One aspect of ministry that I continue to find surprising and encouraging here in Scotland is that churches really do try to work together to reach their towns.
Yesterday, I was able to attend a lunch put on by Inverclyde Christian Initiative, a charity that is all about doing gospel ministry in our local area. There were churches of all stripes who may have different beliefs and convictions on things like baptism or church polity but we are all united on the gospel.
This was the case when we served in Strathaven as well. There is no way that any one church will be able to reach an entire town. Greenock itself has over 40,000 people. No church could possibly hope to reach all of them, and there wouldn’t be anything close to acceptable pastoral care in a church of that size.
In any case, it was encouraging to see that we all share the particular concern of trying to reach the young people in our area. They are being taught some terrible things in school about the nature of humanity, personhood, and all that goes with those things. There are multiple churches working together right now to reach teenagers in our town.
Our church has a very small youth group, and 75% of the kids are mine, but we are still working to present them with the gospel. Heading into the final week of March and Holy Week in particular, be praying that they would not ignore the message of Jesus as it is presented to them again. Pray that their hearts would be softened and that their ears would hear.