Free Grace Baptist Church (Chilliwack) will be hosting a new annual conference in April. The conference is called “Confessing the Faith” and will be held on Friday afternoon, April 26th and Saturday morning, April 27th.
The conference is designed:
- To promote fellowship among Reformed Baptists in western Canada. Several pastors from various churches in western Canada have been meeting (via Zoom) and discussing the possibility of starting an association of RB churches in western Canada.
- To promote fellowship among other Reformed churches in our area. We have much in common and we think it would be good to seek fraternal and collegial relationships with other pastors and churches.
- To promote growth in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for all of God’s people who wish to attend – office bearers, men, women, and youth.
We hope to do this every year and the subject matter will be our Confession of Faith, so this year will be focused on chapter 1 (“Of the Holy Scriptures”). Our speakers will be Dr. James Renihan, President of IRBS and Dr. Richard Barcellos, Pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Palmdale CA and Associate Professor of Exegetical Theology at IRBS. We have also secured speakers for next year for chapter 2 (“Of God and the Holy Trinity”), Dr. James Dolezal and Dr. Samuel Renihan.
We desire to serve our brethren, so there will be no cost for the conference, however, there will be registration so that we can have an approximate understanding of how many will be there as we plan to provide snacks and meals. Since some of the pastors attending will be traveling from outside of BC, we hope to keep their costs down to by providing housing with brethren in our church. If any of you are willing and able to host a pastor(s) for the duration of the conference, please contact Charlotte Van Dop as she will be coordinating lodging and travel into BC.
We have asked Drs. Renihan and Barcellos to stay through the Lord’s Day (April 28th). On that Sunday, Dr. Renihan will preach at the Surrey RB church in the morning service, Dr. Barcellos will preach at FGBC in the morning service, and then we will have a joint meeting at our church building in the afternoon at which Dr. Renihan will preach. We will move that meeting to 4:00pm and the brethren in Surrey will join us for worship and then a time of food and fellowship following.
There is a brochure and website (www.confessingthefaith.ca) forthcoming for informational purposes and to facilitate registration for the conference.
Please pray that the Lord will bless this for His own glory and for the edification of the saints. As well, pray that we would see the formation of an association of Reformed Baptist churches in western Canada so that we can cooperate together in church planting, missions, and ministerial training.
