Scottish church-planting project ‘20Schemes’ has exciting plans to take forward its work after the pandemic. Ben Hansen writes:
Over a year of lockdown in Scotland’s schemes has exacerbated just about every social issue in our communities. Drug use. Addictions. Abuse. Unemployment. Isolation. The list goes on. All of them worsened during the pandemic. This has provided untold challenges for our churches and church-planting teams. Scheme ministry was hard enough pre-Covid. It can seem like the darkness is winning.
But, praise God, that’s only half the story. The other half is full of light. Hope. The darkness, in fact, is not winning. People are studying the Bible for the first time. Churches have provided meals for people struggling to make ends meet, while others have delivered needed medicine to those unable to leave home. Most significantly, souls are being saved. Recently, a local lady was baptised in one of our churches in Edinburgh. This is the kind of news we labour for, and long for more of.
So while there has been much sorrow in the past year, there is always reason to rejoice.
As we look ahead to the continued easing of restrictions (Lord willing), we have many hopes for the coming days. We have four different church plants/revitalisations in the works – some of them in very needy schemes. We also hope to resume our annual Vision Trips later this year – vital parts of our ministry that generate long-term partnerships from various places around the world. Additionally, Lord willing, we’ll officially launch 20schemes Retrain, a back-to-work initiative to help train local scheme folks in vocational skills, all that they might find meaningful work where they can glorify God.
Yet, if this past year has taught us anything, it is that we must hold our plans loosely. James 4 went from theoretical to immensely practical overnight. ‘Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” – yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” ’(James 4:13–15).
So join us in praying that our ministry as a whole would cultivate a posture of humble dependence on God, for we do not know what tomorrow will bring. But He does. And that is good news.
