December, 2021 Newsletter
Getting Back to Normal!
And soon it will be Christmas — we hope that you will join us.
Over recent weeks more people have been coming to church than we can ever remember and, what is really special for us, new folk are coming and joining our church family all the time.
That’s not to say that we don’t have some quiet Sundays because many of our congregation have families in different parts of the country to be visited and some have a penchant for foreign holidays but almost everyone is with us on a Sunday morning if they are at home.
What more can we ask for? Well, if you are reading this newsletter and you are part of our parish we would love to have you with us — and when better to come than at Christmastime.
Yes, we still have to wear masks but that won’t stop us from singing all of our favourite Christmas carols! And we promise you that we will keep you safe while you are in church, whether that’s taking part in a service or enjoying refreshments afterwards.
We do have one very special evening to which you might want to come. It’s on Wednesday 22nd. December in our Church starting at 6 p.m. with a sandwich, sausage roll and cake tea with some Christmas entertainment followed by a short Road-Show by the Presbytery on their plans for the future of the Church in our area.
These plans will be discussed elsewhere in this newsletter but if you would like to come and join us on this evening, we would love to have you with us.
You might like to know as well that teas and coffees are served every Wednesday morning from 10.30 a.m. until 12 noon. It is a very informal coffee and chat occasion and it is for everyone, no need to be a member or to ever have come to church. It’s a communal event for our Fogo community.
Our Christmas Programme
Sunday 12th. December at 10.30 a.m. A Service for the third Sunday of Advent.
Sunday 19th. December at 10.30 a.m. A Service of Nine Lessons and Carols.
Friday 24th. December at 6 p.m. Christingle Service
Friday 24th. December at 11.15 p.m. Watch-night Candle-lit Service
Saturday 25th. December at 10.30 a.m. Christmas Day Family Service with ‘fun around the tree’and a Christmas Celebration of Holy Communion (following all appropriate guide-lines).
Sunday 26th. December at 10.30 a.m. Boxing Day Service of Music and Christmas words from down the ages.
Sunday 26th. December at 5 p.m. A Service in which we remember those we love but whose absence we miss – an absence which we feel even more at Christmas-time.
Sunday 2nd. January at 10.30 a.m. A Service for a New Year.
We promise you a warm welcome at any or all of our Services. If you can’t join us in person then why not join in with our live-stream which is available at
www.fogokirk.org ….
…. and next time you might want to come in person!
What could be more beautiful?
All of the best pictures of our church have been taken by Molly — until now! This picture was taken by her son, Sandy, while he was home from Singapore and brought his drone with him. It really does remind us in what a beautiful spot our church was built all those years ago.
It is good to be able to report that the building is in a fine state of repair and that it survived the recent storms without a scratch. We are extremely fortunate.
One of our plans is to build a short pilgrimage walk around the perimeter of the church yard. This walk will tell the story of Saint Cuthbert on plaques made for the purpose. These plaques will also contain prayers and readings to guide the thoughts of those who choose to follow the trail which will end up in the church at the new little chapel which is currently under construction and which will also tell the story of the Saint who must have passed this way on several occasions during his life-time.
Saint Cuthbert has much more to teach us, however, for he is one who lived close to nature and taught his monks to care for the community of animals with whom they shared God’s world.
Caring for creation is not just an option for us today; it is an imperative if we are to pass on our beautiful world to those who follow us and our pathway and chapel will help keep this at the front of our minds as well as speaking to those who come here of the beauty of God’s creation.
Here is our St. Cuthbert’s Chapel. There is a lot of work to be done! The walls, from the wooden baton in the picture to the floor, will be oak panelled. From the panelling to the line you can just see, three feet or so above, there will be painted the life story of Saint Cuthbert, and, above that, will be a prayer of the Saint in lettering of about six inches high.
It will be a beautiful and a quiet place of meditation and we hope that it will be used by our members, by our community and by those who come to visit. All of the work is being done by our own members and we are extremely grateful to them all.
Now here is a picture you might want to keep and show to your grandchildren! This is how we used to have to go to church, all wearing our masks!
We hope that this won’t be the future for us all for all time to come but, while you are looking at the masks, do look and see how very beautiful our church looks as well.
It’s always warm, it has comfy seating, it is always well filled and it is ever so friendly. And, what’s more, the church is always open!
Big Changes afoot!
All over Scotland congregations are wondering what is going to happen to them over the next few years. Our traditional Presbyteries are going to disappear, to be replaced by fewer larger ones.
The Presbytery of Duns will join with the Presbyteries of Lothian, Jedburgh, and Melrose and Peebles to create the new Presbytery of Lothian and the Borders. This will take effect from the 1st. January, 2023 — just twelve months away.
The number of full-time ministers serving Berwickshire and the town of Berwick will drop to just four from the 1st. January, 2025. How will we cope?
The Church of Scotland centrally envisages that as many as forty percent of Church buildings will close. Those that remain will obviously have to be able to show that they have a viable congregation, that they have the facilities necessary to serve the needs of their members and their communities in the years ahead and that they can afford to pay their way.
We are not sure what the future holds for us in Fogo. Our presbytery appears to have accepted that we can’t just continue to make bigger and bigger parishes and expect one minister to look after more and more congregations and more and more people. Instead, the limited staff which our area will have will perhaps be used to support the members of congregations to look after themselves. That’s not something which frightens us. In fact it’s what we have been doing for the last five years.
We regularly conduct our own worship. We care for each other in our church family. We are adapting our building as we can to make it more appropriate both for our own use and for community use as well. We seek to reach out into our community. We learn about our faith and we seek to make a difference to the world.
This Christmas we are giving financial gifts to our Missionary partner, Dr. Linus Malu who is working in Malawi helping men and women abandoned by their partners to set up small businesses with which to support their children. It is wonderful work and Linus achieves so much with so little in our terms.
We are also sending money to the Jeel al Amal children’s school in Bethany. We visited the school when our congregation went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land last year and we saw how the staff of this school welcomed everyone and provided an education, and for many, a home, for those who otherwise would have nothing at all.
We’re not a rich congregation but our members are extremely generous and we are totally self-supporting and with enough to spare to help other people. Of course, in the world’s terms, we are extremely rich and so it is important that we try to make a difference: here in our own community and throughout the world.
From the Minister’s Desk
There is no doubt that Covid has affected us but now we are beginning to get back to normal. There are still one or two of our members who are not quite sure about returning to Church but several, I might also say many, new folk have come to join us and our numbers are now back to where they were before the pandemic hit.
We are all having to learn new skills! How do you sing while wearing a mask? How do you read the words from our Orders of Service without your glasses steaming up? How do you remember not to hug a friend or offer your hand to a stranger who has come to join us?
Remarkably, we have all learned to take these things in our stride! It is great that we are now permitted to share in after-church refreshments and to sit and chat with each other again.
I’ve had to learn all kind of new skills, not least learning to communicate with folk through video. One of the hardest things has been being unable to attend school assemblies but rather having to prepare my message on video and hand it in to the school on a memory stick — it’s certainly not something I was taught at college all those years ago!
Our Sunday service now is live-streamed, ‘broadcast’ might be a better word, on our website every Sunday morning. It’s watched by some of our folk who are unable to come to church but it is also watched as far afield as in America and in Switzerland from where we now boast ‘overseas members.’
In order to keep in touch with everyone I now prepare a Saturday email which I send out to everyone on our Church list (it is on our church website) and I try to keep everyone aware of all that is going on in our church community. Staying in touch is so very important.
Our Plans for 2022
If you haven’t visited Fogo Parish Church recently it would be worth popping in to see how beautiful the building has become and how suitable it now is for community events of all different kinds.
High on our list of plans for next year is to restart our programme of musical events. Already we have been approached from a number of different directions about the possibility of groups coming to perform in the Church. Our answer has always been that we would love to have them.
There are some groups totally new to Fogo and that will be great but we are particularly hoping that Frog and Henry, the New Orleans Jazz Band, who have made two visits to us before Covid, will return in the new year.
We are also going to start a number of congregational evenings in Church in the new year. Our plan is that each of these will be in groups of four evenings so that the commitment from those who come is not for an extended time.
We are talking about having a series of four special guest speakers: perhaps we might start the evening with a simple supper and then sit on our new comfy seats and enjoy hearing a really good speaker entertain or enlighten us.
We have some special films we might show. Again this might be best in a series of four and might end with some light refreshments while we talked about what we had seen.
Some folk have expressed a desire for some form of Bible Study — not the kind where we come along and open the Bible and all speak about what is written but rather where there is an introductory talk explaining the background and perhaps identifying what we can learn and why the passage or the book has been valued over so many years. So many of us realise that we don’t have the Bible knowledge that our grand-parents had and we’d like to learn.
And then there are those of us who would like to meet regularly and eat together, using the basic facilities which the church now has to enable that to happen. Maybe this could incorporate an after-dinner speaker or a musical entertainer.
The sky really is the limit and now that we have such a very beautiful community facility we want to use it and share it with everyone in our community.
“You are always welcome at Fogo Parish Church”