IPCA VII Conference – Bangkok, Thailand – 2-7 October 2025
Bookings now open for IPCA Europe, North America and Oceania!
Dear IPCA members,
We are delighted to announce that booking is now open for our IPCA Worldwide Conference in Bangkok, running from 2-7 October 2025.
Our Europe & Middle East, North America and Oceania members can currently sign up using the following link, with other IPCA regions following in the next few days whilst we finalise arrangements.
We look forward to meeting you in Bangkok at the Church of Christ Headquarters for five days of seminars, workshops, visits to prisons, sharing with colleagues and enjoying fellowship with IPCA members. The steering committee continues to work hard behind the scenes on the final programme and arrangements.
Our IPCA President David Buick has some helpful answers to any questions you may have about the conference below. Please do get in touch via ipcaww@gmail.com with any other questions or queries.
Looking forward to seeing you in October!
IPCA Worldwide Steering Committee
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Conference FAQs
FAQs
When does the conference start and finish?
Conference registration will open at 1pm on Thursday 2 October and the official opening will be at 4pm.
The closing session will be held at 8.30am on Tuesday 7 October, followed by a prison visit for those interested (details to be confirmed)
Where is the conference happening?
The conference will be held at 328 Phaya Thai Rd, Thanon Phetchaburi, Ratchathewi, Bangkok 10400, Thailand, at the headquarters of Christ Church Thailand.
This is very close to Ratchathewi metro rapid transit station, making it easy to access from anywhere else in Bangkok on the public transport network.
What should I expect at the conference?
The conference will include keynote speeches, workshops, a business meeting, time for informal networking, visits to local churches, and an evening’s entertainment on a river cruise. There will also be an optional prison visit at the end of the conference.
What is the conference language?
The conference will be held in English with translation into Thai as required. French translation will also be available. Please contact us for other language translation needs and/or if you are able to provide language translation services.
How do I get to Bangkok?
Bangkok is served by two international airports. Most long-haul flights operate to and from Suvarnabhumi Airport. From there it is easy to travel to the city centre using the Airport Rail Link. Please check which airport your flight will land at and depart from!
We advise you to book your travel and accommodation only once your booking payment has been received and confirmed and to take out appropriate travel and medical insurance. IPCA worldwide cannot be held responsible for cancellations or emergencies.
You are also advised to check visa requirements for your nationality carefully. If you need help, please contact us.
Where do I stay?
Please note that unless otherwise specified on your registration form, conference registration does not include accommodation: you must arrange this separately once your conference booking and payment have been confirmed. Bangkok has a very large range of affordable accommodation solutions for all budgets; we suggest you check hotels close to the MRT network to make it easy to travel to the conference venue and the airport.
What does the conference fee cover?
The conference fee covers overheads such as room hire, an entertainment river cruise and dinner, tea and coffee breaks, and lunch and dinner from Thursday 2 October to Monday 6 October inclusive. It does not include accommodation (unless otherwise specified on your registration form) or breakfast.
If a letter explaining the conference could help you raise support for attending the conference, please contact us.
Is my payment refundable?
Our financial arrangements mean that once paid, your registration fee is non-refundable. Registration fees will be paid directly to the event hosts Church of Christ in Thailand: the budget is designed to allow the conference to be self-funding, not make a profit. Any surplus funds remaining after the conference or in the event of cancellation due to force majeure circumstances will be earmarked for use to develop prison chaplaincy in Thailand under the auspices of CCT.
This solution has been adopted as the best possible way of sharing the risks relating to the conference.
How and when do I need to pay?
After completing registration, we may ask you for additional information. You will then receive a request to make your payment to CCT and the relevant payment details. Your payment must be made by bank transfer with the SWIFT instruction ‘OUR’, which means you pay all related bank charges so that the amount in full reaches the CCT account.
Payment of conference registration fees in full is required to access the conference.
2024 Christmas Message from IPCA Worldwide President
Christmas is of course a time when we as Christians remember the Incarnation, a central tenet of our faith. Incarnation is also a concept that’s close to my heart as a chaplain, as we in some small way bring the fellowship of Christ to inmates through our bodily presence alongside them not only at crisis points during their incarceration but also in the humdrum of prison routine. As we have all learned from covid, there’s something about in-person encounters that technology simply cannot replace.
That’s why IPCA’s Worldwide Steering Committee is working hard on preparations for our IPCA VIII worldwide conference in Bangkok from 2-7 October 2025. It was a huge disappointment for us not to be able to hold the conference in person in 2020 as planned. We “kept hope alive” with a webinar at which it was exciting to see faces from all over the world, but this only strengthened our resolve to hold the conference in person when this again became possible.
The world has changed almost beyond recognition since then. The threat from covid has been replaced by geopolitical upheaval and instability, increasing evidence of climate change, and in many parts of the world a greater tendency towards polarization and protectionism. All this is a long way from the winds of globalization and financial growth that were blowing when IPCA was founded in Bossey, Switzerland in 1985.
Some might question whether international gatherings still have their place 40 years on in this changed world. It is my conviction that just as face-to-face encounters are a crucial part of our ministry as chaplains, so face-to-face meetings are a core component of what IPCA and indeed our Christian faith is all about – and that today, a global gathering representing diverse cultures and strands of Christianity, welcoming representatives of other faiths is something truly prophetic – as the IPCA VIII tagline has it, “A Living Hope”.
I know that attending our conference in Bangkok will be a huge challenge for many, not least from a financial point of view, but I do invite you to prayerfully consider taking up that challenge so that after ten long years, we can once again enjoy all the benefits of ‘incarnating’ worldwide prison chaplaincy.
Wishing you a peaceful Christmas and every blessing in the New Year in Jesus’ name,
David Buick
President, IPCA Worldwide
WELCOME TO IPCA
Organisation in special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council since 2014
The International Prison Chaplains Association welcomes you to its Worldwide website. We exist to provide support and encouragement to prison chaplains everywhere, and to engage in advocacy on prison-related issues.
We invite you to visit the various pages and if you are a prison chaplain, to join us – membership is free. There are a number of ways you can connect with your colleagues in prison ministry around the world. You can also visit the websites run in our various regions worldwide.
As prison Chaplains around the world we share in this ministry together. If you have any suggestions for improving this website we welcome your ideas. Feel free to contact our President David Buick.
IPCA’s virtual symposium ‘Keesps hope alive”
14 November 2020
On 11 November 2020, IPCA held the closing event in its ‘Keep Hope Alive’ virtual symposium: a worldwide webinar that brought together prison chaplains from Nepal to Costa Rica via Australia and Norway. Chaired from Manila by IPCA Asia representative Gerry Bernabe, the meeting marked the conclusion of a series of virtual gatherings in each of IPCA Worldwide’s six regions (Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America/Caribbean, North America, and Oceania).
Over 120 attendees followed the closing webinar, which is now available on YouTube. In addition to IPCA’s core community of Christian chaplains from different denominations, the symposium also welcomed chaplains of other faiths, including Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist colleagues.
Keep Hope Alive was an opportunity for chaplains to share their stories of dealing with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on prisoners and on their own ministries. In the face of today’s extreme difficulties, participants were encouraged by the realisation that they were not alone. As one Scottish chaplain attending summed it up: “It was wonderful to be reminded that prison chaplaincy all around the world is essentially the same. We are one big family!”
In addition to grassroots feedback about prisons in the Covid-19 era, the symposium also highlighted IPCA’s role in global advocacy. IPCA’s new declaration on prisoners’ rights to spiritual care amid the health crisis was presented in each regional meeting before being formally adopted in the closing webinar. IPCA’s vice-president Jean-Didier Mboyo (DRC), who heads up the organisation’s UN Team, explained that as a recognised NGO, IPCA will now submit the document to the UN for official publication – and emphasised that individual chaplains can start using it right away: “each chaplain in their country’s prisons is the bearer of the declaration. You are the ones who can take it to your prisons, to your governments”.
The symposium also looked beyond the pandemic to consider wider concerns for prison chaplains: access to research, dealing with high reincarceration rates among indigenous peoples, and coping with violent extremism were just some of the topics raised during the various meetings.
“It’s great to have been able to reconnect with the prison chaplaincy community across the world despite travel restrictions”, said IPCA Worldwide President David Buick. “We now intend to build on that momentum to develop the IPCA community and provide the organisational resources needed for us to continue to keep hope alive.”