Monthly Archives: February 2020

Weekly Blog 29th. February, 2020

I had to write a note to my blog page today because of the date. It’s going to be such a long time until the 29th. February comes around again. I read somewhere during the week that the musical composer Rossini (born on 29th. February, 1792) had to wait until he was twelve til he had his second birthday. Doesn’t seem quite fair somehow.

Talking of things which don’t seem quite fair, I’ve had quite a week, not least because my computer got hacked and had to be deep-cleaned before I could start to use it again. All of that has now been safely done but I found myself with time to sit and read a book when before I would have been working at my desk. Maybe I have learned something from this event and will spend less time looking at a screen.

Rachel and I have also spent a couple of days this week painting one of the rooms in the Hen House so that it is now ready to have skirting boards and facings installed. We should have had all of this done such a long time ago but then Fogo Parish Church came along and the world turned upside down!

On Thursday several of us met to watch the first part of a mini-series about Masada. The programme was made a long time ago and starred, among others, Peter O’Toole, but it was fabulous, especially for those of us who just a few short weeks ago stood on Masada and looked down at all that lay below. I’m looking forward to part two next Thursday already.

On Friday I shall be going to the World Day of Prayer Service at Christ Church in Duns. The service has been prepared by Christian women from Zimbabwe and I’m looking forward to it. March is also going to be a month of meetings as our Presbytery sorts out our plan for the coming years. There’s an urgency to this as four of our neighbouring congregations will lose their minister in April and two others have ministers who will only be with us for another couple of years or so. I’m expecting that there will be several meetings held before the end of the month and am hopeful that this will enable a plan to be agreed by everyone at the April meeting of Presbytery.

Talking about hoping for particular outcomes, I’m really hoping that the weather will take a turn for the better. The ground is so wet when we walk the dogs every morning and the wind has been ferocious — it will be grand to get some weather when it might be appropriate to venture onto a golf course once again. Watching the professionals on television has made me forget my limited ability and I imagine that this year I will play like them! It’s good to dream.

Weekly Blog 21st. February, 2020

Spoken Blog

This has been a good week – back to normal after the trip to the Holy Land and the catching up that invariably results from such a visit. There was a really good feeling in Church last Sunday. I felt it – and other people felt it too. I got an email the following day from which I quote:  “Was really pleased to be at Fogo yesterday. There is such a joy there, you can almost touch it!” I’m glad that other people feel it too.

I spent quite bit of the first part of the week working on the communication channels which have been identified as crucial by our congregational mission strategy conference. We are now operating a web-site, Facebook, Twitter, an E-Newsletter, and a regular slot in the local news section of our local paper. On our web-site I am trying to keep a weekly blog going and I have succeeded in producing a short video and a sound copy of the blog (both of which are on the web-site). There is still quite a lot to do, the next task for me is to create a form for the web-site to allow new folk to sign up for our E-Newsletter (our members are already subscribers). I’ll hope to do this next week.

On Wednesday Tom Thorburn our Presbytery Elder, Tom Stewart our Session Clerk, Olive Gardiner our Treasurer, along with Bob Kay the Fabric and Glebe Convener of Presbytery, Roger Dodd the Presbytery Planning Convener and I met with two members of the General Trustees to consider our plan to purchase a cottage to use to bring retired ministers to our area as our guests who will be invited while they are with us to conduct services both at Fogo and in some of the other churches in the area who will not have the services of a stipendiary minister. It would be fair to say that some of our team found the meeting to be a frustrating one but we enjoyed showing our visitors around our beautiful church and I hope that the General Trustees will catch the enthusiasm which is shared both by our congregation and by our Presbytery.

Looking to the near future we shall be watching the television mini-series Masada over the first four Thursdays of Lent, starting at 7 p.m. on 27th. February in the church. This has arisen from our trip to the Holy Land where we spent our Friday being taken to the top of Masada by cable-car having first of all been shown a presentation about the importance of the fortress there. As part of the presentation there were scenes from this mini-series and so we determined to get hold of a copy we could watch in full once we returned home. Of course, this evening isn’t just for those of us who visited Masada, it is an evening for everyone. It is an exciting story and the film has been extremely well made.

Friday 6th. March is the World Day of Prayer and this year a service is being held at 7 p.m. in Christ Church, in Duns. It will be good for us to have the opportunity of joining with members of all of the local congregations at the Scottish Episcopal Church. The service is prepared by Christian women from a different country each year. This year the service has been prepared by women from Zimbabwe and the theme they have chosen is ‘Rise, take your mat and walk’.

During the week I have started arranging meetings with elders from some of the congregations in the Gordon, Greenlaw, Legerwood and Westruther grouping who will be without a minister when Tom Nicholson retires soon after Easter. As I mentioned last week, I am to be their interim moderator and this is the major reason that we have advanced our plans to have a cottage to which we can invite retired ministers to assist us with the many services which will have to be held in the very near future as we move towards a time when services will be more usually led by lay members of each congregation. It is going to be exciting times!

I started off by explaining that I thought that we were now getting our communication act together. But what of the message we are communicating? The message this week has been all about the results of our Sunday afternoon conference in January. These are now available on all of our media. I hope that they will be the subject of our discussions at home and when we meet in church so that when we have our next Sunday afternoon conference after a congregational lunch on 15th. March we can dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s and agree our policy for the rest of this year. Of course, work will already have begun on some of the plans which were clearly agreed at the first meeting – such as, for example, strengthening our communications strategy.

We value everyone’s opinions, so do share them – and look out for another edition of this blog next week!

Weekly Blog 12th. February, 2020

The spoken Blog 12th. February, 2020

On the face of it, with no weekly blog since the middle of January, it looks as though I have fallen at the first hurdle in my determination to provide a weekly blog to our web-site. However, when you consider that we have been away in the Holy Land from where there has been a blog entry every day, I trust you will forgive me!

It has been a tremendous experience for all twenty-seven of us. All of the arrangements worked perfectly. Our hotels were superb and very different. We lunched in a different environment each day and each day was superb. Our guide, Nael, was magnificent and our driver Hassan was calm and capable.

And then there were the sites we visited. We started in Jerusalem which we explored in considerable detail, and from which we moved out to explore the surrounding areas (what a wonderful afternoon we spent in Bethlehem) and then we moved north to the Sea of Galilee where we walked in the footsteps of Jesus’ ministry there. I’m not going to describe in detail our trip because that can be found under the title Holy Land Pilgrimage on the Home Page. Suffice it to say that the trip was everything we hoped for, and a lot more besides.

Earlier today I continued a series of talks I’ve been asked to give as part of the University of the Third Age here in Duns. My subject is to look at the history of the Church of Scotland, or better perhaps, the Church in Scotland from the beginnings right up until today. It is a story of faith and courage, of history shaped by events and by individuals, and today we were looking at the two decades between 1540 and 1560, exciting and difficult times which shaped the Church today.

This next period is going to be a challenging one for us in Fogo — and for me as well. I’ve been asked to act as Interim Moderator in the charge of Gordon, Greenlaw, Legerwood and Westruther which will become vacant when the current minister retires at the start of May, although he will leave his post at Easter because of accrued holiday entitlement. I think that in some minds at least it is hoped that the pattern we are attempting to adopt in Fogo of a congregation which can stand on its own feet without a stipendiary minister is one which may be appropriate in at least some part of this charge as well. Today I have been asked about a course to enable some of my Fogo members to train as worship leaders, something a little bit more formal than the hands on training we have been sharing together. So that will go on the agenda for the coming weeks.

We also have to take forward the planning which started last month to create a mission strategy for this year. Our conference after Church threw up a lot of ideas and some of these have now been processed. My task is to take these ideas and draw up a vision of how our congregation and church might look if these plans were adopted. This plan will then become a discussion document or video which would be used as the next stage in the consultation process which will, I imagine, involve another congregational lunch followed by a congregational discussion.

So that’s where we are — and there will be a number of special get-togethers, I’m sure, to share photos of the Holy Land trip and perhaps to watch the old film ‘Masada’. We visited Masada while in the Holy Land and in the introductory display we saw clips from that film. I’ve bought it now from Amazon and am just waiting for an opportunity to show it!

Weekly Bog 11th. January, 2020

Saturday 11th. January, 2020

This is going to be a really exciting week for us. Tomorrow we meet for our service as usual at 10.30 a.m. but this will be followed by a buffet lunch and then we shall meet as a Kirk Session, Congregational Board and Congregation to start work on preparing our mission strategy for this new year.

I suppose that it must sound strange that we have waited until the start of our fourth year together before having such a meeting. But we did meet a couple of years ago and draw up what we thought were the important things we ought to be doing under the heading of mission. More than half of the congregation met in Clare’s home and we prepared a list of nine things we thought we could do and, looking back, we have achieved almost all of them.

But, truth to tell, over the first three years of our new existence we have been concentrating on growing our congregation (what’s that if it is not mission?) and making our ancient building fit for worship in the twenty-first century. With all of that done — with a wonderful congregation and a glorious building — it is now time to concentrate on what we really exist for, and that’s what we are going to discuss tomorrow.

I can’t give you, dear reader, any clue as to what will be decided because we are hoping that the ideas will emerge from our members and friends. It is important, however, that we don’t see mission as a period of frenetic activity which once done will allow us to subside into a well-deserved comfort zone, but rather that we see mission as being what we are about today, tomorrow and every day.

Watch this space for news of how we get on!

On Thursday evening we shall have the final meeting of our group who are going on pilgrimage to the Holy Land at the end of this month. There are twenty-seven of us in all and it looks as if it is going to be the trip of a life time with us spending a number of days in Jerusalem exploring the city and the surrounding area before setting off for Galilee (via Caesarea and Acre) and spending four days exploring the places in which Jesus taught and healed during his ministry. We’ll be spending eleven days in all in the Holy Land and, with a packed programme, we’ll see an enormous amount of the country but I’m particularly looking forward to sailing on the Sea of Galilee and looking around at the sky and the sea and the shapes of the hills all around and realising that what I’m seeing is very similar to what Jesus and his disciples will have seen so many years ago. I hope to be able to post updates on where we are and what we see while we are away.

Next Sunday our service will be led by the Reverend John Hunter, a great friend of the congregation, and one who was born here in Fogo when his father was minister here. Looking further ahead to a week on Friday at 7 p.m. we shall welcome back Frog and Henry, the St. Louis jazz musicians who entertained us so royally last year. Put the date in your diary and plan to be with us.

January, 2020 Highlights

Frog and Henry played in Fogo in January
Rev. John Hunter conducted one of our Sunday morning services in January
After Church on Sunday 12th. January we held a congregational lunch followed by a conference to prepare our mission strategy for this year.

Sunday, 12th. January, 2020. Today was a big day at Fogo Parish Church. Our service at 10.30 a.m. was followed by a congregational lunch and conference session of what we should be doing as a congregation during 2020. It was a meeting of the Kirk Session, Congregational Board and members of the congregation deliberately structured as such to enable decisions to be made. The session was conducted by Julian, one of our new elders and experienced in leading such sessions. He asked us all to identify what made Fogo Church what it was, what brand image did we have in our own minds when we thought of our congregation or what made us want to belong. Then we were invited to think of the people to whom we wished to reach out — a whole variety of responses was received, from an elderly lady with few friends in a nursing home, through families who were doing well and had no interest at all in what happened in their local church, to young folk who had previously had no involvement at all with matters of faith. Finally we were asked to think through plans to reach out to those people we had identified. A huge range of proposals was produced ranging through those which might be grouped under the heading of communication, through those centering on special events, to making more use of digital media to reach out, share and interact with those whose circumstances prevent them from being with us, seeking the assistance of young folk to enable us to communicate with the elderly. The results of our conference will now be analysed and a detailed strategy produced with a view to being implemented by Easter.

On 27th. January twenty-seven folk set off from Fogo for an eleven day pilgrimage in the Holy Land (returning safely on 6th. February).

Roger made a special desert for our congregational lunch. It was very much appreciated!

Frog and Henry return for another triumph at Fogo

Frog and Henry one year on in Fogo last Friday

Frog and Henry takes Fogo by Storm

Frog and Henry, the new Orleans traditional jazz Band, played in Fogo Parish Church on Friday 24th. January and there wasn’t an empty seat in the church. Such was the welcome which Fogo had given the band when they unexpectedly included our small church in their Scottish tour last year that they agreed to include us in their tour this year even although their tour was intended only to take in venues in England. They made this one small incursion into Scotland. Such was the appreciation of their music last year that this year the church was filled to the doors leaving standing room only. The music was stupendous and the audience was so captivated that it refused to allow the musicians to stop playing until they had promised to include Fogo in their programme for next year. The programme of traditional jazz was superb and the musicians were rewarded with standing ovations, warm applause and genuine appreciation. It was an evening which will not be forgotten!

Taking their final bow — it has been a wonderful evening
Frog and Henry a year ago