The Journey of Reconciliation: Beyond Hearts Exchanged

When the eight-month Hearts Exchanged learning journey comes to an end, a common, weighty question often arises for participants: What’s next?

Reconciliation is a lifelong posture. Recognizing this, the Hearts Exchanged team is offering continued support to churches through Communities of Practice (CoPs) in partnership with Thriving Practices through Thrive and their grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc. These groups are designed to extend the learning journey by an additional one to two years, providing coaching, peer connection, and grant funding to help local congregations turn head-knowledge into long-term, transformative action, equipping them to build meaningful relationships with Indigenous neighbors.

Liz Tolkamp, a regional connector for Thrive, will be a participant in a British Columbia-based CoP starting this summer. Looking at the program through a lens as both a CoP participant and as a denominational staff person, she said, "CoPs are a great next-step opportunity for those who have participated in the Hearts Exchanged learning journey. By learning with and from each other, participants in a CoP can build capacity within their churches to be communities of reconciliation and belonging."

A Haven for the Journey

For Lindsay Vander Hoek, a member of an Edmonton, Alta.-based CoP, the group has been a safe space, she said, during a time of personal and academic wrestling while pursuing her master's degree at the University of Alberta. 

Vander Hoek shared about some of her challenges in her studies, noting that some spaces could lump Christianity entirely together with colonialism. "Hearts Exchanged itself was like this little haven for me, where I could still say, 'Yes, I'm a Christian, and, yes, there are people who care.' That really carried over into the Community of Practice. It’s been a place for my spirit to feel at peace while working through tough questions."

Jesse Edgington, a CoP group member from Fellowship Community Church in Edmonton, experienced a similar grounding effect. He said that while the core Hearts Exchanged material was unsettling and life-changing in a positive way, it naturally left participants with more questions than answers.

The Edmonton group has named themselves Open Hearts, a nod to having completed Hearts Exchanged and wanting to move forward with hearts that continue to be open to learning while pursuing meaningful relationships. 

"A huge impact of the CoP is not having to walk the journey alone," Edgington said. "When you have others who have gone through similar experiences and are committed to journeying together for the long term, it really helps give some peace that the questions are okay."

Vander Hoek emphasized that the CoP model thrives on mutual encouragement rather than rigid obligation: "It’s more like saying, 'Hey, I really want to be doing something to continue this learning journey, and that's not always easy.' Having a Community of Practice can be one way to help that journey continue."

Moving onto the Land

Initially the Edmonton group met monthly to share personal updates and to process their growth. As trust deepened, the participants expressed a collective desire to experience things as a group and to explore what reconciliation means specifically in their geographic location.

The group has done a wide range of activities, including book studies on Becoming Kin and Mend, gathering at the Indigenous Art Park in the heart of Edmonton, planting seeds with other Indigenous organizations and elders, participating as Hearts Exchanged facilitators, inviting more members from their churches, attending a standing stone ceremony, and visiting a memorial site at a cemetery in St. Albert honoring Indigenous people who passed away while in hospitals or residential schools. The group’s learning has extended into contemporary storytelling as well; while reading the novel Prairie Edge, they organized a meeting with the author, local Métis writer Connor Kerr, to discuss his work firsthand.

"Building relationships with Indigenous people in your area is one of the most challenging things to do in this journey, and having a CoP helps so that you are not doing it alone," Edgington said. "It has meant that I do not think about my learning and experience in a silo."

Growing into Reparations

The Edmonton group continues to look for incoming opportunities. Future plans include a potential field trip to Sounding Lake in southern Alberta and connecting with a land-sharing network that partners with farmers to open private land for traditional harvesting.

The group is also seeking out the advice and connections of Indigenous leaders and elders, including Adrian Jacobs, the senior leader for Indigenous justice and reconciliation for the CRC, as well as local leaders Harold Roscher and Travis Enright as they navigate conversations. 

Roscher, director of the Edmonton Native Healing Centre, said, “The more churches and ministries are engaged in a relationship, the better we will understand our roles in how to develop that relationship. Knowing names, faces, and where people have come from are important building blocks toward a long-lasting relationship. We need to find the common ground of reciprocity to build on a solid foundation of trust between the ministry and its partners.”

The Edmonton CoP lives out their Open Hearts posture by taking these challenges seriously. "We also want to include ideas of reparation with our reconciliation walk," Edgington said. "So we are growing together as a group to understand what that could mean or how we could do that as a group."

This group is influential among churches and individual participants, leading to long-lasting commitments. Edgington said, “I desire for my reconciliation journey to become an ongoing part of my life. I want it to be so much a part of my decision making and consciousness that it is a metric that I use in everything I do.”

How the CoP Model Works

The Hearts Exchanged staff team is actively supporting the formation of CoPs as long-term regional groups, connecting peer congregations to share best practices, resources, and ideas.

The program structure includes several key components for participating churches:

• Relational Core: Each CoP is formed by at least three CRC churches. While focused on CRC congregations, we know there is strength in local solidarity, so ecumenical partners, schools, or community organizations are also welcome to join. Each church needs a core group of two or more people committed to the CoP for at least one year.
• Reconciliation Action Plans: Rather than having a one-size-fits-all mandate, each church in the CoP develops its own localized action plan, based on what the ‘next right thing’ is for their context. Projects can range from hosting a Blanket Exercise to educate their wider congregations, to building a formal relationship with a local First Nations community.
• Coaching and Connection: Groups determine their own regular meeting pace locally, alongside regular Zoom coaching sessions with the Hearts Exchanged staff, as well as regularly scheduled sessions with all the churches for peer-to-peer learning.
• Grant Funding: Each participating CRC church can apply for up to $1,000 to cover travel to regional events (such as powwows or learning seminars), to host local Indigenous speakers, or to fund community projects.

Edgington encourages congregations and past Hearts Exchanged participants to consider stepping into the model. "I would really encourage people considering a CoP to be brave and bold and to commit to a community like this," Edgington said. "A CoP gives people a home in which to continue to learn and journey and connect with others who can help to encourage and support them. It is a way to make this a long-term part of your life and not just an event or task."

Ruth Ann Schuringa, a member of Mountainview CRC in Grimsby, Ont., is participating in an Ontario-based CoP being launched this summer. She said joining the group has provided the framework and momentum that her congregation has needed in order to take next steps: "We joined the Community of Practice for accountability, connection, and ideas to move our journey of reconciliation forward. We hope that through the Blanket Exercise already offered, highlighting Indigenous Ministry Sunday, and other future activities, we might continue to invite the congregation into curiosity about Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships. This is a slow process in our community, but we know that the continued exposure and reminders for Indigenous justice will help us all learn and grow."

Interested in Joining a Hearts Exchanged Community of Practice? 

The steps are simple! Decide together who from your church will participate, and commit to the requirements above. Share this proposal with your council/pastor to get approval. Let the Hearts Exchanged staff team know you want to do it! We’ll pair you with other CoP churches (and if you have churches who want to do it with you, let us know!). We’ll set up a coaching call to help you get started and to determine next steps. Contact us at [email protected].