Jim Le Shana | Director, International Friends Church Multiplication Conference
This article is an invitation for you and the churches in your Yearly Meeting to participate in the upcoming International Friends Church Multiplication Conference (IFCMC), November 13-15, 2024! As you may know, this conference happens every other year. The IFCMC in 2022 stirred the hearts of many Friends worldwide, with participants from a record-setting, 30 different countries. We anticipate many more to participate this year! Our continued purpose in this online gathering is to inspire, encourage, and equip us to do our part as Friends to fulfill the Great Commission and to plant churches.
It’s exciting that for the first time ever this year the conference will be offered online as well as onsite at three locations in America and several in-person sites internationally as well that are still being determined. Barclay College, Malone University, and Portland Seminary will all be venues that will host the conference this year.
I know that many of you experienced or helped with the conference in 2022. Thank you! In fact, participation far exceeded our expectations. We believe that more Friends leaders participated than ever before, with over 400 devices registered around the globe (a number of them representing families, groups, and church watch parties) and representatives from a record-setting, 30 different countries! In addition to underscoring a fresh sense of unity among evangelically-minded Friends worldwide, the Lord is using this conference to help us focus on our shared heartbeat to do our part as Friends to fulfill the Great Commission and to plant new churches!
We all know that we do not exist simply for ourselves. A high part of our calling as Friends is to share Jesus with those who do not know Him yet. For those who may not have participated with us previously, we invite you to join in the movement of what God is doing among Friends around the globe, and to invite others in your region to join you! This upcoming conference can become a catalyst for growth and multiplication in your region. Your participation will be a great encouragement to others worldwide, too!
To encourage participation in the conference worldwide, registration will again be FREE to anyone who lives outside of the United States! It will also be free to all students, regardless of where they live. There will be an opportunity to give an offering to help underwrite the costs, but we don’t want money to be a hurdle that keeps anyone from participating.
How can you help? We are asking you to please help us in a number of ways:
· Please make it a priority to attend personally! Mark it on your calendar now, and sign up as soon as you see the registration form (which should be available online later in September).
· Please encourage all of your key leaders to participate, as well as anyone else that you believe will help you to carry out the vision of evangelism and church planting. Denominational leaders, pastors, local church elders, and especially young adults (those who will become our future church planters and missionaries) are all encouraged to participate. Please help us to promote this in all of the ways that something important is communicated in your area.
· Help to determine if you can participate as a group or individually (or both). Depending on the needs in your region and the availability of the internet, please decide with your leaders whether or not you want people to participate individually (at their own computers), or if you will be able to host “watch parties” (small groups) or perhaps even some larger gatherings (in which case you would need some means to project the videos onto a screen). I know of one location that plans to host nearly 70 people at a “watch party.” You might want to do the same.
· Identify and share with us the names and email contact information of 2-3 people from your Yearly Meeting who could participate in a virtual, International Friends Church Choir. This is very exciting! When we have the contact information, we will send them a sound track, and they will need to video record themselves (perhaps even on their smart phone) singing individually, and then send it back to us.
· We would like to ask you to serve as the discussion leader of an online affinity group in the primary language where you minister. Some of you have done this before. It is also possible that you will have a recommendation for us of others who could serve in this way, too. We will provide potential discussion questions. In some cases the affinity group discussions will happen in-person instead of online, depending on the needs. We learned some helpful things about this from two years ago, but one of the most significant is that it is important to give people an opportunity to talk with others about what God is saying to them about evangelism and planting churches. God may call some new church planters to help you in your region, and you may not even know who they are yet! www.friendsmultiply.org
