Peace Camp 2026

PREACHER

LeeAnn McKenna is a Baptist minister, member of the BPFNA since 1989, and a trainer in nonviolence, nonviolent direct action and conflict transformation in conflict zones around the world. Recently, the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace recognised the ‘work and storytelling of LeeAnn with the Muriel Duckworth Award for a Lifetime of Achievement in Peace Activism’. Her about-to-be published account of her work is entitled, ‘Midwifing Peace: Caught in the Crossfire’. She is mother to Emily and Gillian and grandmother to Owen and Morgan. She and her husband, Jeffrey Cottam, live on four hectares of the rolling hills of the Niagara Escarment.

PREACHER

Rev. Junia Joplin (she/her) serves as Associate Pastor at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto. A native of the North Carolina mountains and veteran of Baptist ministry in the U.S. and. Canada, Junia is either a basic suburban hockey mom or a sign of the apocalypse, depending on who you ask.

PREACHER

Luz Amparo Chagüendo Ospina is president of the BPFNA~Bautistas por la Paz board of directors. She also serves as founding executive director of SEPAZ in Colombia.

PREACHER

Rosalyn is a member of the Oneida First Nation of the Thames and the Daughter of Leslie Tewaslake Elm and Dr. Olive Watahine Elm (Huron DD 2021). She and her siblings go by their mother's clan, the Bear Clan. Rosalyn graduated from Huron University College in 2014 and ordained as a Deacon and later posted as Curate at St Paul's Cathedral in London, Ontario.

Rosalyn Kantlatant Elm is an Indigenous Anglican priest, theologian, and national church leader in the Anglican Church of Canada, where she serves as Director of Indigenous Ministries. Her work sits at a vital intersection—where governance meets theology, where reconciliation meets lived reality, and where the future of the Church is being actively discerned.

But titles alone do not capture the depth of her leadership.

Rev. Elm’s ministry is rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing—formed in relationship to land, to community, and to Spirit. She brings forward a vision shaped not by hierarchy or control, but by consensus, accountability, and sacred connection. In her work, authority is not something imposed; it is something that emerges—through listening, through trust, and through the careful work of being in right relationship with one another.

She speaks into a Church still navigating the weight of its own history, including the ongoing realities of colonial structures and assumptions. And yet, she does not remain in critique alone. Her voice calls us forward.

Through what can be described as a framework of Generative Belonging, Rev. Elm invites us beyond reconciliation as repair. She challenges us to imagine something deeper—where relationships are not simply restored but transformed… where belonging is not granted by institutions but created through mutual responsibility… where identity itself is reshaped through justice, dignity, and shared life.

This is not easy work.

It asks us to reconsider how we understand authority.
It asks us to reflect on how decisions are made.
It asks us to listen differently—to one another, to the land, and to the Spirit moving among us.

And yet, it is precisely this kind of work that opens the possibility of a different future—one that is relational rather than jurisdictional; emergent rather than delegated; and grounded not in control, but in sacred connection.

Archdeacon Elm is widely respected as a speaker and teacher on reconciliation, decolonization, Indigenous governance, and the evolving life of the Church. But more than that, she is a guide—helping communities step into a deeper way of being together.

So today, we are not only hearing from a leader—we are being invited into a different imagination of what the Church can become.

PREACHER

Rubén David Bonilla Ramos is the editor-in-chief of the Baptist Peacemaker. He was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico in January 1984, and is the second of three children. He was born and raised in the church, which he attended with his parents and family since childhood. He became interested in the field of theology and decided to study Religion at the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico – Metropolitan Campus, where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Religion. He continued studies in the theological field and in 2019 he finished his Master's in Divinity of the Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico obtaining several awards and accomplishments. He was selected by the Seminary in 2018 to participate in the student trip to Matanzas, Cuba, to take a Decolonial Theology course. In March of that same year he participated in the Global Ecumenical Theological Institute in Arusha, Tanzania. In June 2018 he attended the BPFNA-Bautistas por la Paz Summer Camp in Rochester, NY, where he offered a workshop on his experiences during Hurricane Maria.

Rubén David, as he is known, lives in Carolina, Puerto Rico with his wife Leslie. In August 2019 they received their first daughter, Beatriz Sugeil. He is a tireless fighter for the human rights of the island where he was born and has participated in mass demonstrations in Puerto Rico that seek to defend the rights of marginalized, excluded and dispossessed communities. His goal is to continue doctoral studies in the field of theology, decoloniality and gender studies.

BIBLE STUDY

Néstor Medina is Associate Professor of Religious Ethics and culture at Emmanuel College, University of Toronto. He engages ethics from contextual, liberationist, intercultural, and post/decolonial perspectives.  He explores the ethical implications of religious/theological debates, and how these shape concrete social structures and notions of ethnoracial and cultural identity. He also studies how lived religious experiences shape/transform people’s understandings of ethics on the ground, especially reflecting from Latina/o/x (Canadian and USA), Latin American, and Latina/o Pentecostal perspectives.