This month, a team of faculty and students spent a week on mission in Glasgow, Scotland, walking the streets and sharing the Good News in order to help IMB missionaries there begin the process of planting a church. The following updates were sent from Dr. Harmon, VP/Dean of Students each day.
DAY 1 – Arrival in Glasgow! We have literally hit the ground running! Everyone made it through passport control without any problems. Both flights were great. Within an hour of arriving, the team was in the center of Glasgow engaging people and having discussion on spiritual things. After lunch we toured Glasgow cathedral. After this, our missionaries took us up to a cemetery which overlooks the entire city. There they talked about the moral decay that is pervasive in the culture and gave us our assignment: We will be the first team in a part of the city where no other mission team has been. The team has literally been on the go for 36 hours without sleep. Everyone on the team is doing fine, though tired.
DAY 2 – Today began with training and learning the areas that we would serve. Our goal today was simple. Learn what we can of the new area that the missionaries are targeting for a new church plant and begin conversations with 
people and bring Jesus into the conversation. We were put into groups of three and sought to do just that. As a team, we had 9 significant conversations where we were able to bring Jesus into the conversation. No conversions today, but many seeds were planted.
The Scottish people are very friendly and accepting of us, but very lost. It is heartbreaking to hear the Scottish view of God and religion as “poison.” They told us this is what they think. All that the people want here is a good job and that’s it. One thing our missionaries told us in preparation for our trip is that we would do a lot of walking. No doubt, everyone walked 10 miles today!
DAY 3 – The missionaries here added to our assignment of bringing Jesus into our conversations. Today our students learned how to exegete a community; that is, how to read and understand a community from a missiological perspective. In essence, they learned how to find out the story of the community that we are working in. We are literally plowing the field for the new missionaries to begin planting seeds and a church. The information that we gather will be used by the new missionaries. It was a big task, but our team has embraced the challenge and the students love it!
Several of our conversations today included Jesus, but only two gospel presentations were made today. In one of the conversations, the man nearly made a profession of faith. He had never heard about Jesus in his entire life, and is willing to hear more. This is our first victory on the field. Dr. Wright was able to share the gospel with some inmates doing community service. One inmate’s reply was, “I’d rather do community service than have Jesus.”
It is amazing to watch our students step into the role of an international church planter and serve with such a passion for the Lord. Very proud of them all. Tomorrow is a new day and more souls to reach.
DAY 4 – Each day we begin with lessons on Western European principles of church planting and discipleship. Today was a big day for our students, as they learned the biblical framework and concepts within which our missionaries operate on a daily basis. They learned an effective evangelism method called Simple Church and were asked to put into practice today. Doing Simple Church means going to a public place and reading the Bible out loud and then having a bible study where everyone can have the opportunity to hear and join in and ask questions.
In 3 different public locations, our teams opened their bibles and began to read it aloud for others to hear and lead a bible study in front of them. As one team began reading the bible out loud, a number of onlookers paused and listened to the Word of God being openly proclaimed, possibly for the first time. We can’t wait until we can do it again tomorrow.
Today we had two gospel presentations, but neither were interested in receiving Christ. The sad reality that we are learning is that God is an afterthought to the Scottish people. God is not even on their radar.
DAY 5 – The past two days have been very cold making it a challenge to get people to stop long enough to talk with us. Still, on our next to last day in Glasgow, we walked through our assigned community, looking for final opportunities to share Christ with others. And then today, we spent the day visiting people we had already connected with earlier in the week. We have met dozens of people with which we were able to gather data for the missionaries, have spiritual conversations and gospel presentations.
Though the weather has been cold, and the people have proven to be difficult soil, the team would gladly do this again! Our students are changed because of their time spent in Scotland. We hope that a partnership can occur between the college and the Scotland missionaries, but that’s a future conversation. Even though our week in our target area has come to an end, we look forward to possible conversations with people on the train tomorrow as we travel to Edinburgh for a bit of sight-seeing. We now wrap up our last 48 hours in Scotland. Thank you for your prayers, we have certainly felt them.