Congratulations. You have been saved from a housing scheme background and you have taken the step to enter into cross-cultural ministry. Ministering to the middle class is fraught with many pitfalls and dangers, and is therefore not to be entered into lightly. Please take time to read the following. As a people group, they are […]

One of these partners has been with an American Pastor, Brian Croft, from Kentucky who is also the founder of Practical Shepherding Ministries. As regular readers and subscribers are aware, this is a blog largely aimed at men and women currently working in, or hoping to work in, areas of urban deprivation in the UK. I […]

I have been involved in Christian ministry for 14 years now in a variety of cross-cultural contexts. In that time, I have read dozens of books and hundreds of papers/essays on missions and church-planting theologies and methodologies. Buzzwords come and go, methodologies come and go, and fads come and go. Trendy ideas fall out of […]

There are lots of little articles flying around the ‘blogosphere’ on how to be more ‘missional’ etc. Some of them are helpful and some of them are breathtakingly hilarious. Here are some of my tips of how not to engage ‘evangelistically’ on a housing scheme. Remember, it’s just for fun! 1. Sit in the front […]

Although this is a website dedicated to housing scheme ministry in Scotland, I want to highlight a video from America today. Here is a short video from Dhati Lewis, from the Rebuild Network, interviewing some Christian brothers about urban church planting in their context. Obviously, our situation is completely different in Scotland, but there are […]

Any planter worth his salt will always have a book on the go. We must never stop thinking. We must never stop learning. We must never stop seeking to grow in our understanding of God’s Word and how to apply it to our specific cultural contexts. Tim keller calls it “agile learning”. It’s cheesy but […]

Paul Rees is the lead pastor of Charlotte Chapel, a large independent Baptist Church in the centre of Edinburgh. This was the church that invited me to take over the revitalisation of Niddrie Community Church in 2007, and they have played a large part in growing a thriving gospel ministry. We are also immensely thankful […]

I was deeply saddened late last year to hear of an extremely close pastor friend of mine who had succumbed to temptation and committed adultery. He has not been married for very long, he was pastoring a growing church, and he was also the vice president of a Bible College. I have yet to ascertain […]

When we look at the NT, and the book of Acts in particular, we see that the gospel spread and the church grew through the proclamation and teaching of the ‘Word of God’ (Acts 6:7; 12:24; 19:20). That, surely, must be the basis for any and all ministry in our congregations—we must be ‘Word based’. […]

This is the title of an article I wrote a year or so ago and then adapted for my friend Brian Croft at Practical Shepherding Ministries. Click on the link here to read the article in full. Practical Shepherding is a Gospel-driven resource center for pastors and church leaders to equip them in the practical […]