The Methodist Conference, governing body of the Methodist Church in Ireland, will meet in Portadown next Friday, and its sessions will continue until Tuesday.
One of its first acts, set in the context of a worship service, will be installation of a new president of the church. The Rev Desmond C Bain was last year designated to this office.
Mr Bain is the son of a former president of the church, the Rev Charles Bain, and was born in Belfast. His wife, Valerie, is from Cork. He has ministered in Cork, west Cork, Limerick and Dublin, where he was superintendent of the Dublin Central Mission.
For the past seven years he has been the energetic and imaginative general secretary of the church's home mission department. Wherever he has been his ministry has been marked by grace, thoughtfulness and a quirky sense of humour.
He comes to office as the church completes a period of reorganisation, in which Mr Bain has been deeply involved. The church's governing and planning structures have been revised with a view to meeting more effectively the demands of worship and service in the 21st century. The conference will be asked to approve these.
The council on social responsibility will report on Monday, June 13th. In a busy year it has addressed matters concerning the healing of hurts in Northern Ireland, international conflicts, the punishment of children, the misuse of alcohol, homelessness, bioethics and racism.
The council aims to establish a process of two or three years where Methodists directly affected by the conflict in the North may find a place of healing.
The June issue of the Methodist Newsletter reports on an attack on the Methodist church at Kiran in Sri Lanka. The local minister received threatening letters from a group calling themselves "Progressive Hindu Youths", ordering him to stop relief activities among the tsunami victims. They alleged this was bait for religious conversion.
Knowing that this was not so, the minister did not take the letters seriously. On April 27th the church was set on fire. The army brought the blaze under control. Fortunately no one was injured, but the church and the relief supplies were destroyed.
Methodist Women in Ireland are planning a dinner in Portadown next Saturday, when Marlene Skuce will speak about Sri Lanka, where she and her husband, the Rev Stephen Skuce, worked for some years.
Werner Stoltz, a young South African living in Dublin and worshipping in the Clontarf Methodist Church, recently learned of two South African-based charities which look after children infected or orphaned by Aids. These are known as Phakamisa and Place of Hope.
To raise money for the cause, he plans to leave the Liffey in a sea kayak on June 16th and paddle some 12,000 miles around the Irish coast, expecting to return around August 20th. The website for the venture is www.kayak4aids.com