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Believers Church Conference 2025

Welcome to Amsterdam!

June 1-4, 2025

Come and join us at the 20th Believers Church Conference, June 1-4 2025 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands! We will celebrate 500 years of Anabaptist beginnings and reflect on what it means to work on ‘radical renewal’ in times of major crisis and systemic injustices, while anticipating in hope for the promised ‘new heaven and new earth’. It is a conference for academic theologians, students, pastors and all who want to celebrate Christian renewal in ecumenical perspective.

Story of the BCC

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Plenary Speakers

Sarah Augustine

Sarah Augustine is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery. She is a social scientist and a professional conflict manager. Sarah writes for Anabaptist World, has written two books – The Land Is Not ...

Rev. Merlyn Hyde Riley

Rev. Merlyn Hyde Riley is a Minister of the Jamaica Baptist Union (JBU) for the past 25 years and is the General Secretary (the first woman to occupy the position in an organization with a history dating back to 1783). As a practicing ecumenist, she is ...

Rev. Helen Paynter, PhD

Rev. Helen Paynter, PhD is an accredited minister with the Baptist Union of Great Britain, and works as Tutor in Biblical Studies at the Bristol Baptist College. She is the founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence. Her main re...

Prof. Dr. Naw Eh Tar Gay

Prof. Dr. Naw Eh Tar Gay serves as the president of (Baptist) Myanmar Institute of Theology (MIT) in Yangon, Myanmar and a professor of New Testament Studies. She is a former director of Gender Studies Center at MIT.

Nindyo Sasongko

Nindyo Sasongko is a Teaching Associate at Fordham University and a Theologian in Residence at Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship in New York City. He was born in the City of Kudus in the province of Central Java, Indonesia, (1980) and raised a Mennonite in...

Gabriel Stephen

Gabriel Stephen is a native of Nigeria and a citizen of Norway with vast international experience. His areas of interest include religious freedom, missions, the church in the context of migration and integration, and politics.

Dr. Willie James Jennings

Dr. Willie James Jennings is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Theology and Africana Studies at Yale University Divinity School. Dr. Jennings, who is a theologian, teaches in the areas of Christian thought, race theory, decolonial and environmental stud...

Planning committee

Prof. Dr. Miranda Klaver

Miranda Klaver, Professor Anthropology of Religion at the Faculty of Religion and Theology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Trained as a cultural anthropologist and theologian she intergrates empirical research and theological refle...

Prof. Dr. Henk Bakker

Henk Bakker is full professor at the James Wm. McClendon Chair for Baptistic and Evangelical Theologies at the Faculty of Religion and Theology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Co-Editor of Amsterdam Studies in Baptist and Mennonite Theology (ASBMT), and ...

Prof. Dr. Fernando Enns

Born 1964 in Curitiba/Brazil, ordained in the Association of Mennonite Congregations in Germany, since 2018, Professor for “Peace Church Theology” at the Department for Protestant Theology, University of Hamburg/Germany (Endowed Chair), since 2006 (Foun...

Jaap Brüsewitz MA

Born and raised in Utrecht in a Mennonite family. As a pastor’s kid started to study theology at Amsterdam University in 1971. Studied at the Mennonite Seminary as well. Finished my studies with a thesis on the Dutch Mennonite Aid to their Swiss Bret...

Henk Stenvers

Medical doctor and former general secretary of the Dutch Mennonite Conference (2001-2020). Secretary of the Deacons Commission of Mennonite World Conference (2012-2022). President of Mennonite World Conference (2022-present). In this time of seculariza...

Dr. Teun van der Leer

Teun van der Leer is a tutor at the Baptist Seminary, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is the editor of Seeds of the Church: Towards an Ecumenical Baptist Ecclesiology (Cascade, 2022) and the author of Looking in the Other Direction. Th...

Dr. Mike Pears

Mike Pears is the Director of the International Baptist Theological Study Centre, Amsterdam. His research interests include theologies of place especially as this relates to issues of power and inequality. For over forty years Mike has combined experien...

Dr. Andrés Pacheco Lozano

Research assistant to the Chair of Peace Theology and Ethics at the Faculty of Religion and Theology at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, lecturer at the Dutch Mennonite Seminary, https://doopsgezinden.nl/seminarium/, co-director of th...

"The Amsterdam 2025 Believers’ Church Conference will be a unique opportunity to rethink and experience our hope as a global community of free churches, in a time prone to squeezing and choking the hope of people away."

Prof. Dr. Henk Bakker

Corresponding with the commemoration of the 500 years of the Anabaptist movement, the upcoming BBC promises to be an important space to come and discern together what a “Radical Renewal” entails in the world we live in today. Theology, ethics, and witness are meant to be revisited, challenged, and reimagined as part of this movement of renewal. Weather as a presenter or participant, joining in the next BCC conference will imply not only the possibility to learn from people with diverse backgrounds, locations, and experiences but also to contribute and help shaping how this “Radical Renewal” can be understood and embodied.

Dr. Andrés Pacheco Lozano