The Baptist World Alliance (BWA) is a family of churches and denominations that was founded in 1905 in England.  It represents 214 denominations and associations, over 37 million members and 105 million believers.  We have very able and strong leadership from our Canadian Baptist Ministries (CBM) General Secretary, Gary Nelson, who has just completed his term as a Vice President and from Harry Gardner, the former Executive Minister of the Atlantic Baptists.  Western Canada has been represented well by three former CBM Presidents who later became BWA Vice Presidents; Roy Bell, Shirley Bentall and Bruce Milne.

As you know from previous newsletters the BWA met in Amsterdam this summer to celebrate 400 years of Baptist witness, beginning with British religious refugees meeting in Holland to experience their faith in Christ.

These events will be marked in the next two newsletters.  They are divided into two themes.  The firs is commentary and visionary reporting from three perspectives:  David Coffey (British) President of the BWA 2005-2010; Neville Callum (Jamaican) General Secretary BWA; and Gary Nelson, our own CBM General Secretary.

The next section which is for the week following Thanksgiving is a series of services that we experienced in Holland; first, a sampling of the daily worship times amongst delegates and secondly, the 400^th Anniversary Service in a Mennonite Church in Amsterdam. 

Warmly

In Christ,

Jeremy

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Permission to publish these reports has been given to us by the BWA.  These are part of the documents distributed at the Annual Gathering in Ede, Netherlands, July 27-August 1, 2009

We have made the  BWA Commentary available by PDF.