National Free Church Prison Chaplains' Training, 7th - 9th May 2024

Photo by Wan San Yip on Unsplash

“Our Reason for Hope”

Venue: Eastwood Hall, Mansfield Road, Eastwood, Nottingham, NG16 3SS

Price: £350

The theme for this year will be “Our Reason for Hope”, and our main speaker will be Rev Dr Joe Boot who runs “The Ezra Institute” .

“Rev. Dr.Joseph Boot (M.A., Ph.D.) is a Christian thinker and cultural apologist, Founder and President of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity. He is adjunct instructor for culture and apologetics at Bryan College, Tennessee. He also served as the founding pastor of Westminster Chapel, Toronto, for 14 years.

Now resident home in Great Britain, Joseph has worked in the fields of Christian apologetics, worldview education and church leadership for over twenty-five years on both sides of the Atlantic. He has spoken and guest lectured globally at numerous university events, seminaries, churches, colleges, and conferences. He regularly addresses pastors and Christian leaders as well as academic, medical, legal, and political professionals and has publicly debated leading atheistic thinkers and philosophers in Canada and the United States.”

Registration will start at 11:00.for lunch at 12:30, and the Opening Session at 13:30. The event will finish on the final day at 14:00.Price included the cost of each event is two nights’ accommodation and all meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner).

For more information, please contact Bob Wilson at bob.wilson@freechurches.org.uk

Pop–Up Reflective Practice for the Free Church Healthcare Chaplain

Reflective practice is part of the Ten Essential Shared Capabilities described in the UKBHC Capabilities and Competences (2015) document. Similarly, within the Spiritual Care Competences for Healthcare Chaplains (2020) document agreed for Scotland, is recognised as one of four domains of healthcare chaplaincy competence. As part of the process of continuing professional development chaplains are expected to demonstrates the ability to reflect upon practice in order to develop and inform their professional practice. Reflective practice, as described by Mark Stobert, is a form of supervision that is underpinned by a reflective practice mindset. It uses the potential of ‘reframing’ situations to unearth creative responses to those situations and to develop new knowledge of practice for those situations. Over time it becomes a developing state of mind so that we can reflect in action, not just on action. These pop-up sessions are for anyone to join, but are particularly aimed at those in smaller teams who might otherwise struggle to engage in reflective practice.

Photo by Carolina Heza on Unsplash

Dates for the first part of the year are as follows:

• Thursday January 25th 12:00 to 13:00 

• Tuesday February 20th 09:00 to 10:00 

• Tuesday 26th March 12:00 to 13:00 

• Thursday 25th April 15:30 to 16:30 

• May- TBC

• Monday 10th June 12:00 to 13:00 

• Tuesday 16th July 13:00 to 14:00 

A reflection sheet for chaplains to use before the session to help think about what they might have on their mind and after the session to record learning can be downloaded from here. For more information or links/diary invites to the session, please contact Mark Newitt at mark.newitt@freechurches.org.uk

Healthcare Chaplain Annual Study Day: Chaplaincy on the Edge

Exploring being on the margins through art, research and story

With input from Kate Cornwell, Tim Dixon, and Suzanne Nockels

Date: 12 June 2024, 10:00-16:00

Venue: Central URC Church, 60 Norfolk St, Sheffield S1 2JB

Price: £35

A discount code is available for the Free Church Healthcare chaplain.

Chris Swift writes about how chaplains are not simply on the margins between church systems and the medical paradigm that dominates the hospital, but between life and death, a Christendom past, and a contemporary spirituality that has rejected the rights of external authority. Yet, being perceived as on the border or edge can be a place of creativity that bring various benefits. Through story, art and research this study day will explore aspects of liminality and marginality and the joys, frustrations, opportunities and challenges that being ‘on the edge’ can bring.

Indicative Timetable for the day

10:15 Welcome and Introduction

10:30 Deep Talk 1

11:25 Break

11:40 Interpretating Art

12:45 Lunch

13:45 Reflections from Research

15:10 Break

15:25 Deep Talk 2

15:55 Depart/Cake and conversation

Deep Talk – sessions led by Kate Cornwell

Deep Talk is a creative and imaginative method that nurtures personal and community wellbeing. It uses life-coaching principles and the art of ancient storytelling to help individuals and groups consider their vision, wellbeing, and life purpose. Deep Talk has found success in various settings including workplaces, educational institutions, community groups, mediation, and professional development. These sessions, will give participants the opportunity to experience a full Deep Talk session and collectively explore what it means to work ‘at the edge’ of our various chaplaincy settings.

Interpretating Art – session led by Suzanne Nockels

Art, by its nature has no fixed meaning, is open to interpretation and can take on a new life not originally envisaged by the artist. Art is fluid so it can help us explore our own times of change. This session will involve sitting with a number of paintings and sculptures which broadly have healthcare as theme. They’ll be an opportunity to respond through open-ended questions and hear a little about the life and context of the artist. Together, we will build a fruitful conversation between the artwork, ourselves and between each other. Viewing art and talking around it can be a helpful tool in our own Chaplaincy contexts. At the end there will be the invitation to write or draw a response to something you’ve seen on a postcard (becoming an artist yourself).

Reflections from Research – session led by Tim Dixon

“It’s like you work for the prison, but you don’t!”

Tim will be leading us through a reflection on his doctoral thesis which looked at the pastoral care of remand prisoners and the role of the prison chaplain. One of the main themes explored there was the marginal or ‘liminal’ nature of chaplaincy, how we stand on the boundaries of people’s competing expectations and on the thresholds of being ‘part’ of the organisations we work for. Tim will make links to healthcare chaplaincy and how we work within ‘edge’ environments, with people trapped in limbo-like situations of disorientation sometimes for months or years at a time – what does this do to people and their identity, and what does it do to us? There will be opportunity for group discussion around these themes and what it might look like to live faithfully on the edge of things, and how this might be a benefit to our ministry, rather than a drawback.

If you are a Free Church Healthcare Chaplain, please contact Thandar at thandar.tun@freechurches.org.uk for the discount code. 

Photo by PNW Production at pexels.com

Nourishing Roots - with Rev. Miranda Threlfal-Holmes, 12/03/24, 10:00-16:00

Join us for a day of reflection and spiritual renewal with the Free Churches Group, led by Rev. Miranda Threlfal-Holmes

Date: 12th March 2024, 10:00-16:00

Venue: The Quaker Meeting House, 22 School Lane Liverpool L1 3BT

Price: £20.00

Join us in Liverpool for a day of reflection and spiritual renewal with the Free Churches Group, led by Rev Miranda Threlfal-Holmes, held at the Liverpool Quaker Meeting House.

Nourishing Roots days are organised for Chaplains in Healthcare, Prisons, Education, and beyond to allow us time to reflect, recharge, and reinspire for our work and ministry.

Miranda is the Archdeacon of Liverpool and Team Rector of the St Luke in the City. She has experience in Higher Education chaplaincy and has published a number of books on chaplaincy, prayer, Christian history, and reading the Bible.

The day will include a buffet lunch.

Please contact Thandar (thandar.tun@freechurches.org.uk) for the discount code if are a chaplain from the FCG denominations. Visit here for the denomination list.

Photo by Brigitte Tohm on Unsplash

Reflection from Revd Helen Cameron, Moderator of the Free Churches Group

“He did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself” Philippians 2: 6-7

It was a great privilege recently to attend a reception at the Foreign Office celebrating the work of the brilliant charity, Prisoners Abroad. As Moderator of the Free Churches Group which does such important work in the field of prison chaplaincy, advocacy and support for prisoners and their families in the UK, involvement with Prisoners Abroad seems a natural link.  

The charity supports British citizens in prisons across the world, offers particular services to their families and offers important resettlement work with citizens returning to the UK.

Prison conditions across the globe can be very poor and challenging, resulting in limited access to the fundamental basics such as food, clean water, and medical care. Prisoners Abroad work in close partnership with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Last year they reached 1,170 prisoners held in 96 countries. Grants awarded can be used to provide clean water, language translation services, and reading matter to reduce isolation and promote wellbeing. 1,356 families in the UK and overseas were supported by Prisoners Abroad. There is a free helpline, local family support groups, a newsletter and a multilingual support team provide a wide range of support services to families enabling them to stay in touch with their relatives.  The third area of this charity’s work is support in resettlement. People returning from prison overseas are clearly at great risk of street homelessness and destitution. Prisoners Abroad operates a crisis service to offer accommodation so that those returning can access benefits, healthcare, training and employment services. The importance of this kind of intervention cannot be stressed too highly in order to prevent a very vulnerable group of people becoming lost. I was interested in the range of people present at the reception and how few people (only two) were clergy or church leaders.

There was a room full of generous and compassionate people from all kinds of backgrounds concerned for their fellow human beings. The evening provided some surprises – I arrived at the same time as, and left at the same time as, Jon Snow journalist and former Channel 4 presenter. A surprise to me was that the largest number of cases of prisoners abroad are found in the US and the highest number of new cases is also found in the US. 33% of all new cases across the world are drug offences. I did a lot of listening and I learned a lot.

It was very good to speak with Pauline Crow, OBE, the former Chief Executive of the charity, who led the charity for more than 20 years as well as the new Chief Executive, Christopher Stacey. I left encouraged and inspired by the levels of compassion, care and commitment I had encountered.

I am writing this piece in Advent (though you will read it later) and I note that several weeks’ after the Prisoners Abroad reception I am still thinking of the work of this charity, the safety net it offers to prisoners and their family at moments of profound vulnerability, isolation and loneliness. I heard stories that evening that I won’t forget, the granting of monies to prisoners which enabled them to survive, not die in really demanding circumstances. Lives are saved and lives are transformed, families kept connected and human rights protected.

The evening and the focus on the work of Prisoners Abroad reminded me of the values we hold as Christian people, the dignity of every human person whatever their actions, the need for timely intervention to avoid even worse tragedy and the different outcomes that are possible if we care enough to get involved.

This idea, of caring enough to get involved in the messiness of peoples’ lives, for me sums up the truth of the incarnation. God was fully present in the person of Jesus Christ, and chooses to continue to be present through the followers of Christ in the messiness of everyday life.

Justice can be understood as a form of kenosis, or self-emptying. Too often, as Christians we speak of self-emptying or sacrifice but such behaviour is unequally expected of certain (often already marginalised) groups. But when we all give of ourselves freely for others, surrendering the privilege that we hold, the imbalance of power which leads to injustice gives way to a commitment to the good of the other.

Paradoxically, this kind of self-emptying leads to a society in which all can be fulfilled.

Most of the privilege we hold in situations is unconscious. We can lack self-awareness of the privilege we hold and take for granted. The work of Prisoners Abroad works with those who have had most of their privilege, even on occasion, their basic human rights removed. It is a non-judgemental support service that sees human need and responds with care, practical support and resettlement.

Please pray for the work of Prisoners Abroad. Remember them in your charitable giving. They can be contacted on www.prisonersabroad.org.uk or info@prisonersabroad.org.uk Perhaps next year you could send a Christmas greeting to a prisoner abroad, shining a light of hope for them that they are remembered, and not forgotten?

Every blessing,

Helen