Welcome!
We
are a gathering of youth and children’s workers from Baptist Churches and Unions
from the length and breadth of Europe, who share a passion for sharing the good
news of Jesus with children and young people. In order to make this possible we
intend to support youth and children’s workers through providing access to
relevant resources, training and support. Please explore the pages and find out
about our projects, aims, training and events. Whether this is your first visit to this website, or you are a regular visitor we hope this website will be a useful resource to you.
Nick Lear
EBF
Youth and Children Workers Conference: “Equipped for Mission”
Baptist youth workers in
Europe are busy preparing for the Baptist World Alliance’s (BWA) World Youth
Conference scheduled for Leipzig from 30 July to 3 August this year. It was one
of the topics at this year’s gathering of national youth and children’s workers
coming from member unions belonging to the European Baptist Federation (EBF).
Forty-one delegates from 23 countries were present at this year’s meeting in
Vienna, Austria from 18 to 23 January.
The Conference held in the
Baptist church of Vienna-Mollardgasse had the slogan: “Equipped for Mission –
Faith, Facts and the Future”. Different worship services, concerts and
workshops involving international speakers, musicians and artists were featured
during the conference. The EBF-Youth Director Jeff Carter (Prague) called for
the use of statistics and survey tools more suitable to meet the current
challenges of youth work. Such tools would allow strategies to be developed
further or modified. He added: “Honest evaluation prevents stagnation.”
One of the days of the
Conference was given over to a retreat, led by Sally Nash (England) of the
Northumbria Community. Sally led the conference delegates on a moving and
profound guided personal retreat, encouraging them to reflect on their own
personal faith-journey and places and people who were significant to them along
the way.
In elections, Svjetlana
Mraz of Croatia was elected Vice-Chairperson of the EBF’s Youth and Children’s
Committee. Russia’s Evgeny Bakhmutsky was voted in as the Committee’s new
Member-at-Large and Jean Francois Lekeu of Belgium was confirmed as Treasurer.
The Chairperson remains Nick Lear of England, who was not up for election this
year along with the Secretary, Vasil Vasilev. The conference ended with a
worship service involving communion.
Chair Youth and Children's Committee
