Clergy Conference

(Above: Photo of Ruth Harvey, credit: Freya Austin)

We are excited to welcome Ruth Harvey as our keynote facilitator for the 2026 Clergy Conference! The theme this year will be ‘Rooted in Hope: lived in Community’.

About Ruth

Born and brought up in Scotland, with stints in Glasgow, Iona, Stirling, South India, Aberdeen, Germany, Amsterdam and Edinburgh, Ruth now lives in Cumbria, NW England with views of the northern fells and Ullswater where she swims when she can. Having been brought up in faith-based intentional community, Ruth is passionate about the power of intentional community, gathered and scattered, to model that hope to which we are called in the face of so much fracture.

This early immersion in community led Ruth to train as a mediator. She worked for many years in faith-based conflict situations and continues to volunteer with Place for Hope as a Practitioner, Mediator and Conflict Coach, facilitating large and small group mediations. Ruth is also an editor and a writer, contributing prayers, poems and liturgies regularly to Wild Goose Publications and other outlets. 

In 2023, Ruth took part in a nine-week listening pilgrimage across the lands now called Australia with the Wellspring Community, and in Aotearoa/New Zealand. She met over 30 indigenous Christian leaders and explored with them questions about creation care, climate justice, and first nations indigenous rights. You can read her pilgrimage reflection here.

Ruth is an ordained Church of Scotland minister and a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Ruth and her husband Nick brought up their family (three daughters) on the edge of England’s lake district. Ruth enjoys paddling a canoe and walking in the mountains.

About the Conference Theme

‘Rooted in Hope: lived in Community’
The Iona Community has been experimenting with the power of faith-based intentional community since1938. We do this through welcoming guests to share a ‘common life’ with us at our residential centres on the Scottish islands of Mull and Iona. And we do this, as a dispersed, global Membership community, through meeting monthly in one another’s homes. We pray, sing, listen, laugh and learn with one another about what it means to work for the justice and peace of Christ’s gospel today. 

Founded in a time of war and the rumour of war, we boldly assert that in the face of all that is fractured in our world, there is hope in community. There is the hope of new life nestled deep within all that is wrong. This is not a naïve hope. This is an active hope, that points beyond a fingers crossed optimism to transformation. 

Drawing on her experience of a life lived in Christian community, Ruth will help us gently to explore the fractures facing our world today. We will dig deep into Scripture and other sources of wisdom, including rich resources from the world of conflict transformation, to reveal hope beyond optimism. And we will look at models of intentional community to learn from one another about how to live now for the good of all.

Registration

The registration package will be emailed to clergy on June 1, 2026. Registration closes September 1, 2026.