Spiritual Elders Meet Emerging Visionaries is an initiative aimed at addressing the growing divide between the generations and exploring contemporary value systems within society:

• What is the legacy left by past generations?
• What are the values for tomorrow's leaders and thinkers?
• What role can faith have in our relationships and work?
  

A Faith Evening in Bolton

Over the last five years we have sponsored dozens of evenings from Newcastle to Oxford and from Cambridge to Manchester where up to fifty young adults have met with and been paired with an older member of one of the Faith Groups active in that community. This inter-generational and inter-faith conversation, carefully structured to avoid evangelisation or quotes from holy scripture, but leading to the gentle sharing of the paths trodden on the spiritual journey of the spiritual elder and emerging visionary, were described by John Battle as the foundations of our new inter faith society.

 

On November 2006 Shamus Maqsood, Development Manager for URI in the North West, held a similar evening in Bolton Town Hall. We changed the name for this occasion – and that has stuck ; no longer “Spiritual Elders meet Emerging Visionaries” but “A Faith Evening in Bolton ”. Around fifty people from many faiths and from both sides of the mystical age of thirty were welcomed by the Lord Mayor in the Banqueting Suite of the Town Hall. Tony McNeil, Chairman of the Bolton Council of Faiths, acclaimed the meeting as not only a great success but the foundation on which much work between URI UK and the Faith Groups of Bolton could build

 

“A great welcome, fifty memorable conversations, a host of new spiritual friendships and a jolly good supper”.

 

Over the last five years we have sponsored dozens of evenings from Newcastle to Oxford and from Cambridge to Manchester where up to fifty young adults have met with and been paired with an older member of one of the Faith Groups active in that community. This inter-generational and inter-faith conversation, carefully structured to avoid evangelisation or quotes from holy scripture, but leading to the gentle sharing of the paths trodden on the spiritual journey of the spiritual elder and emerging visionary, were described by John Battle as the foundations of our new inter faith society.

 

On November 2006 Shamus Maqsood, Development Manager for URI in the North West, held a similar evening in Bolton Town Hall. We changed the name for this occasion – and that has stuck ; no longer “Spiritual Elders meet Emerging Visionaries” but “A Faith Evening in Bolton ”. Around fifty people from many faiths and from both sides of the mystical age of thirty were welcomed by the Lord Mayor in the Banqueting Suite of the Town Hall. Tony McNeil, Chairman of the Bolton Council of Faiths, acclaimed the meeting as not only a great success but the foundation on which much work between URI UK and the Faith Groups of Bolton could build

 

"A great welcome, many memorable conversations, a host of new spiritual friendships and a jolly good supper”.

 

 

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