When builder and Brethren member Sir John Laing was motivated by his deep faith to give away money for the gospel he could little have dreamt that almost £500 million would be given to Christian causes.
Now the trustees of the J.W. Laing Trust are celebrating the centenary of the initial gift that got it going. After Sir John Laing, who died in 1978 aged 98, took over the management of his family’s small building business, he built it into a global construction and civil engineering group, employing over 10,000 people, and listed on the London Stock Exchange.
The Laing group built part of the M1, the UK’s first motorway; rebuilt Coventry Cathedral after the original was destroyed in World War II; and led the building of the Second Severn Crossing (now the Prince of Wales Bridge), alongside other large projects in the UK and worldwide.
Sir John gifted part of the actual ownership of his company in 1922. Then, over the ensuing decades, he and his family made further substantial gifts. As the company grew in value, the value of the charitable foundations grew with it. Funds have supported or enabled Biblical scholarship, student ministry and apologetics, production of Bibles and Christian literature, gospel mission around the world, and relief work.
Former Trust Chair Alex McIlhinney, in a book commissioned for the centenary, writes: ‘Even John Laing, a man of vaulting ambition, inspiring faith and strategic vision, could not, in 1922, have imagined the reach and impact of his giving a century later.’
Andrew Griffiths, Director of Operations at the Trust: ‘We are seeking to encourage other Christians who have the means to support the Lord’s work in a similar spirit.’
