Welcome to our first newsletter

We are delighted to welcome you to this first newsletter from Reconciliation Initiatives. Our aim is to publish a quarterly newsletter, and we hope that you’ll want to stay in touch, and will continue to subscribe. We aim to give a few helpful pointers, and not to overload you. Let us know what you think.

Healing the Earth

In the lead up to the UN Climate Change Conference, our latest public webinar was entitled Healing the Earth. Our speakers were: Alex Hilton, Head of Sustainability, HM Revenue & Customs; Ali Angus, Leader of Eco Church, St Leonard’s Streatham; and Rachel Mash, Environmental Coordinator, Anglican Church of Southern Africa, and leader of Green Anglicans.

This was a truly stimulating conversation, with all three speakers offering valuable insights on the environmental crisis, and the contribution that churches can make to addressing it. You can watch the video on our YouTube channel.

We also have a new Events page with links to the videos of the other webinars we’ve hosted this year. Healing the Earth was the fifth one sponsored jointly with the HeartEdge network. The others are also worth watching.

Reconciling Mission – third cohort for 2022

We are currently recruiting for the Reconciling Mission programme that will begin in July 2022. A bishop can sponsor a group of four from their diocese to participate. Typically these will be experienced parish clergy.

We are recruiting from Anglican dioceses in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The early signs are encouraging. Let us know if you might be able to help encourage a particular bishop to consider sponsoring a group.

The second cohort comprises participants from four dioceses: Ely, Hereford, Lichfield and St Asaph. The residential in June was really well received, and the ongoing action learning groups are proving stimulating and providing useful coaching for participants.

Four participants in the latest cohort have recorded videos to give future potential participants a taste of what the programme offers. Watch below or find all participant videos at the bottom of this Reconciling Mission webpage.

Prayer requests

We welcome your prayers for Reconciliation Initiatives, especially for:

• Identifying a suitable person to be our next Chair of Trustees
• Recruiting at least four diocesan groups for the Reconciling Mission 2022 programme
• Discernment about whether to develop an offering for southern or east Africa

Thank you for remembering us in your prayers.

“The great advantage and edifying power of the parochial system is its capacity for making a ‘broken, divided people’ become ‘one body within certain bounds’. It does this only by drawing near those who were once far off – and by seeing neighbourhood as something offered especially by and to the outsider. It is not a little ironic that ‘parochial’ has come to epitomize insularity and self-containment when its original meaning is far closer to our contemporary definitions of interloper or refugee: but this… is an irony we can work with to great benefit.” 
Quote from Parish: An Anglican Theology of Place, by Andrew Rumsey (SCM, 2017), p.188.