A meeting for Baptists engaged in peacemaking processes around the world which was originally planned this year has been rescheduled for 2019, one of the sponsoring organizations announced Feb. 27.
The sixth Global Baptist Peace Conference, scheduled July 15-20, 2019 — to be held in Cali, Colombia — will double as the annual summer conference for Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America-Bautistas por la Paz, according to a posting on the organization’s website.
The Cristo Rey (Christ the King) statue just outside Cali, Columbia.
Luz Amparo Chagüendo Ospina, an ordained Baptist pastor from Cali, and Ximena Ulloa Montemayor, a former BPFNA board member from Mexico who served as program manager for the 2017 summer conference, are co-managers of the worldwide gathering.
The meeting, themed Peace in Our Land: Toward a World Without Violence, will feature plenary sessions, workshops and training for regional and grassroots peacemaking movements inspired by previous gatherings. The program will highlight Colombia’s 2016 peace accord that ended the longest ongoing armed conflict in the Americas as a model for other long-term low intensity conflicts around the globe.
Paul C. Hayes, one of the coordinators of the conference, said the 2019 meeting will be the first to be held in South America.
“Being with our brothers and sisters in Colombia will be important as we hope to recognize, honor, and learn from the extraordinary accomplishment of the 2016 Colombian Peace Accord,” said Hayes, pastor of Noank Baptist Church in Noank, Conn.
“Our goal is that attendees will be able to learn from the successes and setbacks in order to discover new and diverse ways of approaching peace work, and they will have the opportunity to meet some of the main actors in the peace process,” Hayes said.
Formed in 1984, the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America first connected with like-minded Baptist advocates for peace and justice from around the globe at the inaugural Global Baptist Peace Conference in Sweden in 1998.
Subsequent international gatherings followed in Nicaragua (1992), Thailand (1996), Australia (2000) and Italy (2009).
Co-sponsors of next year’s conference include the Alliance of Baptists, American Baptist Churches USA and and Unibautista Institución Universitaria in Cali.
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