Archival record · conference report, 2010

The 2010 conference: fifteen years, back in a church

The organisation described 2010 as "an intimate gathering of God's people called according to HIS purpose" — the theme that year was Called According to His Purpose — and the description was partly about scale. After a decade in convention centres the conference returned to a church.

The report makes the point explicitly: the fifteenth year was marked in the kind of setting where the conference had begun, a church where people pray, worship and do outreach year-round rather than a hall rented for a weekend. The venue was Global Kingdom Ministries in Scarborough, which would host the next two conferences as well.

What the report records of the weekend itself is atmosphere rather than numbers: a queue outside the prayer chapel on the Saturday, and attendees moving between exhibitors, speakers and volunteers. Two attendee accounts are quoted, one from a first-time visitor struck by seeing "the family of God come together and share their passion for reaching out around the world".

The keynote platform that year was Afshin Javid, Dr. Jean Chamberlain, Tony Fernandez, John Hull, George Verwer, Nathanael Gerber, Ron Boyd-MacMillan. Dates: April 16 - 18. The full record is in the conference archive.

What the report says the conference was for

The 2010 report contains the fullest single statement of purpose anywhere in the record, and it is worth reading as a list rather than a slogan. The conference aimed, it says, to bridge the gap between generations, denominations and people of all nations, and it names the means: a range of speakers, seminars, plenary sessions, 200 exhibitors, a Women's Forum, the ENGAGE youth programme, a leadership programme, a visual arts gallery, an interactive children's programme, and prayer.

Two of those figures are load-bearing. Two hundred exhibitors is nearly double the 104 organizations that appear on the conference's own later A-to-Z roster, which means the roster this record is built on was already a subset by 2010 rather than a complete list of everyone who ever took a table. And the ten-part programme list describes a weekend running several audiences in parallel — youth, children, women, leaders — in a church rather than a convention centre, which is the year's real logistical story.

The voices the report chose to quote

Four accounts are quoted, and the selection is itself informative: an attendee, a worship musician, a Women's Forum speaker and a first-time visitor. Tracey Hanson, a returning attendee, relays a line from the keynote speaker George Verwer — that Mission Fest was probably ten times more strategic an event than anyone comprehended — and volunteers to help promote it. Lisa Cheong, who spoke at the Women's Forum, describes the morning in the language of a religious experience rather than of a programme item.

The report also names the platform in its own prose: George Verwer, Afshin Javid, Jean Chamberlain, Nathanael Gerber, Ron Pearce, Michael Puffett and Tony Fernandez among others, with the children's programme highlighted for Anthony McLean of iEngage and a presenter billed as the Manners Lady. Those names are the year's record and are carried here as it published them; what any of them said is not in the material.

Read against the earlier reports, the 2010 document is the first to sound like an organisation describing a community rather than an event — the phrase it uses is "the MissionFest community", and the details it selects are the exhibitor tent outside, barbecues, a full parking lot and a queue at the prayer chapel. That register continues in 2011 and 2012, and then the published reports stop being written.

Where 2010 sits in the run

Global Kingdom Ministries hosted the conferences of 2010, 2011, 2012, so 2010 is the first of that stretch. The theme was "Called According to His Purpose" and the dates April 16 - 18. The keynote platform was Afshin Javid, Dr. Jean Chamberlain, Tony Fernandez, John Hull, George Verwer, Nathanael Gerber, Ron Boyd-MacMillan, with Ryan Resmer, Marlene O'Neill, Robert Chambers, Lorna & Colette, Relevant Worship, United Through Worship, Paulis Sanchez, Nuevo Elementos credited for worship.

Of that platform, George Verwer also spoke in 1997 — and across all seventeen documented conferences only four speakers appear more than once, so a returning name is the exception rather than the pattern. The speakers record lists every year's platform together, and the archive carries this year alongside the rest. The other years that published a report of their own are 2011, 2012 and 2014.