Joel Edwards preaching in Down Cathedral on 17 March
The Revd Canon Joel Edwards, General Secretary of Evangelical Alliance in the UK is the guest preacher at this year's Saint Patrick's Day festival service in Down Cathedral. Joel has held the position of General Secretary of EAUK since 1997 and also serves on a number of faith, government and public agency advisory groups. He is an ordained minister in one of the UK's major Caribbean denominations and an honorary Canon of St Paul's Cathedral. He is passionate about unity within the church, but unity with a purpose - to see real change for real lives and real communities.
The main St Patrick's Day service takes place in Down Cathedral at 11.45am, with an earlier service of Holy Communion in Saul church at 9.30am. The recently installed Dean of Down, the Very Revd Henry Hull, will be the preacher at the service in Saul.
This year the theme for the day is ‘Captive' which links the story of Patrick with the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. There will be various elements featured in the services and pilgrimage to reflect this.
One example will be in the annual pilgrimage to Down Cathedral, which follows the service in Saul, where pilgrims will carry chains as a symbol of slavery. On the journey pilgrims will also blow whistles in solidarity with the Micah Challenge ‘blow the whistle' campaign as a sign that we are coming up to ‘half time' in the Millennium Development goals, which seek to halve poverty by 2015.
A wreath laying ceremony at Saint Patrick's Grave will follow the Cathedral service.
The invited guests this year include members of the Mothers' Union, StreetReach, Tearfund and Evangelical Alliance.