Interview
Rev. Dr Angelique Walker-Smith, World Council of Churches (WCC) president from North America, together with the leadership of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA and the Canadian Council of Churches, advocated for many months for the development of NATI-RETI.
Rooted in months of shared discernment, NATI‑RETI is being brought to life through a broad network of churches, councils, and ecumenical partners.
“In this troubled season of increased wars, conflict, lack of hospitality for people in need of sanctuary and loving support, denials of histories/herstories, and the scourge of other acts of violence, increasing unjust policies and practices in our regional context also affecting the world, we call for peace with justice in our region and globally,” said Walker-Smith.
Keith Swartzendruber, from the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, who is co-directing NATI-RETI, explained why the experience will be unique. “NATI-RETI provides the chance to really focus on issues that are priorities for local congregations that a larger global gathering cannot do,” he said.
Three-tiered approach
NATI-RETI will combine intellectual, spiritual, and contextual learning in an immersive experience.
David Montealegre, from the Canadian Council of Churches and a NATI-RETI co-director, first encountered this three-tiered methodology as a World Council of Churches' Global Ecumenical Theological Institute (GETI) student in 2013. After then staffing four GETIs over the next dozen years, he reflected that the balance of each day is being carefully designed. “What holds the three tiers together is not a formula but intentional design: building each day so that the morning prayer, the plenary session, and the site visit are in genuine conversation with one another,” he said. "Twelve years of watching it work and occasionally not work is probably the best preparation we have for a very coherent and cohesive ecumenical education program.”
The NATI-RETI fabric is also woven across national borders. “Congregations are not immune to the fractures pulling at North American society,” said Montealegre. “Ecumenical formation teaches something rare right now: how to stay in real relationship across difference and valuing such differences, without collapsing into uniformity or retreating into a corner. That takes more than skill. It takes a sense of vocation.”
Ultimately, NATI-RETI’s organizers hope that the experience transforms the students in many ways. “For some, that will be spiritual, a renewed sense of call,” added Montealegre. “For others, theological, new categories for thinking about justice and unity. And for some, I hope it becomes institutional: they carry what they encountered into their denominations and councils for years.”
Image
The Turtle Island story
NATI-RETI is also being designed to help students carry the theme, “Where now for visible justice?” home to their churches and communities.
“The wonder and wisdom of the methodological approach of NATI-GETI tested in prior GETI experiences and the unique North American-Turtle Island story of diverse peoples, lands, spiritual life accompanied by the lives and lens of students in their own communities in this region, while focusing on the six sub-themes identified, promises to inspire and commend new and renewed concrete actions when students return to their own communities,” said Walker-Smith.
Swartzendruber hopes that participants recognize the intersectionality of everyday life and congregational ministry. “Faith leaders and pastors must be able to speak specifically how faith impacts the everyday issues that people deal with,” he said. “To be a faith leader in the 21st century, you have to be spiritually mature, informed, and aware of all the voices around you whether privileged or oppressed.”
Montealegre noted that “visible justice" is an uncomfortable phrase on purpose. “It does not let you stay at the level of good intentions,” he noted. “What I hope is that participants go home not with a program to implement, but with a question they cannot stop asking: what does the Gospel require of us, here, in this specific place?”
That question is only possible because NATI-RETI is not a conference, he added. “Two weeks of living, praying, studying, and crossing borders together is not incidental to the learning, said Montealegre. “It is the learning. And it changes what you are able to see when you return.”
The six pillars of NATI-RETI—Indigenous solidarity, anti-racism, secularism, wealth disparity, climate justice, and interfaith dialogue—are connected. “They address one reality from different angles,” said Montealegre. “I hope participants carry that way of seeing back into their communities, into how they preach, how they lead, how they stand with people on the margins. At some point, visible justice has to stop being a program theme. It has to become something we just do.”
