Programme Overview

Throughout our 400-year history, mission has been at the heart of who we are. With evangelism and discipleship, it is clearly what still drives our leaders and churches as they seek to reflect the heart of God in their own communities.

For 2025, we are really looking forward to partnering more closely with BMS World Mission, and learning from the insights they and their partners can share to resource the mission of local Baptist churches and pioneers.

Please see below for an idea of what to expect at United in Mission: global insight, local impact.

There will be a Children and Youth Programme available on the Saturday, which needs to be booked with Adult tickets in advance. 
 

Friday 16 May

 

Time	Details
12:00	Registration Opens
14:00	Welcome to United in Mission - and opening worship
14:30	‘Anybody can do this’: making disciples from Kolkata to Toxteth Come and join us as we explore how to make disciples within our contexts and congregations with methods tried and tested across the subcontinent and beyond. BMS World Mission’s Indian evangelist Ben Francis has given life to over 50,000 house churches over the last 20 years. In that time, he has shaped a ‘Look back – Look up – Look forward’ mission framework that is now being adopted and adapted by UK Baptist churches. A meeting in Kolkata between Ben and Toxteth Tabernacle’s Jack Sykes saw this missional movement flow from northeast India to northwest England. Jack and Ben will be on hand to share all that has been learned from the experience and what this looks like in a UK context. And they will be joined in conversation by Hathern Baptist Church’s Rachel Malyk to discuss modelling a different way of church. Holding it all together, we will be joined Kwame Adzam, Head of BMS’ Heart for the Gospel ministry, to share how disciple-making movements are bearing fruit within the cracked soil of Bangladesh, Thailand and North Africa and how we can be inspired by them.
16:00	Refreshment Break
16:30	Welcoming the stranger: when global mission goes local Wherever we are church, we are amid strangers, perhaps never more so than now. In this session we will hear from the voice of the stranger and of ways of being that will help us grow as places of welcome. BMS World Misson partner Quest Academy works on the faultline where refugees meet local communities. Come and join Quest’s Peter Samir and BMS’ Sam Chaise as they share their experiences of training Europe’s Arabic diaspora to bring the gospel to their fellow refugees. They will be joined by Issa Elbechara, the Lebanese pastor of the Arabic Evangelical Church in Dublin, who will share stories of how they are reaching diaspora Arabic-speaking individuals in Ireland. And as the world tilts drastically on its geopolitical axis, Peter and Sam will be joined in conversation by Sharon Shek and Londy Chan from the Baptists Together Hong Kong Response Project, to share stories of helping Baptists discern how God is at work amid migrants in your communities.
18:30	Dinner
20:00	Feedback from the afternoon sessions
20:30	Reflective Evening Prayer
21:00	Close

Saturday 17 May

 

Time	Details
08:30	Registration Opens
09:00	Welcome, worship and prayer
09:30	Multivoiced Bible Studies based on Luke 15: 1-7 'The Parable of the Lost Sheep' – with Kwame Adzam, Savannah Bell, Annet Ttendo Miller, Saba Riazi
10:30	What is God saying to your local church? - with Aniu Kethoser
11:00	Refreshment Break
11:30	All Together Communion and Prayer
12:00	Lunch
14:15	Welcome to Baptist Assembly
14:30	Looking back - reflecting on the past year
15:15	BUGB Meeting of the Assembly - in which the topics required under our constitution will be presented, including the affirmation of the appointment of the Treasurer and the Moderator of the Trustee Board.   Click here for the Administrative Resolutions being brought to Assembly 2025.
15:35	Discernment and Mission
16:00	Worship and prayers of intercession
16:15	Refreshment Break
17:00	Celebrating the Present and Committing to the Future Including In Memoriam; the commissioning of ministers and mission personnel; a keynote address by our General Secretary, Lynn Green; closing worship
19:00	Close of Assembly