Stanely Revisited

I've spent this week at a gathering of twenty missions leaders from all over Europe. It was a combined meeting of the Western Europe Leadership Team (WELT) and the Central Europe Leadership Team (CELT). These two regions stretch from the UK and Ireland, right across Europe to Romania, Bulgaria and the Balkan nations which formed the former Yugoslavia, so our gathering included YWAM national leaders from many of these countries. It was a time of praying and partnering together to see how we can see mission initiatives strengthened and extended in these regions of Europe. I was there as a representative of our King's Kids youth and family ministry across the continent.

It was interesting for me that these Leadership Team meetings were held in Paisley, Scotland, at Stanely House. This old house was my home about seventeen or eighteen years ago; it was the base for our KKI Scotland ministry at the time, and I led several PCYMs there in the early 1990s. It was kind of fun to return there after a ten or twelve year gap, and discover that things looked much the same as they did back then. A different YWAM ministry is based there now, running discipleship schools that consider new expressions of old Celtic traditions of Christianity. The above picture is a sketch of Stanely House that was drawn by my South African friend, Helen, when she was a PCYM student in 1992.

Next year's WELT and CELT meetings will be held in Malaga again, in October 2011. As I'm here in Scotland this year, though, I'll be staying on another week to speak in my home church and at a couple of ladies' prayer groups, before returning to Spain on the 19th.