Presbyterian Moderator, Rt Rev Dr Frank Sellar will chair a special opening session of Bangor Worldwide 2016. Bangor Worldwide Missionary Convention officially opens on Saturday evening 20th August 2016 at 7.30pm in Assembly Buildings, Belfast.
This year Bangor Worldwide is celebrating 80 years of promoting and supporting world mission, having met each year since its foundation in 1937. The Convention aims to inform and instruct people who already have a genuine interest in world mission. It also seeks to challenge those with little or no involvement to become fully committed to mission at home and overseas in terms of praying, giving and going.
Dr. Sellar, who was ordained in Hamilton Road Presbyterian Church, where the majority of the Convention’s meetings traditionally take place said, “It is my privilege in this special anniversary year to have been invited to chair the opening event.”
“As Christians, we are never permitted to be isolationists. We are called to be a community of global concern and there are few organisations more in tune with this than the Bangor Worldwide Missionary Convention. For eight decades it has promoted mission with passion and encouraged many to respond to God’s call.”
“This evening will be no ordinary night. As well as inspirational praise, I am looking forward to meeting our three outstanding speakers. George Verwer, founder of Operational Mobilisation, is in his late 70’s and still has a fire in his belly to evangelise, discipleship, train and church plant. Former Congo missionary from Belfast, Bob McAllister, was wounded in the 1964 Simba Rebellion, which saw 13 fellow missionaries killed. Also, Conrad Mbewe, the pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia who has been described as the ‘Spurgeon of Africa’.”
Bangor Worldwide 2016 opens on 20th August, with Presbyterian Moderator Rt. Rev. Dr. Frank Sellar chairing the opening event.
Before the Opening Night starts at 7.30pm, 50 mission organisations will exhibit in Assembly Buildings from 6.00pm. The Missionary Convention continues throughout the next week meeting in various locations, but principally in Hamilton Road Presbyterian Church, Bangor.
“Many years ago, as someone who feared that God would send me to the place I least wanted to go, I discovered that instead God loves to change us, so that we are happy to do what he wants us to do, a lesson I have never forgotten. I warmly commend this year’s Bangor Worldwide Missionary Convention in expectation of what God is going to do.”
For more information and details of all events at this year’s Convention visit their website here. You can also follow proceedings on Twitter here. Bangor Worldwide 2016 closes on 27th August.