Overseas Personnel in Current Service

• Hamilton Conference
• Serving the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI)
• November 2011 to February 2012

Thom Davies is a garden variety United Church minister who has worked at Wesley Urban Ministries, an outreach ministry of The United Church of Canada, since 2000. He has been appointed by The United Church of Canada to serve as an “ecumenical accompanier” in the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). Thom will serve in the EAPPI’s Group 42, serving from November 2011 to February 2012. The United Church of Canada has participated in this global initiative of World Council of Churches since its establishment in 2002. As of September 2011, the EAPPI has received over 900 ecumenical accompaniers from 16 countries, who have served in small teams for three-month periods in various locations in the West Bank, including Jerusalem.

During his time at Wesley Urban Ministries, Thom acted as both a minister and as the Director of Wesley Centre—a shelter and drop-in centre for men and women who are poor, sometimes homeless, and often living with mental illness and addictions. Aside from his work, Thom is a proud great-grandparent and has a wide range of creative outlets, such as painting (traditional, egg tempera religious icons), playing the concertina, and recently acquiring a set of Northumbrian Small Pipes. Last year, Thom constructed a skin-on-frame kayak for his wife’s birthday.

For the past year, Thom has been part of a small working group of General Council Executive that has responsibility for reviewing and rewriting our denomination’s Middle East policy. Several times during this work he heard the invitation to “come and see” (as the KAIROS Palestine document asks for), or as Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish challenges us, “Don’t believe me, go, take a look for yourself.” Thom feels the call to try and respond to these invitations—to go, and to see for himself.

The World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) is an initiative under the WCC’s Ecumenical Campaign to End the Illegal Occupation of Palestine: Support a Just Peace in the Middle East. Its mission is to accompany churches in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories in their non-violent actions and concerted advocacy efforts to end the occupation and support a just peace in the Middle East. Participants of the program monitor and report violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, support acts of non-violent resistance alongside local Christian and Muslim Palestinians and Israeli peace activists, offer protection through non-violent presence, engage in public policy advocacy and, in general, stand in solidarity with the churches and all those struggling against the occupation.

• Visit Thom's blog