The Methodist Church has been working in Sligo for nearly 250 years but now it is thinking of tomorrow.
For many of those years the church hall in Wine Street served the congregation for a variety of meetings, catering for the needs of its younger and older members. In recent years it has provided a venue for meetings of Sligo's wider community. But the building has aged and last November it was demolished.
Work is now in progress on the site, raising a new hall which will offer better facilities to the members of the church and to the whole community. Variations in ground level in front and behind the building have made it possible to provide facilities for organisations working with children and young people in what is below street level, but at rear ground level.
At street level there will be a large hall and kitchen and at first floor level additional smaller rooms.
Care has been taken in the design of the new building to relate it to the needs of the physically challenged - so access to the upper floor by a lift means all parts of the building will be "wheelchair friendly". The building is expected to be ready for use in October and will cost around £350,000.
One of the ecumenical contributions to the celebration of the millennium in the town of Birr will be a flower festival in St Brendan's Church of Ireland parish church on Oxmantown Mall.
Under the direction of Mrs Majella Fethersonhaugh, it will trace the history of Christianity from the Nativity to the hope for Christian unity, mainly focusing on events in Birr. There will be 17 arrangements. In one, representative of the Methodist contribution, there will be a model of the Rev John Wesley with his horse; he first rode into the town 252 years ago. The festival opens on Thursday evening, August 17th and continues until Sunday afternoon, August 20th.
This weekend, the president of the church, the Rev Kenneth Todd, is in Castlewellan with the many Methodists and their friends who gather there each year for sports, worship and Bible study. In recent years the church in Ireland has been strengthening its links with the Methodist churches overseas, as successive presidents are visiting them. On August 12th, the president and Mrs Todd leave for Africa where they will spend two weeks visiting the churches in Zambia and Zimbabwe. In former years, Irish ministers and lay people served as missionaries in both places.
At his induction in Skopje some months ago, the new President of Macedonia, Mr Borris Trajkovski, spoke of a time for healing and for building peace, quoting from the Biblical books of Micah and Ecclesiastes. President Trajkovski, who has served as a lay pastor of a United Methodist church in Macedonia, was foreign minister at the time of the crisis in Kosovo, when tens of thousands of refugees poured into Macedonia.
On Sunday, August 13th, morning worship from the television studio on RTE 1 will be led by the Rev Dr John Parkin and will consider those who have sought or have found refuge in Ireland from suffering elsewhere.