Restorative Justice:  Dialogue That Builds Bridges of Trust Across the Divides

For the past four decades, the modern movement of restorative justice has expanded far beyond its original context for helping victims and offenders of crime. From school children to African countries coping with mass violence, various models of restorative dialogue bring harming and harmed parties together for storytelling, empathy-building, apology, and reparations. The interest to prevent harm and build up healthy communities is now prompting campus, workplace and church settings to train facilitators to ‘hold space for hard but healing conversations in the heart-zone.’ In this Forum session, practitioner and trainer Ted Lewis will tell stories of reconciliation and describe flexible models for people to be deeply heard so that they can better co-exist.

Ted Lewis is a Restorative Justice consultant and trainer for the Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking, University of Minnesota, Duluth. Since 1996 he has been a practitioner, program manager, teacher and trainer in the fields of conflict resolution and restorative justice. Ted also serves on the board for the National Association for Community and Restorative Justice (NACRJ). For the past 20 years, he has provided workshops and facilitation services for church communities, and in 2016 he founded the Restorative Church project.