Activities
Gospel Halls around the world are involved in spreading the gospel of Christ through various means including public preaching, literature work, Bible exhibitions, Sunday Schools, Radio programmes, Prison and School visitation and hospital work. With thousands of assemblies and with many hundreds of full time itinerant evangelists, missionaries and Bible teachers, the enterprise of spreading the message of Jesus Christ and upholding the fundamental truths of the Bible continues as the vision of Christians gathering in Gospel Halls worldwide. During the last half of the 20th century and into the 21st century, while shrinkage was a feature in Europe, expansion was seen in numerous places, notably Canada, South and Central America and Mexico.
Literature has always been an emphasis among Gospel Halls. Distribution of gospel tracts, gospel calendars and other evangelistic material is commonplace. The Scottish publisher, John Ritchie Ltd., publishes material from authors connected with Gospel Halls, as well as publishing The Believer's Magazine a monthly periodical that has a wide circulation among these assemblies. Other well-known magazines read by Christians in these assemblies are Assembly Testimony, Present Truth and Precious Seed. In the US and Canada, the magazine most widely circulated among Gospel Halls is Truth and Tidings. Missionary magazines such as Look on the Fields and Horizons are also much used.
Conferences are a significant feature of life among Gospel Halls. Many Gospel Halls will host an annual conference to which visitors will be invited to come and hear Bible teaching. Typically in the UK these will be one-day events, whereas in North America they will span a whole weekend. In Scotland, the New Year period is a popular time for conferences. The Easter weekend is widely used throughout the world for Gospel Hall conferences notably in Belfast, Toronto and Vancouver. There are some large conferences at that time of year in several Latin American countries, notably Venezuela. Residential Bible study weeks also feature among Gospel Halls throughout the world.
Recordings of Bible teaching from conferences in Gospel Halls are available on numerous localised Gospel Hall websites and on some central audio collection sites.
Read more about this topic: Gospel Hall Brethren
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“Minds do not act together in public; they simply stick together; and when their private activities are resumed, they fly apart again.”
—Frank Moore Colby (1865–1925)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
“I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)