Around 45 leaders, both pastors and laymen met at Nofi Gonen Kibbutz near Kiryat Shemona in upper Galilee for a two overnight conference to discuss and decide upon the coming steps in the process that started several months ago to unite the different denominations under an umbrella of an Evangelical convention.

Leaders in this conference stated the fact that the purpose of this convention would be to promote cooperation between Evangelicals and will provide a structure for accountability among the 3,000 Evangelicals in the country.

Yet, according to most leaders of the various churches, the main purpose of this proposed convention is to achieve a legal status of a recognized denomination. Each Evangelical church in Israel today has to be organized as an "Amuta" (a non-profit organization) to perform any legal act, while there are 10 other Christian denominations that are recognized by the law and therefore enjoy several privileges and do not have to go through the hastle of registering a Amuta for every church.

The meeting consisted of leaders from the following churches: Baptist, Nazarene, Assemblies of God and Brethren. All leaders came from Arabic Speaking churches. The other part of the evangelical body in Israel is the Messianic congregations who do not define themselves as a Christian denomination, but rather Jews who accepted Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah of Israel.

The participants discussed a proposed statement of faith and major considerations in the structure of the convention.After the major points were decided ,committees were formed to follow up and complete the work. The participants choose the name "The Convention of Evangelical Churches in Israel ", as the official name of this new entity.

The initiative for this meeting and the preparatory meetings that preceded this gathering was taken by Mr.. Monder Na'om ,a food engineer and an elder in the Baptist Church in Shefa-Amr and by Pastor Nizar Shaheen, a Tele-Evangelist and host of the Christian TV program "Light for all nations" based in Canada, who is originally from Cana of Galilee.

.