The largest representative body of Reformed Christians in the world, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, is holding its 24th General Council in Accra, Ghana, from the 31st July until 13 August 2004.
Representing some 75 million Christians worldwide, the 1000 delegates to the Council include four representatives from the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.
Dr Russell Birney (High Kirk, Ballymena), Rev Tony Davidson (First Armagh), Rev Liz Hughes (Whitehouse) and youth representative Louise Matthews from Bangor left on Monday to attend the 2 week conference joining with over 200 Congregational, Presbyterian, Reformed, and United churches in more than 100 countries to bear witness to their common faith in the lordship of Jesus Christ.
The Council will be a celebration of life and faith at the start of a new century. Guided by the theme "That All may have Life in Fullness" (John 10.10), meaning, not just material wealth, but health and wholeness and spiritual well-being in a world of peace and justice, participants will reflect on the threats and challenges to life while seeking God's will for our response.
This is the second general council to be held in Africa. The first was in Nairobi in 1970 and the Council returns to Africa and to Ghana, the home of Rev Dr Setri Nyomi, the first African to be appointed as General Secretary of the Alliance. Dr Nyomi was a visitor and speaker at last years Presbyterian General Assembly in Belfast.
Sam Prempeh, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, says his church is "overjoyed" to host "this historic event". He sees it as a way of asserting the place of Ghana's Presbyterian churches in the worldwide Alliance family, and in a world church whose centre of gravity has shifted from Europe and North America to the southern hemisphere - above all to Africa. He is happy that the council is meeting "at a time when the country is enjoying relative peace in a sub-region plagued by internal conflicts" and hopes to make the council "one with a difference, the memory of which will remain for a long time to come".
The council will expose participants to the richness of worship life in Ghana in other ways as well.
On August 2, they will gather for a "Durbar", a great open-air service in Independence Square in Accra that will be attended by leaders of the Ghanaian Christian community, political leaders and representatives of civil society.
The following weekend, they will pile into buses for visits to churches in Accra and elsewhere in Ghana and in neighbouring, French-speaking Togo.
According to the national organizing committee, the aim is to give the visitors a taste of local worship and to see how local tradition and culture have influenced and inflected the western styles of worship imported by missionaries in the 19th century to what was then the Gold Coast.
The atmosphere during the church services will be enlivened by drumming and dancing and the singing of African lyrics based on the teachings of Christ.
The general council meets every seven years and is the Alliance's highest governing body. The last Council held in Debrecen in 1997 is best known for its call to member churches to engage in a common process of recognition, education and confession of faith in relation to worldwide economic injustice and environmental destruction. As these problems deepen, the World Alliance sees the theme of "Life in Fullness" in clear continuity with the Debrecen discussion and enabling member churches to take their response a step forward.
The Presbyterian Church in Ireland was a founding member of WARC in 1877 and hosted its Council Meetings in 1884.
Issued by Stephen Lynas, Presbyterian Information Services. Info@PresbyterianIreland.org
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