Insights from Equipped to Welcome and Belong 2026

Equipped to Welcome and Belong 2026 morning conference took place on 18^th April at Glenabbey Church. This conference was a collaboration between Mission Action Partnership (MAP) and Welcome Churches once again. It was a very worthwhile morning of intercultural worship, plenary session, seminars and panel discussions. Over 60 people joined us either as delegates, speakers, worship leaders or staff.

Paul Lutton, minister from Newtownbreda Presbyterian gave the keynote talk in our first session. He helped us to explore from scripture how we as the Church need to be living out in the present, God’s future purpose of gathering the nations into one family in Christ as seen in Revelation 7:9-10.

Paul went on to share from Ephesians 3 challenging us as the Church to remember that the good news of Jesus is for all nations, tribes and tongues and that as the Church we are called to unity in Christ. In the early church we saw a multi-cultural people not divided by class or gender. Paul challenged us to have courage in our local churches to see how we can live out Ephesians 3 and Revelation 7 in our contexts here in NI.

Over the remainder of the morning, we had different seminars running which helped us to explore topics such as;

• Skills for Psychological Recovery (SPR) – An intervention that helps give skills to survivors of traumatic events and to those that work with them.
• 'Teaching English - Sharing Jesus' - Welcoming newcomers to this island involves integral mission, that is, presenting the gospel as well as helping in practical ways. We have a desire to help people, not only learn English but also to learn about the love of God in Jesus Christ.
• Moving Beyond the Welcome: Hospitality and Building Friendship - This seminar explored the stages of the “welcome journey” towards true hospitality and building friendship. It was a time of practically learning ways to move beyond hospitality and build a community where people feel known, needed, and truly at home.
• Understanding cultures - We also took time to learn more about how to understand cultures and what that may look like on a practical level. We thought through what makes up worldview and culture, what causes some of the clashes, as well as how to navigate them for the sake of the Kingdom.
• Intercultural worship and church – What should this look like and how can we be inspired by God’s word to see this come to pass in our local churches?

Concluding our time together we got to hear the practical outworkings of intercultural church as we heard from 3 different church leaders working in different contexts. Overall, the feedback from the morning was very positive and as we look to future events it was clear that one area that we as the Church here in NI and the UK need to wrestle with is that if things are to change within churches there must be a culture shift. The whole Church must get on board with having God’s vision of all nations worshipping together in heaven being seen in the Church today.