First Baptist Church of Moorestown held two Restorative Communities Training programs on Feb. 15 and 22, both of which helped participants discover restorative approaches to building and restoring community bonds.
A restorative community embraces the principles and practices of restorative justice in seeking to create an environment where individuals work collaboratively to resolve conflicts and foster trust, accountability and understanding. Restorative justice is a process for resolving disagreements and conflicts up to and including those that arise in the criminal justice system.
Principles of restorative justice include inviting full participation from all involved parties, healing what has been broken, seeking full and direct accountability, reuniting what has been divided and strengthening the community to prevent future harm.
“As Christians, it’s what we’re called to do,” said First Baptist senior pastor Rev. Linda Pepe. “We continually reconcile, we continue to see the value in all people and that everyone has these gifts and this calling from God, and are people of God.
“Our mandate is to be able to always honor the whole person, to see the value behind the behaviors, and to see that everyone is still loved and cherished,” she added. “Our call is to continually heal and reconcile.”
Restorative communities are safe spaces – physically, intellectually and emotionally – for respectful interaction. They promote a positive and healthy culture by building, strengthening and, when harm occurs, repairing relationships through social-emotional learning, circle practice and restorative dialogue.
“In a community like Moorestown, we’re already doing so much as a community together, that this is just another enhancement to build that sense of relationship and value in the community,” Pepe explained of both Restorative Communities Training events. “People really took it in and understood the need for such a program, and how remiss we’ve been as a society to have turned and bought into punitive justice …
“If we look at someone who has done harm as still a person who has incredible value in our community,” she continued, “we’re going to be more caring of them and try to restore them back to the community in any way we can. And that comes through talking and mediating and facilitating reconciliatory processes with all parties involved.”
Both training sessions were led by Rev. Dr. Donna Lawrence Jones, pastor of Cookman Beloved Community Baptist Church in West Philadelphia and executive director of the Metropolitan Christian Council of Philadelphia, a church foundation that provides faith-based nonprofits, leaders and congregations with resources to educate people in low-wealth neighborhoods.
Jones founded the Restorative Cities Initiative (RCI) – sponsored by the council – to promote a collaborative training and advocacy model from “porch to city hall,” to integrate restorative practices throughout neighborhoods and formal and non-formal social systems to achieve and sustain peace with justice. The RCI seeks to end the “information apartheid” in neighborhoods regarding restorative practices and restorative justice.
“We’re just at the beginning, and (we) don’t know where this is going to go,” Pepe acknowledged of both programs, “but the foundational energy is terrific around it. We’re just open, open to seeing what happens, and we’re exploring and training.”
