Porvoo Church Conference Concludes in Cardiff

|TOP|A conference which brought together representatives of the Porvoo Churches from across Europe concludes today after much deliberation on the challenges and processes of communicating the Gospel in the twenty-first century.

The Porvoo Communion brings together four Anglican churches with Nordic and Baltic region churches as well as Iceland, Portugal and Spain to maintain close relationships and interchurch unity for the purpose of more effective mission.

Members of the churches in Wales, England and Ireland as well as Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Latvia gathered last Thursday at the Urdd Centre within the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay for the start of the four-day conference which ends today.

Delegates at the conference include Ian Hargreaves, Director of Corporate and Public Affairs at BAA, and Phil George, Creative Director of Green Bay TV, the company behind the BBC series ‘Bread of Heaven’ and the BBC programme on the Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘An Archbishop Like This’.

|AD|Jonny Baker, who works with the Church Mission Society developing and supporting mission and new ways of being church in the emerging culture, as well as Rev Tom Ehrich from North Carolina, US, were also both on hand at the conference to provide delegates with some mission training.

Numerous seminars took place over the four days including “Communication at the cutting edge: the place of the internet in communicating the Gospel” by Jonny Baker, and “The interface between mission and television” by Phil George.

The Porvoo church communicators joined church leaders from the Porvoo Churches for a special service in the city’s Llandaff Cathedral to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Porvoo agreement.

The conference was hosted by the Church in Wales and was centred on the theme of “Come! Follow Me”.

The four-day visit also included a viewing of the ‘reality’ TV series The Monastery and visits to the National Museum and Galleries of Wales’ St Fagan and the Big Pit museum in Blaenafon.