10 November 2026, 15:00 (CET)
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This webinar will ask how companionship can influence the way churches prepare for visits, listen to communities, receive difficult stories, reflect together, and follow up after an encounter.

Within the Pilgrimage for Justice, Reconciliation and Unity, encounters are not simply programme activities or exposure visits. They are moments of mutual learning, spiritual attentiveness, and shared discernment. Companionship helps participants enter such encounters with humility, openness, and accountability. It also reminds churches that pilgrimage is not only about going somewhere, but about being changed through relationship.

The session, lead by Rev. Prof. Dr. Stephanie Dietrich, moderator of the WCC Commission on Faith and Order, will consider how companionship can be embodied in preparation, facilitation, reflection, and continuity. It will also explore how churches can avoid extractive or one-sided approaches when engaging communities affected by injustice, conflict, or marginalization.

Participants will be invited to think about companionship as a method that connects theology with practice, and as a way of making Pilgrimage encounters more participatory, responsible, and transformative.

The five-part series aims to show how the Pilgrimage of Justice, Reconciliation, and Unity appears —through a lens of companionship— as a theological orientation and an ecclesial practice.

Participants will be invited to explore companionship as a deep yet understandable journey from theological foundations to practical implementation. The series will move through five themes: foundations, method, ethics, context, and implementation.

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WCC launches webinar series on Theology of Companionship (WCC news release, 13 August 2026)

Next sessions of the series:

13 January 2027, 15:00 (CET): Ethics
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3 March 2027, 15:00 (CET): Context
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12 May 2027, 15:00 (CET): Implementation
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