I grew up in Belfast during the Troubles and was strongly influenced by the work of the Corrymeela Community. I have also been greatly influenced by the work and witness of the Taize community. I studied history at the University of Durham before being ordained as an Anglican priest in the Church of Ireland in 1997. I was serving as a curate in Omagh at the time of the bombing in 1998 and shared in the ecumenical response to the tragedy. I was a chaplain at Trinity College, Cambridge in 2000-2006, working with both students and the college staff. I served for five years as Minister of a local ecumenical church just outside of Cambridge which united Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Quaker and United Reformed Church traditions in a single fellowship. I spent a further year in full-time study to take a Master’s degree in Peace and Reconciliation Studies at the University of Coventry. Since 2012 I have been dividing my time between serving as vicar of an Anglican church in Cambridge and working in the area of conflict resilience- providing coaching and training to church leaders and communities in how to respond to conflict
- working as a mediator in disputes in churches and charities I currently serve as the Bishop’s Adviser for Resilience in Conflict in the Diocese of Ely.
My approach to conflict resilience
It is my conviction that
- everyone has the capacity to be resilient to conflict
- we can all develop greater resilience through experience and training
- every situation has within it the capacity for transformation
