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Potatoes, Parachutes and Prayer

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Andy Bathgate


Pray Any Way, now in its second year, allows families to come together for an afternoon focussed on fun prayer. This year’s event, held again on a Sunday afternoon at the Houston House Hotel in West Lothian, drew over 100 people, ranging from a few months to the (well) over 50s!

Pray Any Way has its basis in the idea that children should be encouraged from a very early age to speak to their heavenly Father, and also that families should be encouraged to pray together; older praying for younger but also younger praying for older.

If children are really fellow-disciples with adults then they can pray for us – as well as vice versa. One of the highlights of both years for me personally has been being prayed for by children. This year children who volunteered to pray for adults drew out a word written on a slip of paper from a tub. They took that to an adult and then prayed that word for them. The little boy who came to pray for me had the word ‘friend’ and he prayed that I would know Jesus as a friend. His prayer included the lines: ‘we have friends, even best friends, but Jesus is the top of them all’.

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Four key prayer pointers for your local school

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Elizabeth McDowall

“And the child grew and became strong, he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.” Luke 2:40

These familiar verses, talking of course about Jesus, are a brilliant way to pray for children and young people as they go to school. When you pray for the pupils at your local school, here are four key topics to be praying for:

1. We want pupils to gain maximum advantage from the education system we have here in Scotland, growing in knowledge and understanding, fulfilling their potential. We also want them to grow physically, protected from sickness and harm.

2. We long for Christian children in particular to be strong at school; not weak, following the crowd, but with an inner strength that sustains them through times of doubt and difficulty.

3. We also want them to be wise, able to discern the difference between truth and lies, making good decisions and right choices.

4. And of course, most of all, we long for the grace of God to be upon them. What does that mean exactly? It means that they might be aware of his goodness, his love, his favour, his blessing. What a prayer!

Seeing that prayer answered is thrilling. Maybe a young person you know is flourishing at school, or growing as a Christian. Praise God! Or perhaps someone comes to mind who isn’t, and needs your prayers.

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Take a tour of the new Alltnacriche Staff Housing

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Carren

We’re still waiting for a few final tasks to be done, but we’re getting there. In the meantime, enjoy the tour from Lizzie and Morven:

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Do you follow the news?

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Emlyn Williams

I’ve just had a quick look at what’s in the world news today. Obviously the Euro crisis is high on the agenda, but look at some of the other BBC headlines:

  • “Deadly mudslide strikes western Colombia”
  • “Nigeria Islamist raid ‘kills 63′”
  • “Kenya: Grenade attack on church in Garissa kills two”
  • “Honduras arrests 176 police in corruption purge”
  • “Ex-general wins Guatemala run-off”
  • “Bangkok flood evacuation widens”
  • “Pakistan bomber kills ex-official”
  • “Egypt bus crash kills Hungarian tourists”

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Young people share highlights from the Go Conferences

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Carren

We asked some of the young people at this year’s Go MAD and Go LIVE Conferences what they enjoyed about the conference, and how it had helped them to grow as a Christian

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Does poverty really exist in the developed world?

Posted on October 28, 2011 by John Nonhebel

In May 2010, I moved back to Scotland with my family having spent the previous twenty years living and working in Mumbai, India’s largest city with a population of around twenty million people. Taking up the Urban Ministries Leader role with SU Scotland after working in what is still referred to as the developing world, I frequently get asked what the similarities and differences are between working in Glasgow and working in India. Apart from the obvious difference in weather, it’s easy to refer to the fact that Mumbai has more than 20 times the population of Glasgow, which means that many more people are affected by poverty and injustice. It’s also easy to discuss how the levels of poverty and abuse that I encountered in India appear more severe than Glasgow – after all, Glasgow is part of the developed world and Britain has a good welfare system which prevents extreme poverty – doesn’t it?!

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Growing servant leaders

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Chris Brett

Growing Servant Leaders

Training up young leaders is an important ministry in the church; as young people begin the transition into adulthood, we must equip them for their role in tomorrow’s generation.

If they are to step up as leaders, they need to be trained and mentored, and they need the opportunity to put what they’ve learnt into practice; to take on challenges and responsibilities in an environment where it’s ok to give it a go, even if it doesn’t always go as planned.

The scariest thing I could think of…

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Posted in Missions, Training, Volunteers | 1 Comment

How will the church look in the next 20-30 years?

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Andy Bathgate

It’s not looking great. Recent statistics for the UK show a 90% decline in the numbers of people under 20 attending church over the last 20 years[1]. What will that mean for the church in the next 20-30 years?

It ties in with John Drane’s comment from a few years back – ‘we often say that if we could get people into the church they would realise that what it has to offer is good news. But it is the people who know us best, from the inside, who are rejecting us. If we could merely hold onto our own children, who desert the church in droves, the decline would be turned around’[2]

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Communicating God’s love without words

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Rebecca

On the 8th of July I set off very early to Edinburgh airport to meet with a group of people I had only met a couple of times before, who were to become some of my closest friends.

Our group was joining the two-week 2011 SU International Leadership training event in the Ukraine. Arriving in Vorzel, I was filled with a mixture of excitement and apprehension as I seemed to know very little about what we were going to do! However, these fears were unfounded as the first week was filled with the formation of new friendships, amazing Bible study, answered prayer, bilingual worship, many laughs and an ever growing relationship with God. During the first week I really felt God talking to me, demonstrating His love and reminding me that with Him I would have the strength to persevere.

This was a great preparation for the second week where I knew I was going to be doing something I had never done before: helping to run a holiday club. Never mind the additional complication of the language barrier! So, armed with my few phrases in Russian, I set off to Mokrets with 6 others from the international camp; Scots, Siberians and a Ukrainian.

The first thing that struck me when we arrived at the Baptist church was that it was more a house than a church and that it wasn’t fully built. Appearances are deceptive though and I soon learnt that this was the home of the pastor and his family, and which was to become our home for the next week, as well as the main resource for the holiday club.

With the week of preparation we had a basic idea of how we were going to carry out the program, but we still had to work out the details – this took place in evening sessions. I think our team was particularly lucky as we were in relatively luxurious surroundings compared to others, with flushing toilets and hot indoor showers!

On average we had about 22 children, all about primary school aged, and a team of 12. This meant we were able to interact with the children on a more personal level, although this is hard when you don’t understand what they are saying. That’s one of the things I found most difficult; not being to understand what they were being taught in Russian/Ukrainian about God and not being able to chat with them. Through this I learnt that communication can occur without words and, most importantly, that God’s love can be communicated just as clearly through your actions.

Posted in International, Training | 1 Comment

Can you see the big picture?

Posted on August 31, 2011 by David Clipston

Where do you you find a Regional Worker on the 1st day of term? On holiday? Desperately trying to finish their camp accounts? In bed sleeping off a ‘camp hangover’?

Well in the east end of Glasgow we believe in hitting the ground running and so you would have found me at 8.50am in an assembly hall full of eager/nervous/petrified new first years’ in the local secondary school. The theme of the assembly was ‘choices’, and with the help of a clip from the Adjustment Beaurea (thanks to Assemblies Online for the idea) we challenged the young people to consider the choices they make and the implications these will have on their time at school and beyond. We also asked them to consider that we might be created and intended to live a life God planned for us, and how this would impact the choices they made.

This assembly on it’s own is not much, even the series throughought the year with every year group will only form part of the picture.

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Posted in Regional, Urban | 1 Comment