The Relay Trust was established to be the connection between church leaders like this and the resources, training, and support to enable them and their communities to grow and thrive in their Christian lives. Through previous work training lay-leaders in Sierra Leone (2013-2016), Mette and Alex Bjergbaek Klausen realized that in-person training was limited by time, place, and capacity, and a vision for using technology to provide digitally enhanced training was born.

This vision was shared with Neil Smith, an Australian businessman, who officially created the The Relay Trust with Mette and Alex in August of 2016. During a following two-year period, Mette and Alex travelled the globe, creating a network of partners, discovering what methods, courses, and resources were being used by other ministries already, and building a team.

The Relay Trust began preparations to work in West Africa. An office was setup in Sierra Leone, connections were established with clients and partners, and the construction of Mount Zion a new training and retreat centre in Freetown, Sierra Leone was initiated.

Perhaps surprisingly, 2020 brought the most defining changes for The Relay Trust. As the coronavirus pandemic shut down operations across the world, we further developed our digital course structure and tripled our team, as the importance of digital training was confirmed.

Today, The Relay Trust has offices in Oxford, England, Buea, Cameroon, Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Lira, Uganda. The The Relay Trust team members are scattered across three continents (Africa, Europe and North America) and several time zones. We serve as a connection between local churches of every denomination in Africa and the practical training to equip their leaders in caring for their communities. Partnering with international and local organisations and seminaries, we work to transform resources and training courses into audio, visual, or simple text materials that can be shared through easily accessible digital platforms, such as WhatsApp. The Relay Trust is also in the process of building a new digital learning infra-structure to support remote churches, where internet is either unreliable, too expensive, or non-existing. This digital product, which includes a hardware and software solution is called The Well.

Reach out a hand to see how we can partner with you in passing on the Baton of the Good News.