PQ #27 - The Reconciliation Circle and the Culture of Encounter - With Rev. Dr. Vincent Nyman

PastoralQuotient

Vince Nyman is a priest for the archdiocese of St Louis with almost twenty years of ministry in several parishes plus a stint as a missionary in Bolivia. He has earned several graduate degrees including an MFA from Washington University and, more recently, a doctorate in preaching from the Aquinas School of Theology. He is also a gifted artist and, now, a published children's author. Fr Nyman began ministering in urban St Louis a few years ago just as the Michael Brown incident was going down in Ferguson. Troubled by his first-hand experience of the manifest volatility of deep racial wounds and divisions, he began wondering how he, a white priest, could preach to a mixed race congregation in such a context. This led him to pursue doctoral studies in preaching, with a focus on the reconciliation circle as a tool for the encounter with and empowerment of suffering, voiceless, and marginalized people, such as he often encounters in his inner city community of Baden in St Louis. In this conversation, we talk about the culture of encounter as facilitated by the reconciliation circle and how it can contribute to a renewal of preaching, restorative justice, and the new evangelization.