DISCIPLES OF JESUS MINISTRY

    We have three grown up children Ian, Lynsey and Paul and live near Glasgow, Scotland.

   In 1978 we met at Bible College- the Bible training Institute, Glasgow where we were both studying. Mind you the college was nicknamed as a Bridal Training Institute. 

  Both of us have been Christians for over forty years, and we would like to be able to tell you that we left College and went from strength to strength but although both of us were born again and had an initial experience of the Holy Spirit we didn't move on as we should in the things of God. In many ways our understanding was limited, we didn't move into our calling at that time. We have been involved in many areas  of church ministry throughout the years but we lacked the faith to step out for God unless we saw the provision actually coming in beforehand, yet the Lord had called us into evangelism. So here we are after twenty- seven years finally moving into our calling and it's exciting, because there is no way we can do this in our own strength, we need to move in the power of the Holy Spirit.

 For some time the desire of our hearts has been  to go beyond having a strong theology for healing, for our theology on the gift of Prophecy, our theology of who we are in Christ,  our theology on how God wants to prosper us and what we know experientially  to catch up with where our Theology stands, to see the Kingdom of Heaven really invade the earth, we knew our  God is a good God , but we wanted to taste and see the reality of His goodness in all it’s fullness. He is a God of the miraculous, He hasn’t changed. The river is flowing and we want to be right there in the river flowing with it. We have become very aware that it’s not what we know, it’s who we know and He loves us  despite our weaknesses. It’s all about getting to know Jesus better and giving the Holy Spirit more and more sway in our lives. As youngsters we had come to know Jesus as  our Saviour, the Holy Spirit to us was a comforter who lived inside of us, but He was more an it than anything else and God the Father was our creator and the Father of Jesus, but really we had no clue about the Father’s heart of God, nor what it was to be empowered by the Holy Spirit. We had our individual paths which brought us to discovering that the Holy Spirit was far from being an it but was a very real person as part of the Triune God.  However, even although the Lord took us into Bible College we had no idea what victorious Christian living was all about, we got married and graduated from Bible College and within five years of graduating from Bible College we had three small children and spiritually we were on a slippery slope. Whole days would go by without us giving God the time of day, yet we would attend church every Sunday, Raymond  was by then a Baptist Church Deacon regularly preaching the Word of God yet we were barely praying together, we would argue about financial problems, and didn’t really look to God for provision.  Our marriage was shaky at times and if it hadn’t been for God we would never have survived the thirty years which we have now been married. Years went by and both of us were active in Church, We thought we really knew God, but really although we were both saved and had some knowledge of God at a personal level, it was more knowing about Him than knowing Him.

   About fourteen years ago God TV came on the scene in the UK. We got Sky TV shortly afterwards and we started watching the God channel, particularly at that time  and Irene avidly watched Joyce Meyers,  and her Spiritual eyes started to open. Irene would walk along the streets and break into tears crying for the lost, always having felt a compassion for unsaved but not like this.

    We moved into a small Independent Pentecostal Church, a church plant and we were leaders there but God moved us on, He asked us to consider what was more important our ministries or Him

     For a few years we had been attending our current church and we had been learning much of the Father’s heart of God and God was starting to radically impact our lives. God asked us to put aside our positions and leave the church we were in and move on into Glasgow Elim that we might learn of Him, that we might seek His Face and put our relationship with Him before our positions. 

     Our Senior Pastor at that time was Simon Foster, a lovely man who is on fire for God, the presence of God in our church is awesome, but the greatest thing of all is that God is revealing more and more of Himself to us, we are on a journey, a journey of discovery and it’s a wonderful journey we may have been on it for a long time but we are aware more than ever now that we must die to self and we can do nothing without the Holy Spirit empowering us.

    It is now September, 2009 and we are becoming hungrier for God than ever before,  our church is moving into new and exciting days and we pray it will bring with it a fresh wave of Revival. A new Senior Pastor James Glass started with the church in October 2009 . We as individuals are spending more time with Jesus, we must tarry with the Lord. Our desire is to see the outworking of the Kingdom of God in the city of Glasgow and beyond. For years the church has prayed "Your Kingdom come." God has been establishing a new fire in our hearts, fiery coals have ignited us and we just want more of Jesus and to venture out into our city and our nation and reap a harvest of souls.  This is the hour, it is the time when God is going to do so many great and wonderful things. Hallelujah! 

Raymond and Irene McGough