Evangelicals on a mission to Northern Ireland

Bishop David McClay has invited Sharing of Ministries Abroad to send 150 people to his diocese from the Anglican Church worldwide – from Singapore, South Africa, the United States and England – to help run mission and outreach: for a team in every Down and Dromore parish.

Mission teams will be available from Friday June 2 until Thursday June 15 and can be placed with parishes for a three, four or seven-day mission.

Each mission participant will be making their own way to Northern Ireland, so host parishes need only provide accommodation and food, the bishop confirms.

Bishop McClay, a committed evangelical, said the Sharing of Ministries Abroad guests are coming "to share Christ", to speak at outreach events, and to be available for whatever mission activities a parish has planned in each locality.

The bishop urges his clergy and their congregations, at this stage, to pray, and begin to put together a programme and identify the people in parishes who could work alongside the Sharing of Ministries Abroad team visitors.

He says: “It is an exciting opportunity and it is one that I am asking all of our parishes to grasp.

"These will be days of blessing and interaction with people from the worldwide church with every parish in our diocese.”

Sharing of Ministries Abroad UK is an Anglican Mission Agency, founded at the global Lambeth Conference in 1978 when bishops from around the world came to Britain for an international session that is held every 10 years.

Then, 300 evangelical bishops and senior clergy took the opportunity to gather for a pre-conference renewal gathering and it was said that "an outbreak of God's spirit" energised those who met at that event.

Today, Sharing of Ministries Abroad, with a strongly evangelical message, continues to connect the church across the world, breaking denominational barriers that can separate and building up "the body of Christianity through learning together".

The Down and Dromore diocese initiative next year is being organised in that spirit.

* Down and Dromore Church of Ireland diocese has 75 parishes, with churches located in greater East Belfast, all of Co Down and in north county Armagh around Portadown and Lurgan.