The First Connection Youth Leadership Conference, under the auspices of the Dublin-Munster Presbytery Youth Council, will be held at the Lucan Youth Centre, Co Dublin, from Friday, January 7th, to Sunday, January 9th.
Mr Dave Fenton, an associate pastor and youth leader in the Above Bar Church, Southampton, England, will be a principal speaker. Organisers heard him at a conference for the equipping of leaders for the new millennium in the North recently. They said that Mr Fenton had a wealth of experience in youth and adult ministry.
Perhaps of special interest to Dublin-Munster Presbytery will be a Church leaders' and parents' seminar on Saturday, January 8th, 2.304.30 p.m., at which Mr Fenton will speak on the challenge of integrating young people into the life of the church. A young adults' (19-45) gathering on Saturday, 7.3010.30 p.m. is intended to be a fun evening, at which Mr Fenton will also speak. Other seminars on Saturday, January 8th, will consider the range of issues in volunteer, full-time and detached youth ministry.
A millennium working group reported in June last that entry to the new millennium would be a fitting time for "rededication and recommitment" by the entire church membership. It was urged that on January 2nd the mission statement of the church should be repeated by all congregations.
Accordingly, a millennium memento in the form of a handsome and practical bookmark has been prepared with the church's millennium logo on one side, and the mission statement on the other. The statement affirms the church as reformed within the wider body of Christ. It emphasises the divine call "to a shared life; to worship; to mission; and it states the challenges of biblical discipleship". Copies are with all congregations.
Much of the work of the church, at home and overseas, is funded by the response of congregations to a united appeal. The United Appeal Board will announce the launch of new publicity material for 2000. Presbyterian Briefing, as it is called, is meant to serve two main purposes: informing our people in an even better way about the wider work of the church, and encouraging even more realistic giving through the United Appeal. Presbyterian Briefing has been developed by the board of communications. An eight-page informative and appealing leaflet will be sent out twice yearly, in spring and autumn.
Church and State in the new Millennium - Issues of Belief and Morality for the 21st Century (Harper/Collins, £16.99), is a timely volume. While the Rev David Holloway, Vicar of Jesmond, Newcastle-on-Tyne, comments from a markedly conservative perspective, his controversial views will prove "a catalyst to a necessary debate on the role of Christianity in public life".
Mr Holloway "highlights the culture war that is being waged for the soul of the West". He argues "that in the West we are rooted in the Judaeo-Christian spiritual tradition; with the best of Graeco-Roman political tradition". The church cannot allow "a sweeping tide of secular humanist policies to dominate education, healthcare, and the social services".
He concludes: "You can cut a plant off from its roots: but you cannot then expect it to survive for long".