Saturday 18th. July, 2020
I am heartily ashamed to have taken so long to get around to writing this blog entry. Here we are in lockdown, unable to go out and spend time with other people and yet every moment of every day has been taken up with activities which have prevented me from sitting down at my computer and writing a few words.
Now, let me spend the next few paragraphs explaining why this has been. First of all, presbytery agreed to have its end of June meeting by Zoom and at this meeting I was elected as Moderator for this next year. I wouldn’t expect that this will be especially onerous but it will involve time spent on presbytery matters which in the past I have been happy to leave to others!
At the same time, Tom Nicholson has retired from his charge of Gordon, Greenlaw, Legerwood and Westruther and I have taken over as interim moderator. Obviously there has not been a great which I can do physically during these strange times. But I have been providing an online service and I have been available on the telephone to try to help the congregations as they move forward. There isn’t going to be a vacancy because it has already been agreed (I think) that these congregations will not get another minister but will receive ministerial assistance and will be encouraged to learn to provide for themselves in the years ahead — that’s not to be hard on them, it is the way that the world — or at least the Church of Scotland — is going.
Risk assessments regarding church re-opening at these churches have been completed (Tom has supervised this), plans have been made, and it seems likely that Legerwood Parish Church will reopen on Sunday 2nd. August and Greenlaw on Sunday 30th. August. The congregation at Gordon hasn’t as yet made definite plans, nor have they applied for Presbytery permission to reopen, but I think that they are working towards the date of 6th. September as their reopening day.
You will know that the Scottish government gave permission for churches to reopen first for private prayer and then for communal worship subject to a whole range of conditions from this Sunday onwards. When the matter was raised at our Zoom Coffee and Chat meeting last Sunday everyone present thought that we should reopen the church this Sunday. I was quite taken by surprise at this as I thought that several of our folk would find it difficult to come back to church at this time. However, that was what was the clear feeling of our Zoom group so that is what we are doing. (I need to stress that those for whom it will be difficult should not come to church until they are ready to do so — our online worship is not to be seen as second best (certainly not by me, at any rate).
I will continue to provide an online service each Sunday both for adults and for children — I’ll just have to reconcile myself to the fact that there will be less folk sharing in it.
An enormous amount of work has gone into making the church ready to reopen for worship. It’s one thing to draw up a risk assessment and a plan of what should be done, it’s quite another to get it all done. And yet here we are on the day before our reopening with everything done, and done really thoroughly. Even our orders of service have been printed and placed in envelopes without being touched by hand, and the envelopes placed on seats without being touched by hand, and left on seats for three days to ensure tht they are absolutely risk free.
I won’t repeat all that has been done because it is all on the front page of this web-site; I will repeat my thanks to Tom and Tom and others who have made it all possible.
I should also tell you that Tom T has now taken on the task of being Presbytery Webmaster (the position really should come with a pointed hat) and he has been reinvigorating both the presbytery’s website and facebook page. He worked on the website so hard that at one stage it blew up and sat dormant for several days until it had got its breath back. There is still a lot to do but Tom is making real progress.
On the subject of facebook, about which I know several people have reservations, I should tell you that in the last twenty-eight days no less than 2,556 different people have accessed our page. That’s nothing compared to the facebook pages of the Church of Scotland or of the Moderator of the General Assembly, but for a small village church it’s not at all bad — and there have been some very supportive messages about both our worship and our daily prayers. So, well done team!
On the non-church front, Rachel decided that we were going to empty a barn and find a set of wardrobes which we used in our home in Luss. It was a very major exercise, but we managed and, even more remarkably, we succeeded in re-erecting the wardrobes — and they look great.
Other than that, there is little to report. Well, with all of the church preparations there has been little time for anything else. I look enviously at other folks’ nice shorn lawns and think, ‘If I didn’t have a service to prepare …’ But truth to tell, I have enjoyed the challenge of doing things differently, even if it has been such a steep learning curve.
Most of all I have enjoyed preparing something for the children — enjoyed and found challenging — as with everything new, it has taken me a little while to find my feet, but I’ve hit on the idea of being present with children in the early church as they meet with the disciples and ask them their questions. I’m finding that great fun. It will also take a while to find our feet, or at least for me to find my feet, in the new way of worshipping without singing in church but you are all kind and will allow me, I know, a few weeks to hit on an appropriate formula.
The one thing that I am really sorry about is that with the reopening of the church we can’t manage to have a Zoom Coffee and Chat at 11.15 a.m. We could if the church had broad band but unfortunately at present it doesn’t. I can’t tell you how much our Zoom meetings have encouraged me over these last months. I can’t tell you how much I have missed all of our church folk and how much I am looking forward to seeing you all again in the flesh quite soon.