God has guaranteed success to one institution on planet earth.

Complex problems won‘t be solved by easy solutions.

20schemes Equip is a new website that exists to resource churches in the world’s poorest communities. I (Ben Hansen) asked Mez McConnell and Matthew Spandler-Davison about the history of 20schemes, what kind of content we’ve released to this point, and what we hope this new site will achieve. When was 20schemes started? Matthew: We launched […]

Let me tell you a story about a pastor called John who lives in a small town in Scotland. You’ve never heard of him and you’ve never heard of his community. Where he lives unemployment is high, drug abuse is off the charts, and life is hard and short. John was saved about 10 years […]

This is the final section of a three-part series on Theodore Dalrymple’s book Life at the Bottom, which explores the lives of the ‘underclass’ living on schemes. In the chapter ‘Choosing to Fail’, Dalrymple strikes right at the heart of the problems we face in the schemes. Commenting on the many excuses that people have […]

This is the second in a three-part series on Theodore Dalrymple’s book Life at the Bottom, which explores the lives of the ‘underclass’ living on schemes and council estates in the UK. Dalrymple’s chapter ‘Goodbye, Cruel World’ is particularly helpful in catching the underlying social pressures of living on a council estate. He talks of […]

Described as a book that is a classic of our times, Life at the Bottom was first published in 2001. The book informs us that: ‘The majority of the British underclass is white, and that it demonstrates all the same social pathology as the black underclass in America – for similar reasons of course’ (pviii). […]

This is the final post of a three-part review of Richard Florida’s book, ‘The New Urban Crisis: Gentrification, Housing Bubbles, Growing Inequality, and What We Can Do About It’. In Part 2, we established that wealthy churches are, despite initial good intentions, failing to fund or support poorer and scheme-based churches. In partnership with Acts […]

This post is the second in a three-part review of Richard Florida’s book, ‘The New Urban Crisis: Gentrification, Housing Bubbles, Growing Inequality, and What We Can Do About It’. Last time we discussed gentrification in general terms. What does it look like in Edinburgh? Here is what I have observed happening in our community as […]

This post is the first in a three-part review of Richard Florida’s book, ‘The New Urban Crisis: Gentrification, Housing Bubbles, Growing Inequality, and What We Can Do About It’. Anybody reading my Twitter feed in the last few weeks will have seen stat after stat from Richard Florida’s book, The New Urban Crisis: Gentrification, Housing […]