Canon Andrew White – known as the ‘vicar of Baghdad’ – was among the speakers at the new Connect 2010 event near Poole, during July 14-18. 

Reverend White is vicar of St George's Church, Baghdad, the only remaining Anglican church in Iraq. He is also president of the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East as part of his reconciliation work in Iraq and the Middle East as a whole. 

He joined David Rowe (warden of Lee Abbey), Brian Draper (author and broadcaster), a team from the Middle East and local speakers.

Emergency Department 2010
Kids Workers Training Day
Sat 22nd May 10:00 am – 12:00 noon

Connect 2010 is getting close now – just 8 weeks away!  We are starting to make the final preparations to make sure the event is fun and safe for all the generations.

Connect has loads of activities for kids of all ages during the Friday, Saturday and Sunday, filled with praise, games, small group work, craft, sport, bible teaching, quizzes and lots of amazing fun.

Hilarious and fast-moving sessions will help kids learn how God intends us to ‘get on well’ with each other, help each other, serve each other and most importantly love each other.

The Connect team are extremely grateful to the Aldhelm trust for their generous grant of £5000 towards the event

• The Ven. Patrick Evans, Interim Archdeacon of Dorset; The Ven Paul Taylor, Archdeacon of Sherborne - We warmly support this - the project appears to be well thought-through and has good local support.
• Rev John Wood – As the Rural Dean of Purbeck, I am delighted to support Connect as a local initiative which I am sure will enhance the life of local churches working together.
• Rev Jean de Garis, Rural Dean for Poole - “I believe that this will be an event that will resources, encourage and train a large number of Christians to increase their effectiveness in mission and ministry within and beyond their local churches.

To Rob, Anna and others,

I'm from the Upton and Lytchett Minster parish, a colleague of Jean de Garis, and met you at the day at Emmanuel, Swanage last year, and again at the recent Russ Parker day. I just wanted to encourage you witha bit of my story related to the Russ Parker day.

• Rev Canon Andrew White, known as the vicar of Baghdad
• David Rowe, warden of Lee Abbey the Christian Community and Conference centre in North Devon, plus a team from the Community
• Brian Draper, author and broadcaster
• A team from the Middle East comprising Messianic Israelis, Arab and Lebanese believers
• All the talks in the Main Tent will be recorded and available for download in MP3 format from the website here.

Connect was launched at an evening celebration held at the Parish Church of Lady St. Mary, Wareham on Sunday 22nd  and post cards are available for churches and individuals advertising the event next summer. These are available from Paddy Bartholomew

At the Leaders Lunch at the Lighthouse Family Church last week, Russ Parker introduced the foundation of this year of preparation. He demonstrated through story and testimony how issues and hurts in church and community life have been swept under the carpet, fudg-ed, or covered up creating divisions within the Body of Christ and in our communities so that the Holy Spirit of Truth is prevented from bringing the Kingdom of God in power.

Look out for more on how to prepare as a church for the day workshop as post it, but, in brief, the fruit of roots in past woundedness will include some of the following characteristics: 

Hi! We live in Wareham and I (Rob) am one of the (semi!) retired clergy in the Parish of Wareham Team Ministry. We have a family of three, all are married and we now have four grandchildren - (as I write we may well have a fifth grandchild we are sitting on the phone waiting for the call!).

Anna and I were married in 1973 at Lady St Mary’s, Wareham and both taught at Port Regis School, Motcombe, Shaftesbury before training at St John’s College, Nottingham and my ordination in Salisbury Cathedral in 1980. We moved to Weymouth and I served as curate in the Radipole and Melcombe Regis Team ministry. It was there that I had the privilege of chairing “Down to Earth”, a three week mission with Eric Delve.