Introduction

World Conference 2007

Friends from over 30 countries travelled to Ireland for the denomination's triennial international conference; 315 delegates from as far apart as New Zealand, Bolivia, India and Kenya arrived in Dublin for nine-day conference providing the opportunity for Friends to meet together and explore their response to current global issues.

The FWCC Website gives an overview of the event.

Although this was not strictly a "public" event, the fact that Ireland had been chosen as the venue is exciting for Irish Friends and was of interest to many others. There are about 370,000 Friends in the world, of which less than 1,600 are in Ireland, and about 16,000 in Britain.

It took place at The King's Hospital School, Palmerstown, Co Dublin, and of the 325 who attended many were from among the substantial numbers of Friends that live in sub-Saharan Africa and in South and Central America.

The prime emphasis of the Triennial was on worshipping together, but getting to know Friends from other countries, and widening friendships also played an important part in the programme.

The theme of this Triennial meeting was "Finding the prophetic voice for our times" with a sub-text from 1 Corinthians 14.1 "It is love, then, that you should strive for. Set your hearts on spiritual gifts, especially the gift of proclaiming God's message".

A leaflet is available relating to the event, as a pdf file.

The final Sunday morning talk by our member Doreen Dowd can be found here here;
other talks by Lizz Roe of Britain YM here,
by John Sheldon also of Britain YM here
and by Marion McNaughton also of Britain YM here.

Previous FWCC Triennials had been held in New Zealand in 2004 and in USA in 2000. The 9th world conference of FWCC was held in Ireland in 1964, at Newtown School in Waterford.