| Co-ordinator's Letter
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Welcome to the ICDF website! We are a mostly voluntary organisation with a passion for the arts and a desire to serve you. Please feel free to contact us with any questions you have. Please be patient if you don't receive an immediate answer and try again if you don't make contact straight away - we are there to help. The Christian Dance Fellowship began 30 years ago as an encouragement and support to those in the various Christian churches who were involved in the movement arts. Dance had virtually disappeared as an expression of the Christian faith and experience for 200 years but there were some who had the vision and desire to see it return. Over the last few decades there have been huge changes in peoples' attitudes to their bodies - a much more candid and open approach and the church has at the same time been recapturing a more biblical approach to the self - seeing body, mind and spirit as an integrated whole created, loved, redeemed and valued by God. This is in contrast to the dualism borrowed from Greek thinking in the early years of the church as non-Jewish new believers joined the newly forming congregations all over the Greek-speaking world. Today dance and movement are more widely accepted in the Christian community and there are many more networks, resources and courses available to help those called or interested to develop in the creative arts and ministry. The Christian Dance Fellowship is the most widely spread organisation around the world, over 30 countries, and has as an important part of its vision the desire to be involved in promoting and helping people work together from all sections of the church and the wide variety of dance/movement skills and ministries that can express the Christian faith. The arts are an important feature of our culture today and are visible in so many areas of secular culture, speaking to people who are more visually and emotionally oriented than past generations that were not so media driven. Our aim is to serve the church in grasping the vision and knowledge of how to integrate the arts in a way that communicates the power and love of God in such a way that people are impacted and drawn to faith in Jesus. ICDF helps countries start their own CDFs. National CDFs (Christian Dance Fellowships) offer contact, newsletters, conferences, classes and workshops depending on their size and resources. ICDF runs international conferences every 3 years in collaboration with a host national CDF. We have already had conferences in Israel, England, South Africa, Australia, USA and Malaysia and are looking forward to the next one in Scotland in July 09. ICDF also organises Networks in specialised areas of interest that are open to all CDF Members and ICDF Supporters. WHAT'S HAPPENING?
Blessings, |
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