My kids weren’t abandoned by their father, but he was absent even when he was there.

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 […]

Here in Niddrie, we have found the following questions to be very helpful (from a local church perspective) when considering if and when we should receive outside ‘teams’ of young people who come to Niddrie Community Church for a 2 week ‘mission trip’. Obviously, they need to be contextualised to every situation, but they are more […]

Between my time church planting in Brazil and my work now in Edinburgh in one of Scotland’s most deprived housing schemes—a mixture of social housing and low-income homeowners—I have been on the receiving end of a lot of short-term missions teams. And while I appreciate the help, I have noticed over the years that a […]

Back in 2014, Matt Chandler kindly took some time to answer the question of how we can grow healthy churches in some of Scotland’s poorest areas. His answer? Growing indigenous leaders. This is the long-term aim of 20schemes as we work to realise our vision of 20 gospel-centred churches in 20 of Scotland’s deprived schemes […]

20schemes is five years old this month (although the idea was birthed over a decade ago while church-planting in Brazil). Personally, I am entering my nineteenth year of pastoral ministry. During that time, I have worked in council estates in the UK, the slums of Brazil, and now in Scotland with 20schemes. We currently have […]

If we really want to make an impact for Christ in the many housing schemes up and down our nation, then we must be prepared to move into the area. This is the golden rule. There are no exceptions for our leaders. Ministry will fail dismally, particularly if the leaders are not part of the […]

This is the fourth part of a longer conversation on the topic of race and class. Check out part 1, 2 and 3 here. In this video, Mez McConnell, John Onwuchekwa and Sung Kim talk about the gospel deficit in our country and how the evangelical church can even the playing field for those from […]

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (James 1:27)

This article was written by David Binder. According to Pew Research (USA) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Christianity in the 21st century is declining. Whilst, broadly speaking, fewer seem willing to identify themselves as Christiansas in the past, leading commentators such as Ed Stetzer have argued that Evangelical Christian numbers are stable, or […]