Building on Good Faith Conference
A conference looking at how faith based groups might partner more effectively with the public sector to make a significant contribution to the local community is to be held on 30th April, 2007 in the Armagh City Hotel. The ‘Building on Good Faith' conference is a shared initiative between the Churches' Community Work Alliance (NI), a regional inter-church community development agency, and the Department of Social Development.
The keynote speaker for the event is Rev. Dr. Leslie Griffiths, former President of the Methodist Church in Great Britain and now a working peer in the House of Lords, under the title of Baron Griffiths of Burry Port, his home village in Dyffd, Wales. He spent most of the 1970s serving the Methodist Church of Haiti, where he was ordained, before returning to Britain to serve in several very testing urban ministries. Since 1996 he has been Superintendent Minister at Wesley's Chapel, London and as a preacher and public speaker, writer and broadcaster, he has been a powerful advocate of the involvement of the church in the public square, with a deep commitment to truth and justice.
In addition to Dr Griffiths input, the two hundred delegates will have opportunity to hear and respond to a number of research papers, especially commissioned by DSD, on the involvement and contribution of Christianity, and other faith traditions, to community development in Northern Ireland. There will also be opportunity to engage in broad discussion on how faith based community development work can best facilitate the process of enabling Northern Ireland to become a more just, caring and reconciled society.
The conference will see the launch of the new CCWA (NI) Forum for churches, Christian agencies, projects and individuals concerned with engaging in the local area using a community development approach.
Rev David Campton, Chair of CCWA (NI), is excited about this venture and believes it is a potentially defining moment for the churches in Northern Ireland. "This is a wonderful opportunity for the churches to listen afresh to the developing needs in our community and to consider different ways in that we might respond to them as an expression of the Church's mission'.
Further information about the work of the Churches' Community Work Alliance and/ or the conference is available from the Director, Eddie McDowell, CCWA, 218 York Street, Belfast, BT15 1GY; Telephone 028 9074 0077; eddie.mcdowell@ccwa.org.uk