This session will appeal to you if you are in work and wondering if what you do at work really is of interest to God. It will help you consider how you can get up in the morning and go to work with God. Whether you love your job or are struggling to survive the daily grind, it will explore God’s involvement in your workplace and will challenge you to live out your faith in every aspect of the frontline of your work life. It will help you see that there is no need for a sacred secular divide, but that God call us to serve him whatever we do and wherever we are.

The session will be full of practical hints and tips to help you live out and consider faith at work.

In June, we have invited Jean Nicholson the Centre Manager for CAP – Christians Against Poverty – a leading National Debt Counselling Charity Service to come and talk to us about her work and the services CAP can offer.

The charity is a fast-paced, growing organisation whose vision is to answer the national problem of debt in the UK by having at least one CAP centre operating in every major town and city by the year 2021.

BiG will be taking part in the 24/7 prayer initiative for Scotland. A first both for Scotland and BiG, 24/7/365 is a gathering of over 70 Church Ministers & leaders from across Scotland who will be praying 24/7 for the year of 2010 for our nation.

Following on from the recent survey exploring connections between work and spirituality, one of the key words that repeatedly came up was “busy”.

What about an opportunity to find a quiet space in the busyness of life and work, just to be? Sounds good doesn’t it? Interested?

Do email Gayle if you would like a slot.

Our week of prayer, starting on Sunday 16 May will cover 168 one hour prayer slots, split:

84 @ the Prayer Room, Renfield St Stephens, Glasgow 8 a.m -10 p.m
84 @ home slots or wherever you are at 10 p.m – 8 a.m

I very much look forward to hearing from you.

At this Networking Lunch we will be reviewing the initial findings from the recent survey exploring connections between work & spirituality in Glasgow City Centre.

There’s still time to take the survey if you’ve not done so!

BiG will be hosting a networking lunch where Stewart will be talking about his journey into politics and the difference we all can make in this area.

We are delighted to have a discussion with Dr David Fraser. David is a company director, chartered engineer, qualified commercial mediator and NLP Practitioner.

This event will be an informal talk by Dr David Fraser around the themes of relationships and can they be made easy? Here’s David’s introduction:

David is about to release a book called Relationships made Easy: How to get on with people we need to get on with…and stay friends with everyone else, and he will be talking to us about all that he has learned about relationships and connecting with other people as he has journeyed through life.

David works with organisations of all kinds and he’ll share some great insights into avoiding mistakes with other people and connecting successfully with them instead.

We thought we would start off the first BiG meeting of the new decade in a slightly different fashion and hope you will be able to join us. We are planning to have a sit down two course lunch at a very economical price and the usual high standard of cooking that the Oasis Cafe at the Renfield Centre provides. This will give us all a chance to catch up and get to know each other better.

During the course of the lunch, Jack Quinn will also take the opportunity to outline a major piece of research he is doing to develop Business in Glasgow’s understanding of the nature of the business community within the city centre of Glasgow. We are sure that this will be of interest to you and welcome any contribution you wish to make to the study.

In addition we will lay out the plan for the meetings during the course of this year and the new areas we are hoping to introduce.

Booking is essential as we need accurate numbers to pass to the catering team.

The final BiG lunchtime meeting of 2009 will be a panel discussion where three members of Glasgow’s diverse society will offer insights and practical advice on the issues that are pertinent to surviving the recession.

The people involved are:

Gayle Cattanach – BiG Trustee, Chartered Surveyor and Director of a commercial construction company
Ruth Walker – former Customer Relationships Director for Scottish Enterprise, now an independent consultant
Andrew Low – Chief Executive of Glasgow City Mission

The panellists will offer insights on issues they are facing as a result of recession and how they are dealing with it. You should find the different perspectives enlightening.

New Venue: Glasgow City Mission’s new HQ in Crimea Street

Our final Business in Glasgow seminar provides all our supporters and participants a unique opportunity to visit the recently opened premises of the Glasgow City Mission, an organisation which began in 1826 through the vision and compassion of David Naismith its founder.

Once the first of its kind, now duplicated in the major cities of the planet, Glasgow City Mission continues to offer practical as well as spiritual support to the most vulnerable in the City of Glasgow.

With the recession continuing to make significant inroads into our city’s working population it is a good thing to remind ourselves that vulnerability is not just reserved for the poor of society. We are witnessing, if not experiencing, such vulnerability across the business scene too but as with many successful charitable organisations the Glasgow City Mission is a reminder that there is also hope and a future.

We are grateful to Glasgow City Mission for offering to host this event, and we welcome anyone from the business community in Glasgow to join us.

Glasgow City Mission, 20 Crimea Street, Glasgow G2 8PW
Map and Directions

We regret to announce that due to a bereavement, Danny McGuigan will no longer be able to deliver his seminar on Ambition Issues at Work on Tuesday 3 November as planned.

We have therefore brought forward December’s seminar and Peter Gardner will discuss Spiritual Issues at Work.

There are lots of issues we face in our work, keeping work focus, maintaining motivation, finding a healthy work-life balance, sustaining self-confidence, setting goal and priorities. We have all heard of good ways to improve our work practice but most of us find it difficult to do things differently. Peter Gardner, who is minister at Renfield St. Stephen’s church, and has worked with Business in Glasgow over the last seven years will look at these issues from a different angle and, drawing from some of the traditions of Christian spirituality, suggest some practical ways of improving the way we work.

Iain spoke about relationship issues.

BiG Event Report

The topic Iain was addressing was relationship issues and he covered these under four headings:

1. A helicopter view of what areas relationships cover
2. Things which subvert good relationships
3. Things which enhance good relationships
4. What we can do with respect to our relationships
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