Supporting The Local Church – Our Burning Desire
By George Thomson, SBLPA Events Secretary
In common with most organisations across the nation, the Scottish Baptist Lay Preachers’ Association has found this period of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions challenging to negotiate. Fulfilling our call, to boldly and prophetically preach the counter-cultural message of God’s Word, during a time of closed church buildings and reduced pulpit supply requests has certainly been problematic.
However, instead of lamenting the lost opportunities in this season, we have chosen to invest in some online training workshops and times of corporate prayer; encouraging, equipping and inspiring our members – from the Borders to the Shetland Islands – for the days ahead.
Our recent programme – facilitated by the wonder of ZOOM – involved a four-session ‘Online Preaching Workshop’ with Richard Garnett (an actor and communications consultant) and an ‘Expository Preaching’ workshop led by Rev. Dr. Liam Goligher (all the way from the USA).
Our burning desire remains to offer support to the local churches, whether physically present in the pulpit or remotely online and we would urge and encourage any church secretary, pastor or leadership team to get in touch with us as a resource for pulpit supply. We are here to offer our support. office.sblpa@gmail.com
In 2020, despite buildings being closed, SBLPA members undertook 796 engagements across the nation: 65 were in local Baptist churches; 96 services were in evangelical churches with the remainder in care homes, conferences and funerals.
Our Annual Conference will be on Saturday 22nd May where we have BUS General Director, Martin Hodson as our keynote speaker. Martin will be unpacking the theme of ‘Preaching Creatively to Today’s Culture’.
We are very passionate about how we communicate God’s Word into a culture that is ever changing, especially today and we feel Martin being in a national role is best placed to unpack the theme.
Also contributing in our conference will be Rev. Gilmour Lily of Rosyth Baptist who will lead a session on ‘Preaching Creatively’ and Crystal Cryer, from 24/7 Prayer Scotland, who will deliver a session on ‘Creative Prayer’.
We are also very pleased to include a Q&A session ‘live’ with the evangelist, Canon J. John, who will answer your questions to him on the day through ‘live’ comments
This is sure to be a fantastic conference and as it will be online, will be accessible to everyone, so please join us and share with others you know and watch ‘live’ on our YouTube channel or via our website at www.sblpa.co.uk from 9.30am on Saturday 22nd May.
