Mark Magill tells us about the Edinburgh Preaching Group
Ten years ago, a recent graduate from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh attended a Langham Partnership conference in Uganda.
He was impacted by how God was using African pastors with no formal training and limited resources to lead churches of hundreds of people. He knew of other recent graduates with solid biblical foundations through training from UCCF and their local Edinburgh churches. Was there a way to make more use of these for God through preaching? A training session was organised one Saturday morning in the lounge of a three-bedroom student flat. In attendance were 12 recent graduates, including myself.
Strengthen preaching
The training was conducted by Peter Grainger who had recently stepped down as Senior Pastor of Charlotte Baptist Chapel in Edinburgh and was now directing the 2 Timothy 4 Trust, newly established to strengthen Scottish preaching (www.2tim4. org). At this point there was no formal leadership structure, or a plan for development, just a vision for men in their early 20s to be more used by God to serve the needs of the church.
We had degrees, mainly in science, and none of us were on a course for full-time ministry. How could we be effective preachers? Most of us were excited by the idea and found the training valuable, but felt vulnerable stepping into preaching. Some of us were even afraid of public speaking, while others were confident speakers but feared they did not know the Bible well enough to preach in a church.
Yet this marked the birth of the Edinburgh Preaching Group (https://edinburghpreachers.wordpress.com/) that connects churches that need preachers with individuals seeking to develop preaching gifts. In the decade since the group formed, over 40 different preachers have delivered several hundred sermons across ten churches.
Chinese first
The first opportunity for the group to apply their training was at an English-speaking Chinese Evangelical Church in Edinburgh. They were a small group without a dedicated minister and greatly appreciated us coming to preach individual sermons. It then developed that they would appreciate a more structured block of teaching, so the book of 2 Timothy became the first organised preaching series. The book was split into sections and different preachers tackled different passages as the book was preached through verse by verse. This template of doing a teaching block by a variety of preachers was then rolled out to other churches needing preachers.
Statement of faith
Further training sessions developed, along with a path for new members to join the group, the only requirement being that they sign their agreement to the UCCF Statement of Faith and provide a commendation from the leadership of their home church. All new group members begin with a training session on preparing to preach. Further training sessions have included: understanding how to preach from particular Bible books in preparation for a sermon series; the use of illustrations and examples in sermons; communication techniques from a BBC Scotland football commentator; and the spiritual challenges that preachers go through in preaching.
Training also includes the opportunity to deliver and receive feedback on sermons in a safe environment. The emphasis across the training is the 2 Timothy 4 Trust strapline that ‘Every preacher can become a better preacher’.
Widening the work
For many people the preaching group gave them their first opportunity to preach and to receive structured feedback on their sermons, provided by Peter Grainger. While a few of the group have gone on to undertake theological studies and explore full-time ministry, the majority are lay people who receive a warm welcome in smaller churches that cannot afford a paid pastor.
The next phase is to widen the work by encouraging similar preaching groups in other places. When my work moved to Bristol in late 2011 for a period, I was able to establish a similar group there. We believe individuals with untapped preaching gifts exist in other Scottish cities and need an outlet to develop. Our experience is that the need for preachers considerably outweighs the preachers available.
