The Revd Ivor Smith, Convention Chairman, reflects on the Irish National Christian Endeavour Union’s most recent Convention and shares some of those thoughts with our readers Nearly two years ago when we began to prepare for the 2018 Irish Convention we were greatly helped because our Union Secretary had kept her full notes from the previous Convention we had organised, so we had a ready-made check list of items to be dealt with. Recognising that everyone was already very busy, we decided that the Union Executive as a whole would be the Convention Committee. This meant that our regular Executive meetings were held in two parts. In the first part, chaired by our Union President, we dealt with general Union business; then we became the Convention Committee, chaired by myself, and dealt with the plans for the Convention. It worked very well and saved everybody’s time.
Our three initial priorities were ‘Speaker, theme and venue’. Thought and prayer were given to each of these and members were asked to consider the suggestions at the next meeting.
Rev Andrew Faulkner was known to us, and had led a young people’s seminar at a previous Convention which we had organised, so we were delighted that he agreed to be our main Speaker. We wanted a theme that would be challenging, encouraging, give the Speaker a broad scope to work with and be easily remembered – and we felt that, “Jesus First” did all of that.
As far as location was concerned, we felt that there was good road access to Ballygawley, 10
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THE IRISH ENDEAVOURER
