The very last Banner of Truth Leicester Ministers’ Conference was held from 11-14 April! The Conference began in 1962 at College Hall in the Knighton area of the city with about 40 men in attendance, and has been held in Leicester ever since. However, because of changes to Leicester University term times and student housing contracts, it is moving to the Yarnfield Park Conference Centre in rural Staffordshire from next year.
The Conference has become famed not just for its Reformed stance but for its excellent ministry and its sweet fellowship. It seems to this ‘regular’ that the numbers have declined somewhat from its high point (in the 1990s?), but there are still plenty for the singing of hymns and metrical Psalms to be strikingly impressive.
This year’s Conference was memorable for far more than being the last in Leicester. The theme – ‘Kingdom Life in a Hostile World’ – was certainly timely and all the ministry was singularly helpful. There was much of Christ, with the main addresses by David Campbell (a Scot exiled in Pennsylvania) expounding Christ’s words from the cross. In other addresses the call both to faith-stirred endeavour and utter dependence on the Lord was strong, yet tenderly expressed and well-illustrated from church history. And there was a wonderful harmony about the whole programme. All in all it was a fine, heart-warming and spiritually rich Conference which seems to have been a blessing to many who were there.
