Now it’s Canada’s turn. Representatives from fourteen Protestant denominations there are planning to hold a Canadian Congress on Evangelism in Ottawa next summer. The five-day meeting will be another in a series of national and regional evangelism congresses spawned by the Berlin congress in 1966.
The Canadian Congress on Evangelism will meet in Ottawa’s new National Arts Center August 24–28 to “pool ideas, information, and methods in a study of the mission and message of the Church in the twentieth century.” Some 800 delegates are expected.
Sponsoring denominations include the Anglican Church and the United Church, Canada’s two largest non-Catholic communions. Principal Leslie Hunt, an Anglican from Wycliffe College, Toronto, is chairman of the planning committee.
The theme speakers for the congress will be the Archbishop of York, the Rt. Rev. Donald Coggan; Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, CHRISTIANITY TODAY editor-at-large currently teaching at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary; Dr. Kenneth Hamilton, a theologian; evangelists Leighton Ford and Fernand St. Louis.
A news release announcing the congress said that delegates would “seriously examine the responsibility of the Church in proclaiming the Gospel as it relates to major social and economic issues, world missions, youth, cultural pluralism, and the new Roman Catholicism.”
H. Wilbur Sutherland, head of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Canada, is serving as chairman of the executive committee for the congress. The Rev. Marney Patterson, an Anglican evangelist, is executive secretary. There are also four vice-chairmen, one each from western, central, eastern, and French Canada. Simultaneous translations of the congress proceedings will be carried in French and English.
Here is a complete list of the sponsoring denominationsThere are also six associate sponsors: Canadian Bible Society, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, The Scott Mission Inc., Scripture Union, Christian Women’s Clubs of Canada, and Shantymen’s Christian Association.: Anglican Church in Canada, Plymouth Brethren, Baptist Federation of Canada, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Christian Reformed Church, Church of the Nazarine, Free Methodist, General Conference of Mennonites in Canada, Conference of the Mennonite Brethren Churches of North America, Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, Presbyterian Church in Canada, Salvation Army, the Missionary Church, and the United Church of Canada.
