Urgent call to prayer
As Ven Kevin Roberts has said, the opportunities are almost without limit at the moment, but the finances are limited, and without an injection of money and ongoing support we will need to radically revise our ministry model this summer - at a time when we should be scaling up.
We want to continue to support mission and training in the 200 poorest dioceses around the world
We want to help facilitate mission from ‘everywhere to everywhere’ enabling and encouraging teams from the Global South to serve each other and serve the West
We want to roll out fantastic province wide training in Provinces - such as our June 2024 Tanzania mission which saw teams drawn together from African and Western nations.
We want to continue to provide youth training for internal provinces in South Sudan and beyond.
We want to deliver our fantastic META Youth project for global cohorts of 16-19s, and develop it further so that META cohorts can be established around the world and new generations of young leaders can be discipled and trained in a global context.
We want to develop projects using the same training and mission model we have used for META Youth to help inspire and equip leaders starting out in public ministry, and for those who are later on in ministry and needing a reboot.
All this needs resourcing, but we are operating with just over two FTE staff at SOMA in an age where charities increasingly need professional ways to run. Our financial crisis means we cannot even sustain what we currently have, and the next trustees meeting (2-3 July) will be faced with some difficult decisions. But it seems the Lord has positioned SOMA in a very unique way to bless the global church at the moment and we are crying out for an increase of resource, not a reduction.
It may be that some of that can be done by galvanising people to step up into planning and leading teams. Indeed you may be reading this thinking "I could give a day a week to SOMA, or plan a mission, or become an intercession co-ordinator"... or many other things as well! We would love to hear from you, and to pray God resources us to coordinate all the volunteers!
But I’ve spent this week meeting with bishops, archbishops, clergy, and others from the Evangelical Fellowship of Anglican Churches, the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans, and many other bodies - all of whom have been so positive about SOMA. I’ve talked to bishops in Burundi, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, the Indian Ocean, and Brazil, among many other places who have testimonies of SOMA’s breakthrough ministry. And on Sunday I was so blessed to bring SOMA ministry to a church here in Cairo this weekend. All this while our teams in Tanzania and Kenya have seen wonderful ministry this month, with reports of incredible happenings. We praise God for all this.
Please join us to pray and fast this Thursday 20 June for massive breakthrough - there will be three half-hour slots of open-prayer for anyone who can make one or more of them at 7.00am, 1.00pm and 7.00pm on 20 June. The SOMA UK zoom room will be open at these times, so please come and go as you are able to. The link is here.
If you are unable to attend, but are able to pray and have a word or encouragement from God to share with SOMA, please do send it in an email. To give, please click here.
God Bless,
Rev Richard Moy
National Director of SOMA UK