Presbyterian Church in Ireland - Mission Overseas - WYCLIFFE: Making the Bible available to people who really want to read it

3rd June 2011

Outgoing PCI Moderator, Rt Rev Dr Norman Hamilton, was delighted to visit Wycliffe's Belfast office recently.

Next Monday evening, 6th June, at the opening meeting of the 2011 General Assembly, Norman will complete his year as Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and will hand over to Rev Dr Ivan Patterson of Newcastle Presbyterian Church.

John Hamilton, Wycliffe's NI Coordinator says: "The year quickly passes, but Norman found the time to spend a morning with us at the Wycliffe office in Belfast."

As Rev Alistair Bill, minister of Saintfield Road Presbyterian Church and a member of the Wycliffe NI Council, put it at the time:

"This was a valuable opportunity to present what Wycliffe is about to the Moderator, who has had previous experience of a Wycliffe event (From Eden to Eternity at Stormont) and also has travelled in Africa during his Moderatorial year.

So, he brought to the meeting a lot of experience and also the benefit of reflections on the work of mission overseas. He was not concerned with learning for his future benefit, but more with improving the partnership that Wycliffe has with PCI.

He asked a number of questions about that partnership, the most important of which could be summed up as ‘what would an effective partnership between Wycliffe and PCI look like?’"

John Hamilton goes on: "The day after Norman’s visit to our office, he was off to Dublin for the Queen’s visit and then to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. A few days ago he sent me his own brief reflection on his meeting with us…"

"I was delighted to visit our local Wycliffe staff in Belfast, for the Bible is absolutely central to our faith and our daily walk with God. As one friend put it to me recently, we have the Bible but don’t read it very much.

On the other hand, Wycliffe make the Bible available to people who DO want to read it! That is why our partnership between PCI and Wycliffe is so important."

There is still have a lot of work to do to figure out exactly what this partnership/fellowship will look like over the coming years. 

One obvious way forward is to help our younger people to see for themselves exactly what it takes to do this type of work – and so build both a prayer/support base, as well as enthuse people to actually be part of it as their long-term God-given vocation. 

This is a work that really does change nations, as people find God through his word!

More about: Wycliffe & PCI

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