Co-founded in 2015 by Jessica Reesor-Rempel and Chris Brnjas, Pastors in Exile (PiE) was one of the Grebel Peace Incubator’s first participants. Seven years later, PiE continues to bring young adults from across Waterloo Region together through candid conversations about peacebuilding and spirituality in modern contexts. What started as a safe space for young adults to explore their faith has presented Reesor-Rempel with a wealth of experiences that guide her approach to connecting with others as Grebel’s Interim Chaplain.
Since launching in 2015, the Grebel Peace Incubator program at the Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement has hosted over 29 startups, each with a unique approach to peacebuilding and innovation. One of the Centre’s earliest incubator participants was Pastors in Exile (PiE), an Anabaptist-rooted movement that was co-founded in 2015 by Grebel graduates Jessica Reesor-Rempel and Chris Brnjas. Seven years later, PiE continues to support young adults in the Waterloo Region by offering a safe space for open discussion of faith experiences as they connect to contemporary social issues. Looking back, Reesor-Rempel recognizes the Centre for Peace Advancement’s influence in the growth of PiE and her own peacebuilding journey.
Reesor-Rempel always pictured herself pursuing a career that involves actively striving for peace and justice because “peacebuilding and principles of nonviolence are ingrained in the Mennonite faith.” This connection to peace and justice is what brought Reesor-Rempel to Conrad Grebel University College for her undergraduate education in Peace and Conflict Studies, and connected her with the Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement. As a student, Reesor-Rempel and Brnjas were connected to the Centre by former Grebel Chaplain Ed Janzen, sparking conversations about the unserved needs of young adults in faith-based spaces that eventually led to the founding of PiE.
Through PiE, we find we are able to support and empower people outside of the church, and often they feel empowered to take what they learn back to their own congregations.
As a young adult, Reesor-Rempel observed her peers struggling to “find their place in a church setting where they could openly talk about
“PiE was unique among other incubator participants because we were doing religious work but thinking about ourselves as entrepreneurs in a start-up setting,” recalls Reesor-Rempel. What perhaps looked like a strange pairing from the outside opened countless doors for Reesor-Rempel. “Sometimes when you are doing work ‘for the good of the world’, it’s tricky to ask for money from donors, but the incubator helped me see that PiE’s work and not-for-profit funding model is a business,” shared Reesor-Rempel. “I don’t think we would have lasted this long doing good in the world if we hadn’t learned how to make our organizational structure sustainable.” This learning enabled PiE to pay their employees a living wage.
When you are offering a gift to the world, you deserve to be paid to do that.
After graduating from the Grebel Peace Incubator, Jessica Reesor-Rempel continued her involvement in the Centre as an advisor in the Peace Incubator’s Mentorship Circle. She describes her experience as positive and inspirational. “It was great to be able to use the skills I learned as an incubator participant to support people new to the process.” One valuable lesson Reesor-Rempel taught new entrepreneurs was the importance of taking self-care and wellbeing seriously. It is prevalent in the startup world to work endlessly, but her approach to PiE as just one part of her story offered a different perspective to new participants.
Reesor-Rempel’s journey came full-circle in early 2021 when she became Conrad Grebel University College’s Interim Chaplain, relieving Ed Janzen from the long-time role he occupied at the beginning of PiE’s story. While PiE mostly works with people between twenty and thirty years old, whereas Grebel is home to younger adults, working at PiE gave Reesor-Rempel a “sense of what young adults are asking, and lots of experience working with people with different beliefs, faith backgrounds and places on the theological spectrum.” In both her roles at Grebel and PiE Reesor-Rempel hopes to “keep an open and listening posture to the needs of young adults and to live out her values through mindfulness of the earth and its people.”
For now, Reesor-Rempel’s door at Conrad Grebel University College is always open, and she can often be found sitting down with students in the cafeteria. More information about Pastors in Exile and ways to get involved can be found on PiE’s website.