Trustee Meeting highlights direction and hope for SOMA UK
www.stantonhouse.org.uk
In the beautiful surroundings of Stanton House, near to Oxford, 5 trustees were able to meet with paid and voluntary staff to consider the future of SOMA UK together in an atmosphere of prayer and wonder at our God who has provided so much for us in the past 2 months.
We had just learnt that we were at least 91% of the way to our May/June funding target, with more potentially still to come into the bank, and this boost to faith was clearly seen in the way trustees considered the innovations and developments needed at SOMA in the next 5 years.
Focusing around being a Community of Prayer on a mission, the trustees went right back through SOMA’s history to consider how prayer has been integral to how we do both meetings and missions, and encouragement came from the reports of a phone with a 95 year old supporter called Pamela who had run the office to tell us she had prayed for SOMA every day for 45 years.
They also considered proposals from META Youth for developing cohorts totalling 60 people by 2030 with 4 youth missions a year and a ‘Training the trainers’ programme established for both the UK and in 2 + International locations.
These thoughts came together to highlight the benefits of forming communities of prayer around mission teams where a cohort of leaders gets invested in by a SOMA Pastor and SOMA team leader in the build up to a mission and then helped to bring olive branches of hope back to their home context. Cohorts could be international groups perhaps focused on young leaders (end of curacy/staff members of churches), mid-ministry interventions and/or mixed groups of lay/ordained people. There’s a lot of thinking and dreaming to be done to refine this vision but it felt exciting and innovative, and a response to a new age of mission where Digital opportunities abound and there is a need in the West to emphasise mutual learning and reciprocal ministry with the Global Church. This all lead to a lot of action points to take away, as well as a sense of clarity, vision and direction.
It was a faith-buidling and encouraging time, and we were delighted to have 2 more trustees in the process of coming on board this autumn. But we say goodbye to our Honorary Treasurer Barry Hampson at the end of August, so we are appealing for anyone with business or finance background who could help oversee staff with our accounts and payments to consider becoming a trustee. Write to Kevin, the chair of trustees, if you (or someone you could encourage someone with the right experience) could help us here.
