As a follow-up to our newsletter of last month, we wanted to update you and ask for your prayers as we contemplate the busiest two or three weeks we have experienced in recent times.
Sunday 16th June
John is preaching at New Cumnock Evangelical Church in Ayrshire. This small fellowship has been without a Pastor for the past 6 years and for the last 10 months or so John has been devoting, on average, two Sundays a month to bring God’s Word to them and also give some support and guidance to the leaders as they seek the Pastor of God’s choosing for them. It’s a blessing to have the opportunity for systematic preaching despite not being in the pastorate, and it’s surely more strategic than preaching here, there and everywhere on different Sundays.
Tuesday 8th – Thursday 20th June
This is the last week of EBC‘s College year and John is teaching on Monday and Tuesday evenings and Thursday morning. We rejoice at another complete year of training and equipping; our 11th full year in all. Over the next few weeks we are working on a major rebranding of the College, with new website and publicity and John is especially grateful to Grant who is helping with some of these ideas. The Board is also having very early exploratory conversations with a potential successor for John, as he has intimated that he intends to stand down from the role of Principal in summer 2025.
Friday 21st June
We anticipate that this is the day when we will collect the keys to our new home and will be busy over much of the weekend getting things in place and doing last minute packing etc. We are presently in a state of well organised chaos but on track to have everything ready for the arrival of the removal men on Monday 24th. With John still teaching and studying Caroline has borne the lion’s share of all of this work and we are grateful to God for measures of health and strength as we have both needed them.
Monday 24th June
The removal men are scheduled to be here before 9 in the morning and it will, no doubt, be a long day, but a satisfying one as we get moved.
Wednesday 26th June – Tuesday 2nd July
On Wednesday morning, John heads for Warsaw in Poland for three days of teaching at the Polish School for Preachers.
As mentioned in our last email, this venture is the result of the vision and burden of Polish EBC Graduate, Pastor Adam Urban. John will be teaching for five hours on each of these three days, and there will be a mixture of students in person but also on zoom. All of this will be done in English and John has written teaching materials which will later be translated into Polish and published. The recorded teaching will also be later translated and presented on video by Adam so that we begin to build up a complete training course in Polish. From September onwards there will be fortnightly zoom sessions to continue the training, with plans for another in-person training seminar next summer in Warsaw.
On Sunday 30th, John is preaching at Siedlce Evangelical Church in the morning – the church where Adam serves as Associate Pastor – and in the afternoon at their church plant in nearby Łuków (pronounced wukuf). There were no suitable flights on the Monday, so John will be flying home on Tuesday evening. As time allows, John plans to blog a daily update on his ministry website – www.route66.org.uk – and also on the Route66 Facebook page, as well as on the College’s Facebook page. We do covet your prayers for this really strategic initiative. Poland has a population of 37.5 million but there are only about 700 evangelical churches and roughly 60,000 evangelical believers – that’s just 0.17% of the population – with about the same number of liberal Lutherans. The need for strong Bible churches led by gifted and trained preachers is immense. This venture may be small, but little is much when God is in it, and our prayer is that this will be the small beginning of something that will have a massive impact on the work of the gospel in Poland. It is an immense privilege and joy to be involved.
Please do remember Caroline as she sets up home back in Gorebridge, and pray that we will be settled very quickly and able to pick up the usual rhythm of our busy lives. We are also in the early stages of planning a fortnight’s break in Suffolk in the second half of August so that we can spend time with the family there.
Thank you again for your prayers and support. The Lord bless you and keep you in and by his grace.