MARCH 2024 / PRAYER UPDATE

Thank you for your continued support of The Bonar Trust. Much has happened since our last update in December; here are some highlights:

Training the Trainers Days

We look back on the Training the Trainers days we co-hosted between January and March with thankfulness to God and with much encouragement. These were delivered in partnership with local gospel church leaders in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Inverness. The events focused on the need to train gospel workers at a local level, building a culture of training, and how a training programme might look.

Even at a numerical level, these events exceeded our expectations, with nearly 50 churches represented and 20 of these having not yet trained in partnership with the Trust. Delegate feedback included ‘timely, compelling and encouraging’…. ‘clear, inspiring and instructive’. We now pray for fruitfulness and a growth in the base of churches training for gospel ministry.

The day-time events were followed by informal dinners in Glasgow and Edinburgh with many of our current-year grantees. They were refreshing and encouraging opportunities for some of our trustees to meet with the next generation of gospel workers and leaders.

Residential Conference

Over a dozen of our Leaders in Training attended our January Residential Conference in Pitlochry. These events are a great opportunity for fellowship, development, and Bible teaching skills for grantees. Passages and teaching were based on 1 Peter. Delegate feedback included ‘encouraging’, ‘sustaining’, and ‘refreshing’.

Gospel Workers for Scotland

In our last update we announced plans for a day dedicated to helping local churches identify and encourage candidates for ministry training. However, whilst good in principle, February was not the right time to run this, and we shall consider it again for later in the year.

Future thinking and planning

We are continuing to think and plan around the three forms of partnership and support the Trust can offer to and with individual trainees, training churches, and training providers. This may lead us to achieving our current goals slightly differently, or even towards new goals. We will share outcomes over the rest of the year.

New website - under construction

Work is ongoing behind the scenes to refresh our website, and its content and navigation. We hope this will allow people to find what they’re looking for, and how the Trust can help and support them, more easily. We hope to have launched the new website by the time we send our next quarterly Update.