adelaide place baptist church

The series of evenings we have had over the last month were a useful stepping stone in the process of developing our response to the Consultancy lead by Neil Young.

The next stage is for the Deacons to try to draw together all the comments, ideas and the suggestions into a draft action plan, which should be ready early in the New Year. The whole church will then discuss and consider and we will move forward from there.

Linked to this of course is the suggestion that we develop the work of Business in Glasgow by releasing me to work on that part-time. If that happens we will need to invite someone to assist with the church part-time. This idea depends on the Baptist Union releasing core funding for 3 years and I will be presenting our proposal to the BU on Thursday 9th November. I would value your prayers that we may sense the leading of God in this matter.

These are challenging times but we pray that as we open ourselves up to the leading of God he will both supply the financial and the spiritual resources to complete the task. Continue to pray for the consultancy process so that we may be confident in our core mission in the future.

Ian Rankin is back in Rwanda, doing some work for Christian Engineers in Development (CED). Ian is their Publicity Director.

• Ian will be visiting spring improvements and shallow wells in southern Rwanda and seeing how CED can better support the local techician in charge. That church has funding from Canada plus some for a CED partner church in England.
• The Episcopal church asked CED to look at rainwater catchment in a couple of settlements for genocide orphans. This has increased to three settlements as Signpost International, a Dundee based organisation, is about to start a third village with the church this summer. Ian has been working with them to put together a funding application to enable them to train the older children to build tanks out of cement.
• CED works with another charity called RHEPI (Rwandese Health Project Initiative) which is building schools. The idea is that if a community can provide a building the government will provide teachers. Ian is hoping to visit a school CED are building in northern Rwanda.
• Ian met another group last summer that supports orphans on the Tanzania border. He hopes to link them up with RHEPI.
• Ian will also be meeting up with African Community Initiative Services in Kenya. CED is currently seeking funding to help them build an earth dam at Kyalui.

Ian says:

“All these groups are Christians working in their communities, driven by God’s love. I get a real buzz out of being part of the “global community” that is Christ’s kingdom, demonstrating Jesus’ all-encompassing love in practical ways.”

You can follow Ian’s adventures on his travel blog.