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Tomorrow, Tuesday 26-11-96, at 12 noon in the Board Room of Church House, the Moderator, Dr Harry Allen, will launch the plans of the Presbyterian Church for a special Assembly to take place in Coleraine next summer.
Entitled '2020 Vision - Good News for the Next Generation,' the initiative is an attempt by the church to focus its energy on engaging an increasingly secular society with an effective presentation of the Gospel.
'In September, 1990 we held a special Assembly in Coleraine to take stock of where the Presbyterian Church was and where it should be going,' explained Rev John Dickinson, co-convener along with Dr Tevor Morrow of the committee organising 2020 Vision . 'It was agreed then to hold another event away from the normal business of the Assembly meeting in June and the aim of 2020 Vision is to give Presbyterians ideas that they can put into practice in their own situations to effectively present the Christian message.'
The four day programme, which it is expected that some 5000 Presbyterian leaders will attend, will be held in a huge tented pavilion on the University of Ulster campus at Coleraine from August 11th to 14th.1997. Each day the programme will be one of praise, study, prayer and worship designed to encourage everyone in their commitment to God and to playing their part in the development of the church. A series of seminars will look at how to make it happen for the next generation while the evening celebrations will express the joyful freedom in serving God.
The two main speakers addressing the conference will be Eugene Peterson who has recently published a contemporary translation of the bible called 'The Message' and Michael Cassidy, the founder of African Enterprise , whose part in helping resolve the political difficulties in South Africa has been internationally acknowledged.
'In worship today Christians have a wide variety of tastes from the very traditional right through to extremely modern," explains John Dickinson. "2020 Vision is an attempt to see how the Presbyterian Church needs to develop to accommodate these varying strands while keeping it effective in presenting the Good News of the Gospel.'
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