Huntington Beach Live Nativity Celebrates 25 Years of Faith, Unity and Christmas Tradition

For 25 years, the Christmas story has brought churches and families from across Southern California to a small Bavarian-style village in Huntington Beach, where a live Nativity has grown into a tradition of faith, service, and unity across communities.

On December 14, 2025, the American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC), Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP), and Women’s Federation for World Peace (WFWP) came together under the Peace Starts With Me Alliance for the International Celebration of Christmas and Live Nativity Play at Old World Village. Approximately 275 to 300 attendees, performers, and crew filled the village, with 200 chairs set out and additional guests standing to watch the celebration.

This tradition had begun approximately 25 years ago, when ACLC joined Archbishop Juergen Bless, then pastor of the Old World Church, to present the Christmas story. Over the years, the Nativity developed into an International Celebration of Christmas, bringing together churches from South Central Los Angeles to Orange County and across racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds.

That collaboration was visible throughout this year’s production. Congregations and ministries contributed performers for the Nativity cast, angel choir, narration, and crew, while at least 75 actors and production team members helped bring the Christmas story to life. The LA Family Stage Crew and Matt Ishizuka’s production team provided extensive support behind the scenes.

The celebration has also developed a tradition of giving, raising funds in previous years for charitable organizations including World Vision and American Family Housing. This year, participants raised $543 for Schools of Africa. The program also shared information about Dr. Hak Ja Han, founder of WFWP and known as the Mother of Peace, including her approach to peacebuilding and concern surrounding her imprisonment in South Korea.

You can support Schools of Africa

Belvedere Family Church Brings Five Faith Traditions Together for Peace in New York

What does freedom mean to you?

At an interfaith prayer breakfast at Belvedere Family Church in New York, participants were invited to answer that question with a single word. Written on pieces of colored paper, their responses would eventually become part of a mosaic—one small expression of what the gathering itself hoped to accomplish by bringing different perspectives together around a shared desire for peace.

Held December 6, 2025, “Honoring the Light of Faith as the Source of Hope, Unity and Peace” marked the Belvedere community’s first Peace Starts With Me Alliance program. Approximately 60 people gathered for the morning, including 27 guests, as participating organizations within the community worked together to create a space for interfaith reflection, fellowship, and conversation.

Five faith traditions were represented, giving participants an opportunity to hear several perspectives on the values they shared. Following a brief ceremony, faith leaders were each invited to offer reflections from their respective traditions. Among them were Imam Mussa, a Hindu guru, Bishop Roger McKenzie, Peter Parker of the Church of Scientology, and a Jewish rabbi from the Bronx.

Their individual reflections opened naturally into the morning’s broader consideration of religion’s relationship with peace. In his keynote address, “Religion and Peace: Challenges and Opportunities,” Dr. Thomas Walsh used the history of religion around the world to explore both the difficulties faith communities have encountered and the possibilities they hold for contributing to peace. Organizers said the educational presentation was warmly received by those in attendance.

But the morning also asked participants to consider those larger ideas on a personal level.

Women’s Federation for World Peace (WFWP) representative Mika Rothstein led a meditation before returning participants to the question of freedom. Each person chose a word expressing what freedom meant to them and wrote it on colored paper. Rothstein then collected the responses, bringing the separate contributions together in a single mosaic.

Around the breakfast tables, those conversations continued more informally. Ministers and Ambassadors for Peace shared the morning with community members and guests, including a group of nine Filipino attendees from a local social club, most of whom were Catholic. Music and a shared breakfast added to the atmosphere of fellowship.

For Belvedere’s first Peace Starts With Me Alliance program, that combination of individual reflection and shared experience offered a natural expression of the movement’s message. Peace may begin with what one person believes, values, or chooses to contribute, but it can grow through relationships with people whose traditions and experiences are different from one’s own.

The gathering concluded with participants singing several verses of “America the Beautiful.” By then, the individual words they had chosen to express freedom had also become part of something larger. Separate pieces of colored paper had been arranged into a single mosaic, just as five faith traditions had shared the morning without surrendering the distinct voices each brought with them.

In that collection of colors, words, prayers, and perspectives, the gathering offered a simple image of unity—not sameness, but different people finding room beside one another in a shared hope for freedom and peace.

Faith Leaders Unite for Religious Freedom and Interfaith Solidarity in Illinois

For faith leaders who have witnessed threats to religious freedom within their own communities, or watched them unfold across the world, interfaith solidarity can offer something increasingly important: the reassurance that they are not facing these challenges alone. That sense of shared concern took on particular meaning for Rev. Shola Olaiya at a recent religious freedom gathering in Schaumburg, Illinois.

Pastor of Good Success Assembly, a neighboring church of the Family Federation whose congregation is largely made up of Nigerian-born Americans, Rev. Olaiya brought attention to circumstances deeply affecting his community. In a sobering presentation, he spoke about violence facing Christians in Nigeria, including threats of death, kidnapping for ransom, and attacks targeting Christian communities.

Yet the gathering also offered a measure of hope. Rev. Olaiya learned that Universal Peace Federation (UPF) leadership in the United States has been communicating with government officials about religious freedom concerns in Nigeria and elsewhere. According to organizers, knowing that others were working to bring attention to the situation offered encouragement in an extraordinarily difficult situation.

The gathering brought approximately 60 to 65 people together, with at least half coming from outside the local Family Federation community. Longtime American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC) clergy were joined by new contacts and participants from Christian, Muslim, and Hindu traditions for an afternoon centered on religious freedom and solidarity across faith communities.

Ambassador for Peace Dr. Robert Renteria also addressed participants, sharing the anti-violence curriculum he developed from lessons drawn from his own challenging upbringing. The program has since been implemented in school systems in the United States and internationally. Reflecting on his relationship with UPF, Renteria told participants, “The Ambassador for Peace commission is one of my life's highlights.”

The afternoon took on a more personal tone as Rev. Joy Ramza Wood Sedehi and Dr. Bessie Tucker, both longtime members of Women in Ministry, offered tributes to Dr. Hak Ja Han, known as the Mother of Peace. Rather than showing a planned video tribute, organizers invited the two women to speak about what Mother Han has meant in their own lives. Both held back tears as they reflected on meeting her personally and on the teachings they encountered through years of involvement with ACLC.

Pastor Ezekial Mtetwa also shared biblical scripture as participants considered religious freedom not only as an issue affecting individual traditions, but as a concern calling people of faith to stand together.

Woven throughout these conversations was a principle central to Peace Starts With Me: peace may begin personally, but it grows when people learn to carry concern for others beyond the boundaries of their own communities. In Schaumburg, the challenges facing Christians in Nigeria, Mother Han’s confinement in South Korea, and violence affecting young people became shared concerns, bringing people of different faiths together in a spirit of understanding and solidarity.

As the afternoon drew to a close, the warmth of the gathering inspired a spontaneous act of generosity. Moved by the joy of the day, one Women in Ministry elder began offering cash from an envelope she had brought with her to the attendees around her. Many, touched by the unexpected gift, chose to donate it back toward the event—allowing one act of kindness to inspire another. 

The gathering closed in song with “Our God Is an Awesome God,” as guests expressed a desire to remain involved and continue the relationships begun that afternoon. After hours spent confronting difficult questions of persecution, violence, and religious freedom, the afternoon ended in a spirit of connection and hope—different communities listening to one another, generosity answered with generosity, and new relationships beginning to take root.

New Jersey Faith Leaders Unite for Religious Freedom at Interfaith Candlelight Vigil

One by one, on a wintery Saturday, clergy representing different faith traditions entered the New Jersey Family Church of Clifton carrying candles. Each leader then lit their candle and shared sacred scripture from their tradition reflecting on a common theme: bringing divine light into a world darkened by suffering.

On December 13, 2025, 90 people—including 25 guests—gathered for “Light of Humanity,” the third event in the community’s Faith, Freedom, and Peace series. Bringing together representatives of Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Catholic, and Scientology communities, the evening centered on religious freedom, hope in times of persecution, and the responsibility of faith communities to stand together when others are vulnerable.

Following the opening candle lighting, a panel discussion brought those themes into the personal experiences of participants. Panelists shared how their faith had served as an anchor of hope through periods of difficulty and reflected on how people from different religious traditions can work together to protect those facing persecution.

The gathering also drew attention to the detention of Dr. Hak Ja Han, known as the Mother of Peace, in South Korea. A video presentation offered attendees a closer look at her circumstances and invited participants to consider her situation within the broader struggle for religious freedom around the world. The presentation was followed by musical performances from two vocalists, creating a reflective pause as participants considered the evening’s messages of faith and solidarity.

Those ideas soon took physical form.

In one of the evening’s central moments, a Muslim woman and a Christian woman approached the “Bridge of Peace” from opposite sides. The two crossed the bridge together, offering a simple image of reconciliation across religious differences and the shared values capable of bringing people together.

That spirit extended to the candlelight vigil that followed. Each attendee lit a candle from the same central flame before the gathering moved outside. Together, participants walked silently around the block, carrying their candles through the neighborhood in prayer.

What had begun with individual faith leaders bringing light from their respective traditions into the gathering became a shared flame carried outward by the entire community.

The evening reflected a principle at the heart of Peace Starts With Me: peace can begin within an individual, but it does not end there. By listening to the experiences of other faith communities, standing together for religious freedom, and choosing reconciliation across differences, individuals can help create relationships capable of carrying that peace further.

After the candlelight walk, participants returned inside for dinner and fellowship, sharing reflections and strengthening relationships formed throughout the evening.

Against the darkness of a December night, 90 individual candles offered a quiet final image of the gathering’s message. Different traditions had entered the room with their own prayers, scriptures, and experiences, but participants ultimately carried their light into the community together—a reminder that even in times of persecution and uncertainty, hope grows brighter when it is shared.

Peace Starts With Me Volunteers Help Feed 500 Families in Hawai‘i

“Being able to help provides so much love, and you can feel the gratitude from every volunteer and community member you help,” one participant reflected after serving at the King’s Chapel Hawai‘i Food Bank ‘Ohana. “This is something I would love to be part of again!”

On January 23, 11 volunteers from the Hawai‘i Peace Starts With Me Alliance (PSWMA) joined approximately 75 volunteers at King’s Chapel Hawai‘i to distribute food to 500 families across East O‘ahu. Led by the Women’s Federation for World Peace (WFWP) Hawai‘i Chapter, the group began 2026 by joining an established community service effort that has provided food to local families for more than a decade.

The Food Bank ‘Ohana is held twice each month under the leadership of Pastor Margaret Vesnefski, King’s Chapel’s community outreach director, who has overseen the ministry for the past seven years. For the January distribution, volunteers from across the Peace Starts With Me Alliance—including WFWP, the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU), and Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP)—worked alongside King’s Chapel volunteers and other members of the community.

Before they arrived, the Hawai‘i Food Bank had delivered pallets of fresh produce, frozen meats, breads, desserts, and dry goods, supplemented by food from King’s Chapel’s own pantry. Volunteers formed an assembly line to sort fruits and vegetables, pack grocery boxes, and load food into vehicles as families arrived. A separate walk-up distribution ensured that people without transportation could also receive assistance.

As the work continued, younger and older volunteers served side by side, including second-generation youth working alongside first-generation members.

“I was so happy to see our young (people) help,” one participant shared. “They worked tirelessly loading heavy boxes of food into the trunks of cars. We were all empowered by this experience and are looking for more.”

For another volunteer, who was participating in a community service project for the first time, the experience revealed something more personal.

“Everyone was friendly and seemed to genuinely connect with one another,” the volunteer reflected. “I realized that I still can contribute something to the community. I truly enjoyed serving, and the whole experience was incredibly rewarding.”

That discovery—that each person has something to contribute—gives practical expression to the idea at the heart of Peace Starts With Me. Through service, volunteers not only helped meet an immediate need but also found opportunities to build relationships across generations, organizations, and church communities.

Pastor Jeff Schmidt saw those relationships as one of the day’s most meaningful outcomes.

“I could see the hand of God working in our community,” he reflected, describing the experience of “working together with another church community, making a foundation and building a network of friends.”

By the end of the distribution, 500 families had received food, while volunteers left with new relationships and an eagerness to serve again. In the simple work of packing boxes, loading cars, sharing laughter, and serving shoulder to shoulder, the gathering offered a glimpse of how community can grow through service—every bag carrying nourishment, every smile carrying hope, and each act of compassion bringing the vision of Peace Starts With Me a little closer to home.

Chicago Clergy Celebrate 25 Years of Faith, Family and Service

Twenty-five years ago, Chicago clergy and community leaders gathered to recognize lives devoted to faith, family, and service. They came together to honor legacies built over decades—as well as their community’s commitment to carry that work forward for generations to come. Today, that same spirit continues through Peace Starts With Me, which seeks to build upon the shared vision for peace, connection, and understanding fostered by faith leaders and communities over the years.

On January 26, 2026, 133 clergy, community leaders, and families—including approximately 65 guests—gathered at Cosmopolitan Community Church for the 25th annual True Family Values Awards Banquet and Prayer Luncheon. Hosted by the Chicago chapter of the American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC), the gathering celebrated individuals whose decades of ministry and public service have strengthened families and communities while fostering cooperation across faith traditions—reflecting the Peace Starts With Me commitment to building peace through relationships, service, and unity.

The luncheon opened with prayer and fellowship before Dr. Achille Acolatse, the newly appointed ACLC National Director, delivered the keynote address. Speaking about prayer, strong families, and unity among clergy, Dr. Acolatse encouraged participants to continue building relationships capable of strengthening their communities and the wider interfaith movement.

For Dr. Ki Hoon Kim, chairman of the World Christian Leadership Conference, this 25th anniversary had triggered a personal memory of how the Chicago True Family Values Awards Banquets began. Reflecting on the history of the awards, Dr. Kim remembered that “True Father [Rev. Sun Myung Moon] called me directly” to establish similar recognition programs throughout all 50 states. This event partly came about because Dr. Kim encouraged the Chicago community to continue honoring people whose lives demonstrate faith and service, reminding them of this past guidance from Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

Minister Dr. Reiko Jenkins recognized leaders of Women in Ministry Chicago for their years of faithful service, while Rev. Hiro Sagisaka presented 17 Ambassador for Peace certificates to longtime clergy supporters. Many had worked alongside ACLC and the Chicago community for more than two decades, helping relationships across religious traditions take root and endure.

Minister Melishia Bansa was recognized for carrying forward the work of her parents through pastoral ministry, missionary work in Ghana, and public service in Illinois. Reflecting on her upbringing, she expressed gratitude for having grown up surrounded by interfaith relationships through her mother’s leadership—and for the opportunity to continue that legacy for another generation.

Apostle St. John and Co-Pastor Gay Chisum, founders of Gifts From God Ministry Church, were honored for 34 years of pastoral leadership, worship ministry, and compassionate service to the Chicago community. Rev. Katherine Rigney was recognized for more than 50 years of missionary service in Africa, including numerous national and continental leadership roles devoted to strengthening families and communities.

The gathering concluded on a more solemn note as participants joined in heartfelt prayer for Dr. Hak Ja Han amid her imprisonment in South Korea. The moment underscored the continuing importance of standing together across faith traditions—not only in celebrating lives of service, but in supporting one another and defending the freedom to live according to one's faith.

As the Chicago True Family Values Awards ceremony marked their 25th year, the celebration honored more than individual achievements. It recognized the foundation built by clergy and community leaders whose decades of faith and service have strengthened families, congregations, and interfaith relationships throughout Chicago and beyond. Through Peace Starts With Me, that legacy continues to be celebrated while inspiring new generations to build upon it—carrying forward the relationships, values, and commitment to peace established by those who came before them.

Experience April 6th Again

April 6th was amazing! More than 6,000 people joined the Peace Starts With Me rally at City of Refuge in Gardena, CA.

Here are some of the highlights

Thousands gathered for a transformation experience

Hezekiah Walker, Grammy Award Winning Gospel Artist

Jason McGee, City of Refuge Choir Director and Spirit Award Winner

Beautiful Performances by City of Refuge Youth

Emmy Award Winning Director and Producer A. Curtis Farrow lead the 500 voice choir

Youth of all faith backgrounds gathered to stand for peace

Bishop Ki Hoon Kim shared his life experience seeking peace.

“Standing for peace isn’t an easy task. In order to overcome the violence and the many challenges facing our society, we need to rise above our differences and work together to love and heal our fellow brothers and sisters to build true peace.”

Dr. Ki Hoon Kim, Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU) Regional Chairman for North America. “

Bishop Noel Jones gave an inspirational message that reminded us of the importance of each individual in the realization of peace.

“God put us all on this earth to live together in peace. You have to fight certain conceptualizations about religion. We have to turn our backs to the violence and turn the world upside down.”

Bishop Noel Jones, City of Refuge Pastor

Thousands received the Marriage Blessing!

Couples renewed the vows and dedicated their families to being building blocks of peaceful communities.

ACLC National Co-chair Dr. Luonne Rouse and his wife Marie officiated the ceremony.

Crescentia DeGeode MC’ed the powerful Marriage Blessing ceremony.

“God is doing something incredible, something holy in this space"

Crescentia DeGeode, FFWPU Blessing and Family Ministry Director

Watch the Video Below to Learn More About the Blessing Ceremony

“We cannot sit idly by and watch. This world, which our Creator, God, created for us from the outset, is suffering and dying due to our ignorance… We must find solutions to these problems before it is too late. This means that self-centeredness, and nations that place their national interests first, will ultimately not survive…We must combine our efforts and work in unity in order to do that"

Mother Hak Ja Han Moon, Mother of Peace