EN-RE, in accordance with its charter, requires an annual meeting to maintain contacts between the member groups and their representatives in order to ensure a good collaborative spirit. These annual meetings are arranged each year in a different country to allow for the participation of local member groups in a Study Day whose topics are chosen by the host country’s member groups.
These annual meetings often take place on the Ascension Day long weekend since this is a public holiday in the north of Europe. Starting the meeting on the thursday and finalising on the sunday after lunch allows plenty of time for Study Day and visits to local events of interest as well as for the workshops to discuss topics for adoption in the plenary business meeting.
Many of the EN-RE member groups are also members of WACI We Are Church International and when meetings of EN-RE and WACI take place in the same year there is a strain on each member group’s finances if their delegates have to travel to two different locations in the same year.
2018 is special because
EN-RE and WACI are joint promoters of the Aparecida Conference of the Global Council Network (formerly known as Council 50) which will take place in Aparecida, near Sao Paolo, Brazil on 15th November. As WACI had already reserved a meeting place in Rome for 2018, EN-RE decided, in our 2017 Strasbourg Conference, to shorten its annual meeting to start in the morning of Thursday 15th March and end after lunch on Friday 16th March, holding a joint study session with WACI on the friday afternoon. The WACI session will take place on Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th and a special session for GCN will take place on Monday 19th.
Reports on the Rome Conference will be published following the Conference and since a decision must be reached on the Conference location for 2019, the new Conference heading will appear on the website.