May God’s peace be with all of you, dear brothers and sisters.
After much discussion, prayer and evaluation of the risks surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak situation, the SEEC 2020 Committee has recently made the sad decision to cancel SEEC 2020. We would like to share with everyone the rationale and reasoning behind the committee’s decision.
The committee has been closely monitoring the development of the virus outbreak and staying up to date with the UK Department of Health and Social Care’s latest information and advice. Since the February 8th committee meeting, planning of precautionary actions to mitigate health risks for all conference attendees were already kicked off.
However, at our most recent committee meeting on March 7th, upon review of the rapid spread of infected cases in UK and Europe in the past weeks, committee members have expressed our lack of peace to continue with SEEC 2020 plans at the risk of the health and safety of 150+ brothers and sisters travelling from across the UK (and some from abroad). Furthermore, evaluating the additional risks surrounding our speaker’s travel arrangements, concerns over our venue booking, the conference reputation and the committee’s unease to cope with the potential scale of consequences, we came to an unanimous decision within the committee to cancel SEEC 2020.
Alternate arrangements were discussed and explored, including video streaming and hosting discussions via digital platforms. However, we believed that this would take away the ‘core spirit’ of the SEEC conference, and that there was also high uncertainty and insufficient time nor technical skills available amongst the team to evaluate and implement this option.
We hope to have your kind understanding, and will share with you further updates around SEEC events later in the year. The committee team will arrange full refund payments to all attendees who have registered and paid, so please look out for an email with more detailed instructions.
All glory and honour to the Lord whose Spirit has guided the committee throughout all the preparation work this year. Please join us in prayer against the spread of virus and for the health of our brothers and sisters and our communities. May God continue to grant us His peace that surpasses all understanding.
We hope you continue to look forward to SEEC 2021 – see you soon!
In Christ we serve,
SEEC 2020 Committee
