Do you pray to transform your city?

I like the idea of transforming the city. I like the idea of the city reaching it’s full potential and reflecting the best of what the citizens are.

So last Thursday in the Southside housegroup we discussed how we would want to transform Glasgow. We all enjoy living here, but as with anywhere, there are things that we’d like to see improve. Here are a few of the dreams people have.

• A safer city centre in the evenings and weekends, particularly at night. (We are grateful for the work done by Glasgow Street Pastors.).
• For friends to find contentment in their lives, particularly those with unfulfilled dreams of their own.
• A more healthy city (alchohol, obesity, smoking).
• A less angry city.
• A deeper welcome extended to those who are new to the city, particularly those who don’t have close relationships through work, family or church.
• Less dependence on acquiring shiny new stuff, and more dependence on developing relationships.

As we’re planning for the next stage in the life of our church (more of this later), we want to use our dreams to drive our vision of a transformed city.

Glasgow’s motto is of course “Let Glasgow Flourish“, which is a shorter version of the text on the bell of the Tron Church cast in 1631

“Lord let Glasgow flourish through the preaching of thy word and praising thy name.”

Our dreams are simply a continuation of that desire to see our city flourish.

What are your dreams for Glasgow?

Mission Awareness Day will take place on Sunday 8th May at Adelaide Place. The purpose of the day is to use and extend our main time of meeting on Sunday morning, when we gather for united worship, to discover and stimulate the ‘mission’ awareness of our congregation.

For an average sized congregation I suspect we have a more than considerable interest in mission in all its forms, but we want more than inclinations to guide our mission planning and support.

Our hope is to gather information about individual interest and involvement, to discover how much our church wants to be aware of mission enterprise and to highlight the mission activities that we are already engaged in by using personal reports, Skype contacts with members actually involved in other parts of the world.

Therefore through multi-media, personal stories, Scripture, worship and Communion, as well as a shared meal together we want to really get to grips with this issue in a meaningful and relevant way.

Find out more about our global perspective on things.

Picture credit: Ian Rankin at Christian Engineers in Development (see original set on Flickr)

Part of Work Place Chaplaincy’s role is to reinvigorate Industrial Chaplaincy and to take it to a new level. Iain sees Chaplaincy as an opportunity for the Church to be more directly involved where people spend a great deal of their time – the workplace.

Iain spoke with great enthusiasm about the very positive response from businesses towards the opportunity to involve a Chaplain. When Chaplaincy is involved in a working context businesses improve their performance, develop better relationships amongst the staff and reduce absenteeism. From a Kingdom perspective it also enables the Church to blur the edges between the sacred and the secular and to remove the distinction that many people make between work and faith.

After a question and answer session, Iain left a proposition with us to consider how our church and business could be involved more directly with Work Place Chaplaincy. As a follow-on, Iain specifically wished to visit Adelaides to and see what we do in that context. He then returned on Tuesday 19th April where he met with Rena Allan (who will soon become our Business Manager) and discussed possibilities for extending our business opportunities. We also considered how to continue promoting Adelaides’ Christian values in supporting and sustaining working people and their families through stressful and difficult times of family life.

Iain hopes that APBC and Adelaides might be able to enter into partnership with Work Place Chaplaincy Scotland and play a part in modelling how the Church in the 21st Century can better engage with the world of work.

We’ll post further developments of this growing relationship as they happen.

Iain will be speaking at our morning service, we will then have a Church Lunch, and Iain will speak to us further about exciting potential plans to further develop our ministry to workers in the city centre. There will be an opportunity to discuss and explore Iain’s proposal, and begin to work out how the church could adapt to this new challenge.

Adelaide Place has long held a vision of connecting with people working in the city centre. We already do this through our business ministry, Adelaides and through Business in Glasgow. Our senior pastor, Jack Quinn, has worked part-time over the past three years establishing an initiative called Engage, seeking to build deep relationships with people working in the city centre, and supporting Christians who want to make a difference in the workplace.

This year we’re doing something different. We’re going to buy a brick-making machine for Reuben N’gwala, a Tanzanian pastor who worshipped with us while studying in Glasgow for three years.

Reuben N'gwala

The brick-making machine will help Reuben to build accommodation at a Bible College in rural Tanzania, upgrading the living conditions for the students. The machine presses bricks from a mixture of earth and cement, reducing the amount of cement needed (ratios of around 1 part cement to 14-18 parts earth), enabling the bricks to be made on-site, reducing the energy needed to manufacture the bricks (they are cured, not fired), and enabling the buildings to use less mortar as the bricks are shaped to be interlocking. Overall the machine should reduce building costs by over 20%. The machine can continue to be used by Reuben’s team for other building projects in the area, generating much-needed income.

Making interlocking bricks

We’ll post here how we get on!

Much of what he wrote is a disturbing reminder of how bad things can be in the city but he also highlighted the invaluable work that many voluntary societies have been doing, and continue to pioneer without a great deal of assistance from anyone else. It is their determination to do something to alleviate some of the problems that many of our fellow citizens face that has caught Smith’s eye and moved his heart.

On Wednesday night 30 January 2008 several hundred people from the Glasgow Baptist community met at Newton Mearns Baptist Church to pray, and pray specifically by name for those in government and councils who can help to make a difference to the troubled lives of many in the areas of deprivation in the city. It is so easy to become cynical and treat our politicians as our enemies rather than our servants. It could make a huge difference if we prayed more for them even as the Bible instructs us 1 Timothy2:1-2. Such praying is never wasted!

At long last the moment came when our pastor Jack Quinn was commissioned to give half of his time to minister to Adelaide Place and the other half to develop a ministry amongst the business community in conjunction with Business in Glasgow (BiG).

To assist the church to do this we called Ronnie Hall to be our assistant pastor and on Saturday 20^th October both Jack and Ronnie were commissioned to serve the Lord in these capacities over the next three years.

It was a moving and challenging occasion led sensitively by Rev Andy Scarcliffe, Mission Advisor to the Baptist Union of Scotland. Rev Stuart Blythe of the Scottish Baptist College challenged the gathered church when he encouraged us to exemplify the Lord Jesus in “Word and Signs” in our collective ministry.

The highlight of the evening was when members of the church and wider Christian community in the city laid their hands on Jack and Ronnie and, with prayer, commissioned them to these new ministries into which God has called them.

This summer, Christian Aid is asking people to walk the walk on climate change by joining the longest ever protest march in UK history.

The Cut the Carbon march started in Bangor, Northern Ireland yesterday (14 July), will last 80 days, cover 1,000 miles, and see marchers from rich countries and poor spread Christian Aid’s cut the carbon message to companies and politicians. The march ends at the London Stock Exchange on 2 October.

The march passes through Glasgow this Tuesday, 17 July, and there are a number of events planned, all in the Southside:

• 2-3pm, Newton Mearns Parish Church. Meet the marchers, listen to their stories.
• 5 pm onwards, Queen’s Park duck pond. Meet the marchers as they arrive at Queen’s Park. Join the marchers for a walk around Queen’s Park duck pond in the Glasgow “Put Your Best Foot Forward” event.
• 6pm Queen’s Park glass houses. Meet the marchers, listen to their stories.
• 10pm St Ninians Church, Glasgow. Reflection with the marchers.

Further information is on the Pressureworks site, and on the Cut the Carbon Facebook site (registration needed).

Update 21/07/2007: Read the BBC interview with Angela Rowe of Renfield St Stephens Church (just one block down Bath Street), who is one of the Cut the Carbon marchers.

Since the genocide the church has gathered groups of children and formed a couple of settlements of around 30 houses, each with a social worker to support the children, many of whom are still traumatised. We plan to work with the older children to build tanks to catch rainwater from their roofs.

The project should help build their confidence as they learn new skills and should save a significant amount of the time they spend each day collecting water from puddles.

I’ll expect to get a blog going at http://www.rankin6.blogspot.com/.

This is an important step in the direction of Adelaides future ministry within the city centre of Glasgow, and would involve the co-operation of the church with the Baptist Union, other churches and Christians who are already engaged in similar efforts to engage with city centre workers.

The meeting was an honest exploration of the need to relate in as many ways as possible to the demands of 21st century living. It is good to be in partnership with such forward thinking people.

The Baptist Union are now considering our proposal and we hope to hear back from them in the next few weeks.