to pass by. Easier still to judge.
But God moves toward the places we tend to avoid.
To follow Jesus is not just to be kind when lost people cross our path. It’s to go looking. To see the unseen. To call someone by name who feels forgotten.
Shalom means no one stays lost.
All Home
When search-and-rescue teams find someone in the wilderness, they don’t just check a box marked Found. They bring them home.
That’s what shalom looks like.
To be home is to belong. To be known. To be missed when you’re gone.
The poet Robert Frost once wrote, “Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
Home is obligation and embrace. Safety and connection.
But what if “home” isn’t safe?
What if it’s unstable?
Or gone?
Or a country you can’t return to?
For many of our immigrant and refugee neighbors, home is a memory. For others, it’s never been a reality at all.
Shalom means building communities where people are:
- Safe
- Connected
- Needed
- Known
A place where someone says, We’re glad you’re here. We need you here.
Imagine neighborhoods where no one eats alone. Where no one faces crisis alone. Where belonging isn’t earned, it’s given.
That’s home.
All Free
Freedom pulses through the Gospel.
The Apostle Paul writes in Galatians 5, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” Freedom from trying to earn salvation. Freedom from the crushing weight of performance. Freedom from sin and shame.
And when Jesus stood up in the synagogue and read from Isaiah, He made His mission unmistakably clear:
“He has sent me to proclaim good news to the poor… freedom for the prisoners… to set the oppressed free.”
This wasn’t a metaphor alone. It was liberation.
Freedom from spiritual bondage, yes.
But also freedom from crushing debt.
From addiction.
From systems that trap people in cycles of poverty.
There are chains you can’t see, and chains you absolutely can.
Shalom looks like both kinds breaking.
It looks like people who are no longer defined by their worst mistake. No longer suffocating under impossible burdens. No longer believing the lie that this is just how life will always be.
Jesus still proclaims freedom. And we get to echo that good news.
All Loved
At the heart of it all is this:
“For God so loved the world…” – John 3:16
Not tolerated.
Not evaluated.
Not conditionally approved.
Loved.
God didn’t send His Son to condemn the world, but to save it. To restore it. To bring it into shalom.
And yet, so many people carry a quiet question: Am I actually lovable?
Shame whispers otherwise. Poverty often carries a stigma that says, If you were better, you wouldn’t be here. People try to be “good enough” for God, for others, for themselves.
But the Gospel says something radically different:
You were worth pursuing.
Worth finding.
Worth bringing home.
Worth setting free.
Why?
Because you are loved.
When we live as people who are deeply loved, everything changes. We rest instead of striving. We extend compassion instead of comparison. We trust instead of fear.
Shalom means no one doubts their belovedness.
As we step into a new year, this is our prayer:
That shalom would shape our work.
That it would soften our hearts.
That it would stretch our vision of what’s possible in our communities.
What if we really believed that God desires:
All found.
All home.
All free.
All loved.
Not just spiritually in some distant future, but here. Among us. Now.
That’s the Kingdom Jesus announced.
And when even a glimpse of that becomes visible in a neighborhood, a family, a church, that’s when the celebration begins.