Author Archives: PleasantDane
April, 2022 Newsletter
And now for a mask-free Easter!
It goes without saying that we are going to continue to take every precaution and do all that we can to keep everyone safe — but how wonderful that those who wish can now sing without a mask and can begin to enjoy again worship as it used to be!
Because our church is quite large and has some beautiful box pews, then those who wish to keep their distance and to wear masks can safely do that, while who wish to worship mask-free can do that as well!
As you will see from the list below, we have a busy programme of services for Easter — but this is only part of our offering for, in the evenings, following our service, there will be a programme of Biblical films exploring the Easter story. Some will be old favourites and some perhaps, ones which you may have forgotten about because they appeared once on television and then disappeared.
Of course, the coffee bar will be open during each evening and the beauty of our church is that it is always warm. The Coffee Bar is also always open on Wednesday mornings from 10.30 until 12 noon.
Why not make this an Easter which you devote to learning and worshipping? You will never be the same again!
Our Easter Programme
Sunday 10th. April at 10.30 a.m.
Palm Sunday Service.
We remember Jesus entering Jerusalem as a pilgrim, riding on a donkey.
Monday 11th. April at 6 p.m.
Service for Monday in Holy Week.
We remember the cleansing of the Temple by Jesus in Jerusalem.
Tuesday 12th. April at 6 p.m.
Service for Tuesday in Holy Week.
We remember a day of teaching in the Temple.
Wednesday 13th. April at 6 p.m.
Service for Wednesday in Holy Week.
We remember Jesus in quiet at Bethany while Judas prepares to betray Jesus.
Thursday 14th. April at 2 p.m.
A Service of the Stations of the Cross in the open air of our church yard.
Thursday 14th. April at 6 p.m.
Service for Maundy Thursday.
We remember Jesus sharing in his Last Supper with his disciples in the Upper Room.
Friday 15th. April at 6 p.m.
Service for Good Friday.
We remember the Passion of our Lord; his trial and his execution on the Cross.
Sunday 17th. April at 8 a.m.
A Service for Easter Day in the open air of our church yard, followed by breakfast in the church.
Sunday 17th. April at 10.30 a.m.
Easter Sunday Service of Holy Communion including the Ordination of new elders.
Our services are open to all and if you come to join us we promise you a very warm welcome.
What a beautiful world we live in!
We are so fortunate to live in this beautiful part of God’s world. That was a theme which came through a recent Presbytery conference held in Duns Parish Church.
As a result, as we reported in a previous newsletter, we decided to respond to the conference by creating a pilgrimage walk and a small chapel dedicated to telling the story of Saint Cuthbert who will have known our parish area well.
Work has now started on both of these projects and the first fifteen plaques can now be seen if you come to visit our church yard. Eventually there will be almost fifty plaques and these will tell the story of Saint Cuthbert and will include prayers, meditations and other thoughts to challenge our care of God’s world.
We hope that this pilgrimage walk will attract visitors to our church and will raise the profile of a Saint whom many people now only associate with his time in England — at Lindisfarne and later, after his death, with Durham. Of course, as know, his home was in Melrose and it was there that he started work as a shepherd, before the vision described on this plaque:
Meanwhile work has continued on our Saint Cuthbert’s Chapel.
Dave has wood-panelled the lower part of the walls — and has made a magnificent job of it. Rachel has painted the walls and ceiling a beautiful shade of duck blue and has added Celtic designs. The chapel is now ready for the prayer around the walls and the pictures of the life of Saint Cuthbert.
But work has now temporarily been halted because we are all working to create a home for a Ukrainian family. We have property available at Mount Pleasant and we have a splendid team of joiners and other workers within the congregation: so it is the obvious thing for us to do.
Making a Difference
No one reading this newsletter will need to be told that we are a tiny congregation in the smallest parish in Berwickshire. You would be excused for thinking that, small as we are, we would not be making much of a difference to the world in which we live.
We make more of a difference than you might think. In 2020, just before lockdown, twenty-eight of us visited the Holy Land and, while we were there, we visited the Jeel al Amal School in Bethany.
It’s a very poor (in financial terms) school in an area of great poverty, but as a school it never turns anyone away regardless of their religion or background (and that’s quite something where they are).
When we came home we sent money to buy some luxuries — you see the games they bought with our money in the picture. So far we have sent them £5,000 and we are committed to adding to this total each year.
Dr. Linus Malu is our Missionary partner. He is based in Malawi and there he works with folk who have no way of supporting themselves. Very often this is with women who have been abandoned by their husbands and who now have no way of supporting themselves or their children — but sometimes it can be men who have been abandoned by their wives.
Because the economy is so different from our own, Linus is able to set people up in small businesses of their own and each business can cost as little as £300 for something which is totally life-changing for those involved. Of course, Linus is there to provide on-going support.
In a recent letter, Linus told us that “sometimes the women make such a big success of their businesses that their husbands want to come back and re-join the family!” We have so far contributed to quite a few small businesses in Malawi and we aim to provide at least £2,000 a year to Linus for his amazing work.
The picture above shows our first consignment of medical equipment being loaded into a container for Ukraine.
Our first load of equipment was largely made up of responder first-aid kits but we are now gathering funds both to send directly to Ukraine and to support a family when they come to stay with us.
Of course, there are many other ways in which we help other people, many of which it would not be appropriate to include within our newsletter, but the message is clear: even a very small congregation in a very small parish can make a big difference to the folk in the world which we share. Next time you see the church as you pass by do remember all the love for others which is pouring from its doors!
From the Minister’s Desk
I want to tell you about the photograph you see here. The person with his camera photographing the view from Megiddo in Israel is Nael who was our guide when we visited the Holy Land early in 2022.
During the nearly two weeks that we were with Nael we saw so much. But, of course, in a limited time it is impossible to see everything; so now Nael is taking us on virtual tours of the Holy Land seeing all of the places we missed. Here he is showing us Megiddo, one of the most important sites in Old Testament times. Conscious that not everyone in our congregation was able to come to the Holy Land, Nael is now preparing a tour of Nazareth, where Jesus was born, for us all.
Isn’t technology wonderful? We can meet in our beautiful little church and share in a live tour of somewhere special with an expert guide just as people from all around the world can tune in and join us for our Sunday morning service and then we can keep in touch with them by email afterwards. Fantastic!
Tucked away at the back of the Newsletter
This is tucked away at the back because, while it may be of interest to our members, it really isn’t of much interest to other folk.. It’s what you might call our domestic business.
First, we are delighted to tell you that three new elders have been appointed: Molly Hodges, Alan Leighton and John Baird. They will be Ordained and Admitted to the Kirk Session on Easter Sunday (which will make Easter Sunday even more to be celebrated)!
Second, the Kirk Session received the accounts at a recent meeting. These show that last year even although we had all of the difficulties with lock-downs, we still ended the year with more money in our General Account than at the start of the year.
You will remember that when we all started together five years ago we didn’t even have two brass farthings to rub together (in fact we inherited a few bills).
Last year we spent a considerable amount of money on ensuring that our equipment to enable us to stream our services was as good as it could possibly be (and the result of that can be seen on our live-stream available through our web-site). We also continued our programme of improving the church — our new coffee bar as well as the glorious gifts of our Stations of the Cross and Christmas candle-holders.
But even having spent as much as we have, we have generated a surplus and have just under £50,000 in the bank (a little over £43,000 is what is left in our Mission Fund and £6,000 is available for general purposes). So we have done well.
In reality we are where we are because of the generosity of our members and, even although this is tucked away at the back of the Newsletter, it is important that you all know how much your generosity is appreciated.
Congregations exist to make the world into a better place for other people and together we shall certainly be able to do that during the remainder of the year and into the future.
But we shall be doing so much more besides. The regular Thursday evening film show will grow into something a little bigger. We are planning some meals together with speakers with something really interesting to say and we shall revisit our Mission and Education plans which were put on hold by the covid pandemic.
December 2021 Newsletter
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”
November 2020 Newsletter
Such a lot has happened!
How we have coped — and are coping — in these difficult times.
Our last newsletter was delivered to your door in March, just before we all went into lockdown together. Our March Newsletter was an optimistic one; several of us had just come back from the pilgrimage of a lifetime which had taken us from Jerusalem to Galilee as we had walked in the footsteps of Jesus.
We had also just completed, as a congregation, a mission plan which set our in some detail all that we were about to attempt in our parish. In fact immediately before lockdown we had held a congregational buffet lunch to launch our plan. All of that had to be abandoned as we started to live in a world in which we were no longer even allowed to go to church and worship on a Sunday morning.
Not, of course, that we disagreed with the decision which had been made to keep us all safe — it was just all so unbelievable: one day we were filled with enthusiasm of all that we were going to do and the next we were in lockdown. For us that has proved to be not nearly so difficult as it has for people in other places in our country. It has been brought home to us how fortunate we are to live in such a beautiful place. We have been able to enjoy walks in our glorious countryside and our area had not been affected nearly as badly as have many other areas. What must it have been like to live in a small flat in a big city?
Keeping in touch with our members.
We have also tried to keep in touch with each other over these times, not least during lockdown with a weekly Zoom meeting after church. I say ‘after church’ and that needs a word of explanation. As soon as the lockdown began we started to produce a church service which we put online. Because it was online anyone could have drawn it down at any time, but we asked all of our members to access the service in their homes on Sunday morning at 10.30 a.m. — the time of our normal Sunday Service. It was good to feel that although we were in different places, we were still worshipping together. After the service everyone was allowed five minutes to make themselves a coffee and then we all joined together for a Zoom Coffee and Chat.
Preparing Online Worship
We have brushed over quite quickly the putting of a service online each week. In fact this was a major learning experience. A small recording studio was set up in the summer house at Mount Pleasant — a couple of lights and a couple of cameras with everything being recorded onto tape (we were using equipment which was bought in the 1990s).
The completed tape was then taken to a computer room which had been adapted to allow the film to be edited using a sophisticated video editing programme. It was here that the music was prepared at well. We thought long and hard about what to do about music. Some other congregations have drawn down musical items from the internet (and these look fabulous) but we were concerned about copyright and so we prepared every item of music individually, writing a midi-file of each tune, converting this midi-file to a wav-file, then matching the music file to a set of pictures which matched the words of the hymn (often of our local area and also using the pictures we had taken during our recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land). Finally we prepared the words of the hymns and superimposed
them on the pictures. In reality, we created many short films, each of them of one hymn, which we can fit into our Sunday service. To date we have created about one hundred and fifty such films!
Most of our services have been recorded in the summer house at Mount Pleasant but occasionally we have recorded the service in the Church itself — with the added challenges of an outside broadcast! We did this at Easter and at Pentecost and on each of these occasions we also held an online service of Holy Communion. Each of our members had wine and bread already to hand in their own homes and we shared together in our own different places. It’s not something we would have thought of doing before lockdown but difficult times challenge us to adopt different solutions and these services were certainly appreciated.
Sometimes we are asked how our online services differ from what we used to do in church. Probably our services have become a bit more educational — we have spent a number of weeks journeying right through the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, using maps and pictures, something which it is harder to do in our church building.
Childrens’ Online Worship
While the children in our congregation were in lockdown, we also provided a special service for them. Each one of these films consisted of a story, a short prayer and a song and many of the congregation have told us that they enjoyed these as well. We quickly developed a shape for these stories, imagining that a group of children were spending time with Jesus’ special friends, the disciples, in the weeks after the very first Easter. It was a framework which enabled each disciple in turn to tell a story and seemed to work very well. Also during lockdown a team of congregational members put up a daily reading, thought and prayer on our website. These were very much appreciated.
And then our World Expanded!
We were well into lockdown when the minister of Gordon, Greenlaw, Legerwood and Westruther retired and, after a delay caused by the virus regulations was able to move to his new home in Orkney. We were asked to take over the care of these congregations which, it had been agreed, would not get a replacement minister for Mr. Nicholson now that he had retired.
Initially this meant that we started to put out several versions of our online service with one branded for each of these additional congregations and in some cases we were able to hold Zoom meetings as well. Meanwhile, we had a great deal of planning to do.
First of all we had to discover what each of these congregations wished for the future. One of these congregations, Westruther, wanted to close down. It had been struggling for the last few years and had regularly had a Sunday congregation in single figures. It was arranged that once we came out of lockdown a Presbytery Service would be arranged to close the church formally, the congregation and parish area becoming part of Gordon Parish Church (as incidentally it was until 1647)!
The other congregations wished to continue with the worship patterns which they had adopted over previous years. There would be a service each week in Greenlaw, twice a month in Gordon and once a month in Legerwood.
It was also agreed that each of these congregations would set out on a journey which would lead to their becoming more and more responsible for their own worship, mission and pastoral care. This journey, which is also the journey on which our own Fogo congregation is on, will take at least a couple of years and will be supported every moment of the way, not just for a couple of years but into the long term as well.
But how were we to make this happen? The first thing that we did was to recruit a ministry team to provide the support and initially to conduct services in these churches because it was not felt appropriate to expect congregations to run their own services immediately — not least because of the covid-19 difficulties, the start of a new ministry in a difficult situation after Tom Nicholson had had to leave without any of the farewells which were planned, and after a twenty-five year ministry, and to enable us to build up trust with our new friends. A team of four retired ministers agreed to take on responsibility for this — joining our minister were Rev. Dr. Ken Walker, Rev. Veronica Walker and Rev. John Hunter. (You will maybe remember John Hunter as a son of the Fogo Manse — his father was minister in Fogo during the middle years of the twentieth century and he is delighted to be back sharing with us in this adventure.) Over recent months John has conducted our service on the first Sunday of every month.
Moving Out of Lockdown
So far we have described our plans for coming out of lockdown but now for the reality. Once a date for reopening had been given to us for our churches we immediately had to complete a detailed risk assessment and make arrangements to ensure that anyone coming to worship in Fogo Parish Church would be safe.
The toilet was removed. This was partly because toilets were no longer to be available because there was a risk in their being used by several people between deep cleans and partly because it was recommended that every church should have a one-way system with folk leaving through a different door than the one by which they entered.
A number of small green men signs were made and placed on seats which could be used, with red men signs on those that should not be used: that way social distancing would be observed. A sanitising station was set up and a routine for those arriving at church established. Everyone is met at the gate by an elder and asked to walk to church in a socially distanced fashion. Members are met at the church door by another elder who ensures that everyone is wearing a mask, takes their contact details (which, in accordance with the law, are held for twenty-one days) and allows them into church where they are met by another elder who allocates them to a seat. At the end of the service, we exit in the same way.
Having established a system that works, two of our elders helped establish a similar system at our sister congregations and a worship pattern began. There is a service every Sunday in Fogo, Gordon, Greenlaw and Westruther on the first Sunday of every month; every Sunday at Fogo and Greenlaw, and also on the third Sunday in Gordon, and our ministry team moves around the churches so that we are getting to know the different congregations.
But worship is not how it was! The major difference is that we are no longer able to sing. I don’t think that any of us had quite understood what a difference this would make to our worship. We still listen to hymns, we still follow the words, some of us read the words out loud, others hum gently to themselves. How we shall develop as time goes on, we don’t yet know.
Also our numbers of people coming to church are lower than they were because, not unnaturally, many of our folk are still shielding and are unwilling to take the risk of coming to meet with other people. For this reason we continue to offer an online service each Sunday. This service is normally, but not always, a reflection of the service which our minister is conducting in one of the services throughout our grouping.
Moving Forward
You may remember that before churches were allowed to open for communal worship they were permitted to open for private prayer. Quite a number of people regularly made use of our church for this purpose.
You may also remember that very severe woodworm and rot was discovered in the former Hog gallery in the church and, as a result we had to strip out the old pews and make significant repairs to the loft. What has now been done is to convert that gallery into a quiet meditative room. We think that it is very beautiful and will be extremely useful for us, not only when we come out of lockdown but also at present when people are often feeling like going somewhere special for private prayer. We recognise that having such a facility upstairs is not ideal. We have had a handrail installed on the steps but we would like to know at once if there are people who would wish to use this facility but who are unable to use the stairs even with the existing handrail.
There are a number of other changes which have happened within our church in recent weeks. We have already mentioned that the congregation at Westruther decided to close their building. Much of what was within the church went to Gordon Parish Church which has now taken over responsibility for the parish of Westruther. The communion table and lectern was originally offered to Greenlaw Parish Church but, after considering the matter, the Kirk Session there thought that their own existing communion table should be retained because it matched the pulpit. It was then offered to us and we have accepted that generous gift because the increased size of the table is much more appropriate for us now that we have a larger chancel than we did before. The lectern matches the communion table (as well as our new font) and is something of which we have been in need for a long time. Our existing communion table now has the place of honour in our new quiet room in the former Hog gallery and so everything has worked out perfectly! I know too that it is important to the folk of Westruther that their treasures remain in this area and continue to be used in worship.
The other difference you may notice (but only if you look very carefully) is that the church has now been equipped with broadband. This is to allow us to start to stream our Sunday morning services. This might be as an alternative to a pre-prepared morning service online and will allow people who are at home to share in what is happening in church as it happens.
It will also enable us to interact with other churches in our group. Gordon and Greenlaw will shortly be equipped with large televisions similar to the one which we have and, once the system is up and running it will be possible for all of us to share in a sermon (for example) preached in one church and watched in all three as it happens.
These are difficult times but we have moved forward as well and we look forward to welcoming you to your Parish Church — there is a warm welcome waiting for you!
We hope that in our next Newsletter we will be able to report that some of our activities will have restarted — we shall certainly be able to share our Christmas plans and hope that you will join us. In the meantime, do keep safe and well and remember how very grateful we are to all of you for your support.
From the Minister’s desk
My remarks in this newsletter need to be words of thanks. It would have been so easy for our church family to fall apart in the face of all of the current difficulties, but, in fact, we have become stronger and everyone has been ‘going the second mile’ to help each other and others of whom they are aware.
I must thank everyone who has joined us online and those who, now that we are back in church, have been joining us Sunday by Sunday. Many congregations have discovered that without a congregation meeting Sunday by Sunday their finances have slumped alarmingly. That hasn’t been our experience. Our treasurer has received cheques through the post and quite a number of our congregation make their giving by standing order. This has been hugely appreciated because our costs haven’t dropped during lockdown — really because our two major expenses are the insurance of the building and our heating (which is a twenty-four hour a day permanent system).
I have been able to share with several folk in our parishes at difficult times and I appreciate how difficult these times have been. As well as meeting and talking with folk, we have had several funeral services and, also, one very, very happy wedding. Even in the middle of this pandemic life goes on.
At present one of our concerns is how to celebrate Christmas. I love Christmas carols but it looks as though there will continue to have some very special services and I am committed to ensuring that this Christmas in church will be just as special as it has always been. We shall celebrate God’s love in sending his Son into our world to bring us back to him and we shall find appropriate ways of doing this — so watch this space!
Do remember, that no matter what the situation is, I am here to help and am always available. You can catch me on 01361 882254 or on my mobile ‘phone on 07582 468468. I would love to hear from you and to listen to what you have to say.
“You are always welcome at Fogo Parish Church”
Weekly Blog Saturday 18th. July, 2020
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.
Weekly Bog Saturday 20th. June, 2020
Saturday 20th. June, 2020
Well, here we are already in the middle of summer. We all from Mount Pleasant sat out in the courtyard in the sunshine this afternoon with Scott (my brother) and Sue and their daughter Katie. Mum really enjoyed seeing real people who weren’t carers. It was such a novel experience that I forgot to take a photograph!
This week has been busy by lockdown standards. I attended a Zoom Business Committee meeting about Presbyery, a Ministers’ meeting about Presbytery and a Kirk Session Meeting as well and, I understand, on Tuesday there will be a Presbytery meeting on Zoom.
The meeting which affects us in Fogo was our Kirk Session meeting which had been called by Tom (our Session Clerk to distinguish him from Tom our Presbytery Elder) to seek the Kirk Session’s approval to our seeking permission from Presbytery to reopen our Church for private prayer as well as, for example, small funeral gatherings.
To get to this stage Tom had completed a twelve-page risk assessment and both Toms will be at church on Moday ensuring that everything is implemented. It’s not so much about social distancing in church (that is quite straightforard in our situation), so much as getting folk in and out. I suppose we’ll have to have someone on duty at the church gate to ensure that folk walk down the path in isolation, and then someone outside the church only admitting folk one at a time or in their small family groups, and then another inside the church to direct those who have come in to sanitise their hands and to go to a particular seat or pew. And then, at the end of the service the whole thing can be done in reverse. It maybe that after even a small service we shall have to close the church for seventy-two hours to enable any virus to die out: at least that is one of the suggestions which has been made to us.
Of course, having permission to open the church is not the same as saying that we will open it on all occasions. There are certainly no plans at present to open the church for morning worship. It is not yet permitted and in any case, even if it were, we might have reservations about opening because so many of our folk might not be able to come because of health conditions. I think that we shall be online for quite a while yet, and probably there will be a time in the future when we are both on line and in church.
Which leads me on to thinking about what we do online. I’ve been looking at what different churches do on line at the moment — there is a huge variety of offerings. Some, Norman at Ayton and Andrew at Duns, offer a Zoom service on Sunday morning. Andy at Eyemouth streams a service from his home. This is recorded and offered later on in the day on Facebook. Adam at Berwick and Mike at Chirnside offer shorter meditative services using lots of pictures and often quite modern singing and music. Norman also offers a written thought for Sunday while David at Coldstream presents a written service with the hymns and short talk on video in their appropriate place within the script. All work well and are, I know, generally appreciated and I have tried where I can to share their services on our FaceBook page so that we can all enjoy and be encouraged by what other local congregations are sharing. (I haven’t told you about what Gordon, Greenlaw and Legerwood are doing because, since Tom retired, they are sharing with us.)
I’ve adopted a slightly different approach in attempting to present a complete and fairly traditional service from my Mount Pleasant lockdown headquarters! The reason I’ve adopted this approach is because I know that folk need something of the traditional to hold on to while we are out of our churches and what I offer is certainly more traditional than what I offer in church, not least because in church I normally would share the service with at least seven or eight other people, a luxury which is denied me while operating in lockdown.
I’ve also tried to concentrate on the educational side of the preaching spectrum because I think that while we have time to think in our isolated situations it is good to try to remind people of some of the important stories from Scripture and to try to build up all of our Biblical knowledge and understanding. That’s why I have started working my way through the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, an adventure in which the apostles always seem to be up against it (as we seem to be just now) but come sailing through and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit achieve the most remarkable results.
When it came to mission they knew what they were doing — if they hadn’t, I don’t suppose that we would be here worshipping together today — and whether many future generations will be doing the same in years to come will depend upon how we act, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, today.
Weekly Blog Saturday 13th. June, 2020
Saturday 13th. June
I took this photograph this morning, not because of the beautiful view, but because after all of the glorious weather we have been enjoying, today we were in a real Scottish mist — we could hardly see Mount Pleasant up ahead of us.
This has been a busy week. I have been preparing services while Rachel has been emptying boxes and organising her weaving studio. I don’t suppose that our country has ever been filled with so many people who have done so much organising and tidying and gardening. Rachel has been busy in the garden outside our backdoor but the side of the driveway have gone to wrack and ruin and a recent delivery man said to me that the only grass he had seen which was longer was the rough at Duns Golf Course. (He confessed to playing two and a half rounds and losing eight golf balls. I think that I had better wait until the rough has been cut down a bit.)
On the news front, I have had an email suggesting that very soon there is going to be a Zoom Presbytery meeting. I’m glad of that because the future of the Gordon, Greenlaw, Legerwood and Westruther parishes for which I am responsible as Interim Moderator still has to be fully discussed and agreed. It is most odd being Interim Moderator of congregations which you cannot meet — all I have been doing is to prepare services online for Sunday worship and make myself available by telephone for anyone who would like to speak to me. Mind you, in these difficult times, I’m not sure that I really can be much help to anyone.
One of the things which has happened over recent week is a regular meeting of ministers in the presbytery on Zoom. For this week’s meeting we were each invited to prepare a two (or three) minute presentation on our vision of the presbytery in the future. One of the ground rules (although never formally stated) is that we should each be able to expect our thoughts to remain confidential, that way we can all share freely. But I am happy to share my own contribution and I am enclosing it here so that, if you are interested, you may see the way that my thoughts are developing. Of course, it is not possible to present a fully rounded vision in such a limited time but I found it interesting to listen to everyone’s views on where we are going.
I’d love to know what everyone in our church family has to say about the way forward.
I don’t know how long everything is going to continue as it is just now. Today I have received a lengthy document about all that we will have to do before we can reopen our Church for worship. There is a lengthy risk assessment which has to be completed, but I am sure that we shall be able to deal with that. Our aim, I suspect, will be to enable worship in the church once it is allowed while at the same time continuing to offer worship and support for those who prefer not to come to church just yet. Some of the thoughts coming from Church headquarters seem to suggest that some of us will be discovering that our church buildings are not as important as we thought that they were (perhaps preparing us to close more buildings). I must say that I am missing our building more than I ever imagined I would. It is a Holy Space and while I know that God is present with us wherever we are, our Church, hallowed by so many centuries of worship, is a very special place to me (and I’ve only been part of it for four years)!
There is a lot of talk just now about churches not being the most practical buildings for the future. I’ve come to believe that there are things about our church which are unbelievably appropriate. I’ll maybe tell you about something different which falls into this categorie (or invite you to tell me) each week, but right at the top of the list is the pathway from our gate to the Church. It is wonderful. It provides me with an opportunity to have a talk with everyone as they arrive and as they leave and I go home after a service really feeling that I have really been with everyone with whom I have worshipped. Mind you I am astounded by the number of steps which my fitbit tells me I make on a normal Sunday morning!
We are so fortunate in having such a lovely place in which to worship on a Sunday morning — mind you, we are so fortunate to have such a lovely church family with whom to worship as well. I hope that you have a very good week.
Weekly Blog Saturday 6th. June, 2020
Saturday 6th. June
It’s been a good week. Sunny for the most part, and earlier in the week we were able to eat outside in the courtyard which was an incentive for us to try to do some tidying up. We also got into one of the barns and started emptying boxes which had remained untouched since we came here from Loch Lomond-side nearly seven years ago.
It was lovely to eat out in the open air with never a midge to be seen and I have watched all of the pictures of my former home being overrun with visitors and thought how fortunate we are to be here in the Borders.
Pentecost was special for me. It was grand to be back in Church even if just to film the service and it was really kind of so many people to contact me afterwards and tell me how much they had enjoyed our service and not just from our congregation but from other local congregations as well. Having said that, I need to tell you that folk have also been in touch with me to say how much they are enjoying the daily prayers and meditations prepared by our members. So thank you to everyone involved!
There is still no news on when we shall be able to get back into our church for regular worship and we may be continuing to share online for some time to come although, I understand, having the church officially open for private prayer will be allowed quite soon.
I’ve enjoyed putting together a service for Trinity Sunday tomorrow (Trinity Sunday really is quite unique in the Christian calendar) and I’m swithering about what to concentrate on in coming weeks. The lectionary will continue to provide us with Gospel and Old Testament passages but I’m finding myself drawn to the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, I think because these are such strange times and I feel an affinity with those first Christians as we endure lockdown and a threatening world around us. On the other hand, Matthew has a great deal to teach us as well. I’d love to hear what other folk think.
Now it is time for me to join the others in the farmhouse for our evening meal, after which Rachel and I are taking the dogs for an evening stroll to celebrate the fact that Clare’s former dog Ditto, now staying with us, is three today and Rachel says that even dogs have to be indulged on their birthdays!
I hope you have a very happy week.
Weekly Blog Saturday 30th. May, 2020
Saturday 30th. May, 2020
It has been a strange week with my mother in hospital until yesterday afternoon when she was delivered home to us, now recovered from her infection and deemed fit enough to move around with the assistance of her family and carers. We have also had two deaths in our extended family, both elderly and, to a certain extent, expected but still very sad and, with the current necessary lockdown conditions, difficult. I have certainly learned quite quickly how difficult it must be for some folk at the present time. It’s not easy to be in hospital and to have no visitors. It’s not easy to have a loved one in hospital and not to be able to visit. It’s not easy to have a loved one die and not to have been able to be with him to hold his hand nor to plan a funeral the way one might have wished. But, of course, we all understand why it is essential that we all accept the rules and live by them for the benefit of ourselves and of everyone else.
This weekend is Pentecost when we shall celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church and, in a very real sense, the birthday of the Church. I think and have always thought that this is one of the most important festivals of the Christian year and for this reason I and my camera recorded our service for this weekend from our Church. Social distancing didn’t come into it. I didn’t see another soul (except for Rachel who visited me briefly to do the reading). It is interesting that the right of a minister to visit his place of worship is specifically allowed under the Scottish covid-19 legislation.
Our service includes Holy Communion really because for me it is inconceivable to celebrate Pentecost without communion and, in these days of lockdown, there is no other way that we can do this. Although I prepare and film the service during the week, it is still quite a worshipful experience for me when I sit down with Rachel to share in the service at 10.30 on a Sunday morning. I really like the idea that although we are all in different places we are worshipping together in our own place.
I was asked how Sunday could still be special for me when I had spent all week preparing and delivering the service on video. I can tell you that it is, and when you think about it, it is no different than before when I would live with a service during the week leading up to Sunday, when everything that had been prepared would be shared. in Church. It was still special, in fact in Fogo Kirk it always was very special, and there were many times that I left Church having felt that God had been very close during our worship together. But it is also really special to see everyone’s faces at our Zoom Coffee and Chat!
I’m grateful to Tom and John who have been advising me on the development of our website and social media. I’ve been looking at what our sister congregations in the Borders provide, and learning from them. I always knew that the Church of Scotland had its own facebook page; what I didn’t realise until a couple of days ago is that there is a special facebook page for the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The reason why I am telling you this is that on Pentecost Sunday, through that page and, I suspect, through the webpage of the Church of Scotland, the Moderator is leading a country-wide service for the Festival of Pentecost. I understand that this service is embargoed until tomorrow but I will endeavour to provide a link so that our folk may tune in to it at some time tomorrow. Now there is an advantage of our online worship, one can share in it whenever one wishes. One can even revisit it a second time to see if the minister really said what you thought you heard! And one can share with several different congregations in their worship on the same day without leaving the comfort of your own home.
Of course, there are other wonderful advantages as well, not least that elderly folk who are now housebound can share in worship; and folk who aren’t sure if they are yet ready to visit a church can have a sneak preview of what a church service is really like.
For all of these reasons what we provide online is really important and I would value your feedback and suggestions of how we can improve what we offer. I am so aware that one of the marks of our regular Sunday worship was the huge amount of participation in every service — something which is no longer possible, partly because of lockdown and partly because of our limited experience and resources (which is another reason why it is good to share with the Moderator in a service which will have participation and which will have had a great deal of resource and expertise devoted to its preparation).
I spent this afternoon sitting in the sunshine in the courtyard with my mother enjoying her first full day back home. Rachel brought us afternoon tea, using the silver tea and coffee pots and with tiny, crustless sandwiches. Olive and Digger joined us. It was very pleasant.
Have a good week!
Weekly Blog Friday 22nd. May, 2020
This blog is late in appearing, for which I apologise, but life has been a bit upside down this week. My mother of ninety-seven had a fall which has resulted in her being hospitalised in the Borders General Hospital (although we are hoping that she may be transferred to the Knoll later on today — I think that it depends upon a bed being available). She has suffered from an infection which is now under control, and now has to have some mobility assessment and assistance before, we hope, she is able to come back to be with us as soon as possible.
Life for the rest of us has centred around preparing services (Rachel is in charge of the music and preparing slides for the presentations), and doing some of the work around Mount Pleasant which urgently needs to be done. Everyone else seems to have got so much done but we have been so tied up with Church that we have negelected this opportunity. However, we have now made a start. In the Hen House (next to the Granary) we have completed painting what will be the master-bedroom, have fitted the skirting boards and I have tried, so far without success, to order a carpet so that we can move on to finding our wardrobes in one of the barns and fitting them together so that finally our clothes will have a home! Rachel has also been hard at work painting the woodwork upstairs in the Granary.
We always enjoy our walks around the field opposite Mount Pleasant and it is lovely to see the way that everything has started to grow. The dogs are a joy and Ditto has made himself very much at home and is very much quieter than when he arrived.
In a previous blog I raised the question of our Facebook page. My concern was that it really wasn’t very exciting — certainly compared with other Facebook pages I had seen. I asked for advice and help and I have listened carefully to everything which has been flowing back and forwards in emails. There are clearly conflicting views about Facebook. One group of our folk doesn’t want to have anything to do with it at all, while others think that it is quite important. I certainly have never had very much to do with Facebook until very recently. When I was in Luss one of the folk who looked after our technology created a page for me but it subsided into almost nonexistence through non-use. However, in the present situation it appears that all of our local churches are using Facebook as the prefered means of reaching out to those both in their congregations and to those who are in their communities. I’m told that if we wish to speak to those who are young — the folk we really need to communicate with because their absence from our church communities is so noticeable — then we really need to use Facebook (with all its flaws). So what I have been doing is to try to put up a good news story each day, drawn from the Church of Scotland nationally, or from the pages of other local congregations or from our own situation. I have been careful never to put up anything which I would be embarrassed in any way to have read back to me by anyone in the future. We are also using facebook to draw people to our services and without a doubt some of those who have joined us from around the world have joined us through accessing our Facebook page rather than through our web-site.
This morning, along with another nine-hundred and ninty-nine Church of Scotland workers, I joined a webinar (a seminar on the internet) in which we were told about the plans which the Church of Scotland centrally are developing for the future once the virus has been dealt with. There were good things and bad things. The Church expects that its income will be down by a third this year and this will, of course, have serious implications for the future. It will mean, perhaps, fewer ministers and fewer buildings. It will also mean fewer presbyteries as everyone who spoke to us from the Church administration made it clear that reducing the present number of presbyteries to twelve was almost the number one priority. Thus I anticipate that we in Duns Presbytery will join with Lothian, Melrose and Peebles, and Jedburgh to create a Lothian and Borders Presbytery. It is also clear that the central church sees not only far fewer buildings and but also a future in which congregations will worship in community buildings which do not belong to them. We were told that money will be found to develop the technology which will enable us to interact with society through modern chanels of communication. More people are certainly logging on to worship through web-sites and Facebook pages than ever attend church services in our buildings and the central church believes that this is something for us all to build on. I got the feeling that it was also felt that we had to learn to be more skilled in our use of the technology. It was pointed out that we talk a great deal about outreach to the young and yet few of our worship items offered actually include material for young people. We are not just going to have to learn to master the technology, we are going to have to master how to communicate using that technology. As I have thought about this during the course of this afternoon I have realised that there might be advantages in this. At present we don’t really want to change the way we do things in church because what we do is appreciated and enjoyed by the folk we have. If we are to use more online material we can provide something both for those who enjoy what they are used to and something for those for whom our current practice is less satisfactory. These are going to be interesting times.
For myself, I am looking forward to getting back into our beautiful Fogo Church. I’m determined that we continue to offer to God the best worship we can and I’m equally determined that we stream what we do through our web-site because there are folk who have started to join us who maybe aren’t yet ready to come to our building, and there are some folk who through age and infirmity are unable to come. I’m equally sure that our plan to create services for care homes with the assistance and the insight of young people is definitely a project worth pursuing. So there we are!
In case you have forgotten, this picture was taken the last time we met, when we had our planning discussion after our service and agreed the way forward. Wasn’t it good to be together, to share the mountains of food which everyone brought and to crowd so many people into such a small space!
And finally —
Our last chicken died — she had been here since we arrived almost seven years ago — and we were left with Bertie, the cockerel. Heather, our friend, presented us with two new chickens and now everyone is extremely happy!
Have a very good week.