SPECIAL OFFER: £40 off when you book both a residential conference and a three-day EMA ticket on or before Tuesday 29th November.

Our residential conferences are held in comfortable surroundings in which to relax and recharge batteries, spritually and physically. We have an exciting programme of four conferences over the coming months

Upcoming Residential Conferences in 2023

• Women in Ministry: 16th-19th Jan
• Men in Ministry: 6-9th Feb (Swindon), 20th-23rd Mar (Swanick)
• Recharge: for Ministry Wives: 2nd-4th May

For more details about the EMA and all of our conferences (including bookings), please visit https://www.proctrust.org.uk/conferences/

To take advantage of the £40 discount offer, book a three-day EMA ticket and pay the deposit for any residential conference on or before Tuesday 29th November. £40 will then be deducted from the final balance due for your residential conference.

We hope to see you next year!

For the last seventy years, at 3pm on Christmas Day, millions of us have stopped our festivities for ‘The Queen’. Year after year, we listened as she spoke out bravely to millions about her faith in the Lord Jesus Christ: ‘history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves – from our recklessness or our greed. God sent into the world a unique person – neither a philosopher nor a general (important though they are) – but a Saviour, with the power to forgive’ (in 2011).

We are so thankful to God for the Sovereign he appointed, and who dedicated her whole life – long as it was – to serve us because she knew she had been served. Today, she kneels in humble adoration before Him, her Prince and King. She meets her Saviour face to face, and gladly casts down her crown before Him.

We pray for King Charles III, that, under his rule, we may enjoy ongoing stability and peace in our nation, that the truth of Bible may be proclaimed and that the gospel – the anchor in his mother’s life – may advance.

After four hectic and energetic years as Director of Conferences and Resources, Jon Gemmell will be moving on from PT next summer. Jon, Aileen and baby Isaac will return to Scotland (where they were living before joining PT) and to his new role as Co-director of Training at Cornhill Scotland.
We’re delighted for the Gemmells as a family, and for Cornhill Scotland, but will be very sad to see Jon go from a happy team. I and all the trustees are thankful to him, and to God, for the vision and drive he has brought to PT over recent years, and for the initiatives he’s introduced.
Cornhill Scotland is very much our sister work – independent from PT and from Cornhill London, but sharing many of our aims and objectives.  We are delighted to see this relationship continue and be strengthened as our good friend Jon transfers north of the border.

A great new Bible Study Resource…

ReadMark is a Bible Study Resource that has been developed over a number of years at Chalmers Church in Edinburgh. It is a thorough and detailed exploration of Mark’s Gospel that keeps the text front and centre with supporting short videos and an accompanying booklet.

PT are really excited to make this material available to everyone for free and you can access the material at proctrust.org.uk/readmark.

The material is great for people who want to study Mark’s Gospel for themselves, it is a great resource for one-to-one’s and is also very good to be worked through in groups. It is a good next step for people who want to have a second look at Mark’s Gospel having completed a course like Christianity Explored.

We are really pleased with it and would love you to have a look, give it a trial and feedback to us how it can be improved.

We are very grateful to Robin Sydserff and the church family at Chalmers Church for giving us permission to make this widely available and for free. It is a great accompaniment to Teaching Mark which is the newest edition to our PT Teaching series…

We have taken the decision that PT Cornhill will take place entirely online, for the coming academic year (2020-21).

We know that this is a period of great uncertainty about the future, not least in knowing when the current lockdown regulations and guidance may be relaxed. Some people have contacted us to ask us what Cornhill might look like next year, and even wondering whether they should apply at all. To give some clarity now for applicants and for their churches, we have made the decision that the whole course will be provided online for the whole of the academic year 2020-21.

By committing now to this course of action (rather than continuing with an temporary plan that extends the uncertainty), we can give confidence to those who will be studying with us, and also offer a ‘this year only’ opportunity to those who geographically couldn’t otherwise join us.

As well as providing this clarity for the whole year, factors behind our decision include:

• our building, Willcox House, is not well set for social distancing. We couldn’t safely accommodate half a year group, let alone a whole year group, within our facilities. We did trial hybrid teaching, with some students online and some in the building, but we found it the least satisfactory option.
• we anticipate that travel into central London will be disrupted for many months. There’s no easy way to vary our start and end times to be well away from rush hour, and the government continue to request that we should work from home if at all possible.

We’ve been running Cornhill online this year since before full lockdown began and the feedback from current students has generally been good. We’ve been able to deliver all our content this year as we would have done without the pandemic – none of the various elements that make up Cornhill has been lost – and we’ve been learning lots about how to make it work better.

Of course, at its heart ministry is relational, so we have no intention of making the unusual situation of this next year any kind of precedent for succeeding years. And we are actively exploring options to enable people to physically come together at some point during this year. We don’t yet know what this might look like, and can’t guarantee it will happen. But it might be, for example, that a year group meets once or twice in a large church building at the start of the year, probably for a shorter time in the middle of the day so they can travel outside rush hour, just to start to build relationships. That wouldn’t be possible under current guidance, but might be at some point.

As a result of this decision, Cornhill Foundation Year 1 will be live on a Monday while, on a Tuesday (for those unable to be free on a Monday), a recording of the Monday lectures will be available. Teaching practice groups will take place live by Zoom on both Monday and Tuesday afternoons. These teaching practice sessions will be the only part of F1 which takes place live on a Tuesday.

F2 (Wednesdays) and Core (Thursdays and Fridays) will all be live.

Whilst this wasn’t what we had initially planned, we are really excited about this unique opportunity to equip men and women from all around the world to unashamedly preach and teach God’s word. Please pray for us as we adapt to these challenging circumstances.

Here is a podcast recorded at Moore College Sydney. In it, Chase Kuhn (Director of CCL) and Nigel Styles (Director of PT Cornhill London) discuss the question, ‘Are sermons necessary?’

It is well worth a listen.

A team of four of us spent a week with the church family at St Andrew’s Frimley Green. Despite being a fairly small church, there is lots going on each week at St Andrew’s like toddler groups, Bible studies and coffee mornings which we joined in with. Alongside that we ran some special events including a men’s curry night, a women’s breakfast, quiz night and a children’s party.

Particularly highlights included being able to speak in 3 different school assemblies (and act out Bible stories with a short explanation!), with many of the children also opting to come to a voluntary lunch-club to hear more about Jesus; the best-attended women’s breakfast the church has had; and a chance to chat with many members of the church family and share stories and encouragements with them.

It was really encouraging for all of us to spend time with a different church family and to be able to encourage them to speak to and invite their friends and neighbours to come to church. It was amazing how many opportunities we had to speak with people and spur them on in their faith, and share unity in the Gospel despite different ages and stages of life!

Please be praying on for all the people we met and chatted with, everyone who came to an event and the children in each assembly, that they might find true hope in the Lord Jesus. Please pray that the church family would continue to grow in knowledge and love for Jesus and be bold to share the hope they have with the people all around them.

In early February a team of thirteen intrepid Cornhillers, led by Andrew Sach, journeyed down to Exeter. There, we supported the Exeter University Evangelical Christian Union (ECU) in running a week of events, entitled Story 2020: Jesus is not just a story. The week sought to further the ECU’s vision, ‘to give every student in Exeter the opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ.’ This took place through a series of lunch-bars, evening talks, walk-up campus evangelism and personal conversations. Our role was predominantly one of encouragement. We were tasked with getting alongside members of the ECU to equip and spur them on in gospel proclamation.

Immediately on arrival, it was a great to see so many turning out to pray for the Lord’s work in opening spiritually blind eyes at Exeter University. This was especially true of students at an 8am Monday morning prayer meeting! The prayerful dependence on the Lord was a remarkable feature of the remainder of the week. 

Throughout the week there were several other personal and general encouragements. These included: a couple of people becoming Christians; high levels of engagement from non-Christians in walk-up evangelism on campus; students zealous in their evangelism; large numbers of students considering the claims of Jesus from Mark’s gospel; and having the opportunity to hear and learn from the way Andrew used Mark’s gospel in evangelistic preaching. 

Please be praying for all those non-Christians we met and who attended events throughout the week, asking that the Lord, in His mercy, might bring them into eternal life. For those who professed faith in February, pray that the seed of the gospel would find fertile soil and bear fruit in their hearts and lives. Finally, please be praying that all the members of the ECU might go on sharing the wonderful news of Jesus Christ boldly and winsomely, especially in the face of the opposition to the gospel which Events Weeks inevitably bring. 

by Paul Greenhalgh

Street evangelism. Few phrases instil such a fear of social awkwardness and uncertainty in Christians. Rejection, being outwitted by a total stranger and literally jumping into the unknown within a matter of seconds are among many things that might cause the most zealous evangelist to quake. And yet, what a joy it was to spend 3 days on the streets around St. John’s Wood Road Baptist Church doing exactly that. Six of us budding Cornhillers were sent out to speak to strangers about the simple gospel of grace.

Scott Little, the pastor of the church, patiently taught us how to do street evangelism using a simple, and highly biblical model, that allows you to get to someone’s conscience in minutes. ‘If you were to die tonight, would God let you into heaven?’ was the opener. You then use the 10 commandments to point out (to your token total stranger no less) that they are a lying, murdering, blaspheming, adulterer… without getting punched! We didn’t literally shout these things out to random people, but we were taught that if you use God’s law to show someone where they would stand in a court of law against a perfect standard, you have to admit how far you fall short. Only then do you bring up grace, because why would someone think they need a saviour if they don’t think they need saving?

And so, we hit the streets, into the plentiful harvest, and had gospel focussed conversations with nearly 80 people over 3 days. We had our ups and downs, but on the whole, it was a deeply encouraging, edifying and completely exhausting experience. One that we all couldn’t be more grateful for.

Then on the Sunday we helped out at their morning service looking at the topic of, ‘Are you a good person?’ with a number of non-believers in the audience. What a joy seeing someone we had spoken to come to the service.

Having started thinking that this was probably going to be a very painful and long few days, I think I speak on behalf of us all when we say, what a fruitful, humbling and faith affirming few days we had.

Please pray that the Lord would continue to bless the church in St John’s Wood, that reaching the lost in this area would continue to be a top priority for Scott and his team, and that there would be a plentiful harvest as a result of God’s gospel being proclaimed.

by Olivia Milligan

I’ve always wanted to visit Nepal. Mountains, fresh air, stars at night…what could be better? At the start of Feb 2020 I finally made it there. I didn’t see a single mountain or night star and the word I now most associate with the country is ‘dusty’. But I’m fine with that.

I was in Kathmandu with a member of  the PT teaching staff and Mark, a maths teacher and fellow Cornhill student. Each morning after breakfast we would don our face masks and brave the thick dust to pick our way through the street vendors and stray dogs as we headed away from the tourist track and into the side streets near our guest house. Our destination was the unmarked gate of a local Bible College.

Each year, for one week, students and pastors from across Nepal gather together and, with the help of a wonderful Indian guy and a couple of hapless Cornhill students like ourselves, the Bible is opened and the miracle of praying and working hard at the text of the Bible to hear God speak to us is demonstrated and taught. Mark and I were there to attempt to give a couple of ‘model’ talks and to interact with the attendees throughout the training as best we could across the language barrier.

It seemed like exposition was a completely foreign concept for lots of the attendees at the training but, as I chatted to the men and women gathered together, I was struck again and again by the labour and suffering many Nepali Christians are going through to reach their country with the gospel.

Over veggie curry one lunch-time I chatted to a young guy from a poor people group in the mountains who was the first in his family to gain higher education. I asked why he had come to Bible college and if he was going to be a pastor when he finished and how he was going to find money to live after finishing his studies. He explained that he probably wouldn’t be a pastor and that he didn’t know how he was going to live but that he had come to study at Bible college because his people needed to be taught about what the Bible says. Simple.

Another afternoon, over a cup of sweet Nepali tea, I talked to S, a guy from a Hindu family who had become a Christian a few years ago after hearing that Jesus offers life forever. He now works as an evangelist in the mountains where he walks back and forth between the 2 churches that support him. The walk takes 3 hours each way and the terrain is so rough that as we spoke he was still nursing injuries from a recent fall. I asked him why he keeps going given it’s so tough. “Because Jesus gives life,” he replied.

Many of the men and women we met are zealous disciples of the Lord Jesus but as Mark and I chatted and opened the Bible with them throughout the week, we were both were struck by the incredible need they have for training and equipping in Bible handling. There is real sacrifice and service amongst these men and women but little to no training in how to read the Bible and teach it. I don’t mean that they need to be taught how to give a western-style 3-point sermon (though there’s still benefit in that), but that their ministries would be served by being taught Biblical convictions about how God speaks today in the Bible and by being equipped to read in a careful way that helps us pay attention to what God says and why. This is exactly the work this PT staff member is doing internationally.

The further we got through the week, Mark and I remarked more and more on how thankful we were for this ministry in Nepal and other ministries like it in various countries around the world. We were so impressed by the way that the tools for Bible handling that we are taught at Cornhill were also being taught here clearly and simply across language and cultural barriers, and also how all the time this teaching modelled these tools by transparently showing what the Bible says. Alongside the main body of the training students were taken through a Bible overview in four days and it was so exciting to hear students talking afterwards about how they had never seen the Bible as one big story before.

I’ve come back from these few days encouraged and challenged by the zeal for proclamation of the gospel that many of the attendees at the training modelled to us. I have lots to learn from their obedience to Jesus’ command to take up our cross and follow him.

I’ve also come back more convicted than when I left that what the world most needs is proclamation of the Word. The world needs workers who rightly handle the word of truth and who will entrust the gospel to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

We need to be praying for this work and those doing it. In our short time, we saw how this work is often frustrating, disappointing and difficult.

We also need to be praying for our brothers and sisters in who attended this training in Kathmandu. We need to pray that they hold firm to the convictions formed over those few days of training. We need to pray that they would believe it is worth doing the hard work of listening carefully to God’s voice in the Bible and teaching what he says. And we need to pray for fruit in their ministry that God’s church might be built up in Nepal to His praise and glory.

by Nathan Sherwood