It has been a good week not least because I actually had all the different services prepared by Friday night, rather than Saturday night as it has been in recent weeks. So I spent today outside painting. I had intended to do this all day and the morning was wonderful but then this afternoon the rain arrived. It was really heavy and I expect that it will have gladdened the hearts of farmers and gardeners alike.
This week I have enjoyed watching ‘Innocent’ on ITV, a really good detective four-part thriller starring Lee Ingleby. It was really good and it kept all of us at Mount Pleasant on the edge of our seats.
We have also enjoyed accessing the performances of the National Theatre and the Globe which are now available free on television.
I also shared in a zoom meeting of ministers in the presbytery on Wednesday morning. The suggestion certainly seems to be that that folk believe that church will be different after the lockdown comes to an end. The follow-up to that is that we ought to start thinking about what we shall be offering when that time comes.
I got an email from Janice at Gordon today telling me that forty-seven folk shared in the Gordon Service on-line last week – that’s many more than normally attend church. I wonder what that says to us? Does it suggest that there may be more folk coming to church in the future? Or does it suggest that we have to continue to reach out to folk using digital media so that we can keep in touch with more people than we would otherwise do? There is a lot to think about!
We continue to be grateful that we have fields around us and that because the farmers have provided wide borders we can walk around them. Those who remember Ditto, Clare’s black Labrador, will be pleased to know how he has quietened down and is responding to Rachel’s training regime.
I hope that you are all keeping safe and staying well. It’s always good to see everyone’s faces on Sunday after our service. There is a lot on our web-site and John B has started to reorganise it. If our Sunday service isn’t to your liking, you could always try the service on-line for our partner congregations at Gordon, Greenlaw and Legerwood. These, too, are now on our website. Have a very good week.
It’s been a busy week! What has been different is that Tom Nicholson has now retired and I am interim moderator at Gordon, Greenlaw, Legerwood and Westruther. Now you might wonder what that actually means given that we are all in lockdown. What it has meant in practice is that I have prepared services for Gordon, Greenlaw and Legerwood on line. Of course, they are basically the same service with different topping and tailing (you can see them on the new page I have inserted into our web-site – ‘Gordon, Greenlaw, Legerwood and Westruther’ tab at the top of each page of our website).
It would have been simpler if I could just have re-badged our Fogo Service but because we are part way through a series, I didn’t think that would be appropriate. I thought of starting their services at the beginning of our series but two reasons made me think that wouldn’t be appropriate either. First, some of the folk may already have shared in our services and second, there wouldn’t be enough Sundays before we run into Pentecost. So there we are. This week has been spent putting services together.
Now I promise not to talk about technology this week. I’ve done too much of that. But I would like to say a bit about preparing and delivering services on line. The first two or three weeks I found it very satisfying. I was able to strive towards getting something just right. I never quite got there but I felt I was getting nearer each week. In fact I felt that if I carried on doing this for a few more weeks I might get as close as I could to getting it right.
It was then that I realised that there was something missing. What it is, is interaction with real people. When I conduct a service in church I may not ever get it quite right but I am able to see how people are responding. I can pick up vibes. I can gauge how I need to adapt – I can see when I am boring folk rigid. But once something is online I haven’t a clue how appropriate what I have provided is turning out to be. You can’t communicate without feedback. Even a service where one person is basically running the show is a two-way process and that’s what I am missing. Often in Church I come out of the service feeling not only that I have worshipped with friends but that God has been very close to us during our worship. It’s difficult to feel that speaking into a camera, although sharing on a Sunday morning and knowing that others are doing the same at the same moment can feel very special.
I’m also missing the fact that our services used to have so much participation but that just isn’t possible now that we are in lockdown. However, I am being kept going by our daily meditations. I’m really taken by some of the insights which have been shared. I’m also enormously impressed by the way that folk are producing what they do with very little equipment. If it didn’t sound patronising, I would say how much everyone has developed during the time these meditations have been being prepared. It has been good for all of us who have participated. It would be good to welcome some more folk into the team!
It also remains true that our Sunday morning services are shared by many more folk than ever came to church in the days before lockdown. So, we will have to think about what this means when we can eventually return to our beautiful church.
I really enjoy our coffee and chat sessions after church. I’m picking up that some of us are finding it quite difficult to have real conversations on Zoom. It is really great to see everyone, but naturally we seem to say the same things each week. I hope that won’t stop folk from joining us because what is special is to see everyone. I think we have to have a definite close at 12 noon and that we have to say to everyone that it is all right to pop in to the Zoom room for just a few minutes and then to wave good-bye and move on. I also think it might be quite good to have something to talk about for a few minutes; that way we might share our news and then for those who wished we might have a themed discussion – perhaps on what we could be doing as a congregation in these strange times. Someone might have a great idea which would be really helpful for us.
A couple which have been floated with me are first that we might have a short ten-minute evening prayer on zoom once a week (say Wednesday) at (say) 7.30 p.m. The second idea is that we could put together a short news programme with folk giving to me by Zoom a brief statement of what is going on which has caught their imagination, and then I, or someone else who wished to do it, edit it into a magazine programme which we would showcase on our web-site and on FaceBook. After all the BBC regularly uses Zoom and similar platforms in its programmes so why shouldn’t we. Such a programme might reach folk in our parish who don’t as yet join our online worship. What do you think?
It’s now quite late on Saturday night so I’ll upload this to my blog page and look forward to seeing everyone tomorrow.
It has been a busy week and a great deal of it has been experimenting with technology (and not getting it right). A big example of that is our service for tomorow morning, I wanted to do my talk outside, but that just didn’t work, in part because the sun was too bright! So I took it inside the summer house and I’m really not happy with the lighting and the finished product. But, as we keep on saying, we are on a learning curve and won’t make the same mistake again. (I’m sure there is a parable about life in there somewhere.)
We were asked last Sunday in our after-church coffee and chat session to think about having worship on Zoom. It might be more homely, I think was the word used. I’m happy to try that but I have a few reservations which have becomne stronger as I have spoken with colleagues over the course of this week. Let me explain.
The value of Zoom is that we are all there together, we can see each other and we can communicate. But the main parts of the service in which we participate are the singing and responsive prayers and, I’m told, that neither of these work very well on Zoom. It’s because everyone’s bandwidths are different and, as a result, singing gets all out of sync, and it’s the same with responsive prayers. One minister told me that he had initially prepared online services (similar, I suppose, to what I am doing) but he gave that up because he discovered that people weren’t watching. So he adopted Zoom and is continuing with that inspite of the difficulties I have outlined above. The solution he has adopted is to keep most of the folk’s microphones muted so that they can’t speak, but that almost seems to defeat the idea of participation.
Many congregations seem to be using Zoom for coffee and chat meetings and for formal business meetings of their congregations. Another minister told me that after church (he has two congregations) he can get twenty or thirty folk joining for the zoom chat and he uses a facility to divide folk into smaller ‘rooms’ so that everyone gets a chance to participate. We’re not at that stage!
Of course, what most congregations appear to be doing is to live stream their service and then, after the service, make it available on their website. I would like to have a conversation with my folk about whether a live stream would be better than a prerecorded service which we all share in at the same time. I’ve had a lot of experience of this as my service in Luss was streamed live for most of the fifteen years I was minister there. If we were all in our church then I would definitely want to stream our worship live but as it is coming from a room in my house, I don’t see the advantage in streaming it live rather than recording it and all sharing in it at the same time. Prerecording it means that most of the technical hitches are avoided because the service is sitting there on line; it means that the service is tighter and more compact because it has been edited — an analogy which keeps coming into my head, but which I’m not sure is totally relevant, is the difference between the minister or elder praying and making up the words as he or she goes along, compared with having prepared everything and written it down before coming to the service. I’m happy to try both ways.
One thing which you will have noticed is that we are having less of our very modern songs in worship. It isn’t that I have reverted to a previous age, rather that I am trying to be careful of copyright issues. We have bought a streaming licence which augments our existing music licence, but the most modern of songs don’t appear to be covered by that licence.
The other thing to be put into the mix is that up until now our service has been a service for us from Fogo. Later this afternoon I shall be writing to everyone in Greenlaw, Gordon, Legerwood and Westruther, offering to make our service a service for all of our congregations as they will be without their minister. I’m not sure quite what difference this makes — and I’d value advice. Should I just re-label what we do at present and make our service one which is for all of our congregations? Should I prepare a special short introduction for each congregation and make five different versions of our services? (Or one Fogo version and one for the four linked congregations?) I haven’t a clue!
One suggestion made to me is that we shouldn’t try to move our service to Zoom but that we consider an evening prayer (a reading and prayer, no longer than ten minutes ) on say, a Wednesday, at 7 or 7.30 pm. Would this be a good thing? And what time, or even day, would be best? I would conduct this myself but would invite different folk to read the Bible passage. This might enable us to work out just how much Zoom can do for us.
So I’m needing feedback. I look forward to not blogging anymore about technology, but I think we are going to discover that technology becomes increasingly important in church life. But it is strange. It’s strange not to see friends. I miss the hugs and the smiles, and the chat and just being with people who are important to me. I hope those days will return soon.
I hope that this last week has been a good one for everyone who is reading this blog. It is certainly beginning to dawn on me that it is quite some time since I have seen any of my friends face to face. Thank goodness for technology — well, almost ‘thank goodness’. My reservation is only that I am not so adept at using it as younger folk and most of my week has been spent trying to find ways of making things work.
I am so grateful to those who have agreed to prepare thoughts and prayers for our web-site. It keeps us in touch and it is better, even although we are only learning the technology, to hear someone speaking and to see their faces rather than be presented with the written word alone.
Everyone who is contributing sends me their contributions in different ways — some come as zoom messages through Drop Box; others come as messages attached to emails; still more are generated by autocue programmes for ipads, and still others are recorded by me as the speaker reads his words into a zoom conference. Actually, all of these work quite well and we shall get better as we go on. Better, I’m sure, in every way; so please do stick with us.
My problems start when the file arrives and I prepare it to put on our web-site, Much of my problem is caused by the fct that the technology I am using is older than the technology that everyone else is using. Modern ‘phones and ipads and computers send me the material in High Definition Video but I have been making my programmes using an old video camera which I bought way back when I was a minister in Glasgow and I left there in 1998! I also have an editing programme which dates from around the same time. So I have been using what is called Digital Video which is a precursor to HDV. The difference is that my pictures are in the ratio of four by three (as television used to be) and everyone elses’ pictures are sixteen by nine (as television is now). Naturally my software won’t cope with modrn pictures as their format hadn’t been invented when it was written.
None of this matters — at least that’s what I thought until John and Kirsten very kindly volunteered to conduct our service for tomorrow. I would do the music and the topping and tailing and they would provide the meat. Of course that meant I had to try to put two different technologies together and mix long pictures with almost square pictures. The result is not as bad as I had feared — and it is saved certainly by the quality of the content of the service. But my big exercise now is trying to move into the 2020s. Just before this moment I have finally managed to complete a programme in sixteen by nine ratio. It’s the song for our children’s worship tomorrow and I am rather pleased with it because the pictures (of our Holy Land pilgrims and folk at Fogo Church) match the words beautifully and speak of our mission priorities. I’m not going to say more than that so that you will have to visit our children’s page! But perhaps after the children have seen it tomorrow I may add the song to the front page for everyone to see when they join our web-site.
Our service last Sunday, Easter, was conducted entirely on old technology. I am so grateful for all of the messages which we have received about how much the service was appreciated. We have deliberately restricted access to our services to those who access them through the church web-site so that we can know how many people visit who already have some connection with us, rather than those who browse the web and constantly explore youtube (on which the servcie is not available). Many more people than attend our services week by week are joining our Sunday services on line and that will inevitably raise questions for us in the future.
I was very grateful also for the comments which I have received about our Easter Communion. There is a debate going on within the Church about whether it is appropriate to provide communion on-line. I understand the worries that some people have: communion is something we do together with our Lord among us. In the normal course of events I would probably not have been so keen to provide commuion in this way. But these are exceptional circumstances and the difference is, it seems to me, that people cannot be together in one place, so we have to be together at the same time each in our own place. So it seemed to me to be the most natural thing to do, although I hoped that most of us would actually be sharing in the service at the same time on Sunday morning.
In the event, I got lots of messages from folk who had really enjoyed the experience and one message from someone (a friend) who didn’t think that it was appropriate. I’d love to hear other peoples’ views.
During the week Tom T, John B, Tom S and Dorothy, Chris, and Kirsten and John A all signed up, volunteered, were press-ganged into agreeing to provide a short worship slot each once a week for the immediate future. I’d love to have other volunteers as we have such a breadth of worship traditions and a great pool of talent and experience within our church family. Do let me know if you can join our team!
Also during this week, John B has agreed to have a serious look at our web-site. He really is a volunteer. He tells me that it’s not just my video technology which is outdated but also my web-site theory! Folk nowadays don’t want to scroll down endless pages. I am absolutely sure that he is correct and I’m grateful that he is loooking into things for us. I would love it if we could have smaller thumbnails of our videos rather than full size pictures (the best that I can do) and if instead of having complete texts below each one, we could have a sentence or two and the a ‘read more’ to click on to get the full story. This is all quite important as more and more folk are now keeping in touch through web-sites and FaceBook. If you have any views and any expertise, John and I would love to hear from you. (We’ve bought a new web-domain which John will be experimenting with over coming weeks.)
So there we are, the sun is shining and, thanks to Kirsten and John, the service for tomorrow is already prepared. I am going to have lunch in the garden. Stay safe and keep well.
Well, I’m a bit late with this entry coming almost two weeks since the last! But I hope you’ll forgive me when I tell you that it has been because of Holy Week and Holy Week preparations. I really have been on the steepest learning curve of my life!
You’ll remember that one of the things that we talked about during our mission planning activities recently was the possibility of sharing our services — we knew others did it and we didn’t think that we would do it any better (or even as well) but we would be local and we thought that local was good! We also talked about a project involving young people in making worship videos which we could then share with old folk in care homes. That would be outreach to both young and elderly but very importantly we thought that we would be able to tap into the technical abilities and almost inbuilt computer skills of young folk. In fact we have been pitch-forked into a situation from which we envisaged preparing maybe six services over a six month period, to producing something every day. And of course, no sooner had we started than we were in to Holy Week and tomorrow it will be Easter Day. So my head is buzzing as I learn to cope.
The other thing which I have learned is that naturally watching videos is something we are all expert in. What I mean is that every day we watch television and so we take for granted the standards of production which that presents to us. We are about message rather than production, but unless the production reaches a certain standard then the message can’t be heard. So that’s where I am!
Tomorrow, Easter Day, we shall offer communion to everyone on line. Before the service folk will, I hope, have prepared themselves with a glass of wine and a piece of bread which we shall consecrate during the service. I hope that we shall all watch it and participate in it together at 10.30 am. This is not something which I have done before — although I have had Services of Holy Communion broadcast. I know that some people wonder if this is an appropraite thing to do. I would have gone into those discussions not sure about what side of the line I would have come down on — until this present situation. It cannot be right for anyone to be be denied Easter communion, and that is why we shall do what is planned.
Isn’t Zoom wonderful? The highlight of my week is now after our short service when we congregate on Zoom with our coffee (Melanie with her tea) and chat til noon. It was wonderful to see everyone but especially to see Molly who tuned in all the way from Australia. You know our services on line are attracting quite a lot of interest — they are put on youtube in the unlisted section which means that the way of accessing them is through our own web-site or through a link if I provide it. That way we know that those who participate are folk who have at least come through our site and probably know us or know about us. Certainly more than a hundred folk share with us at the present time — so that’s a lot more than used to be in church on a Sunday morning. Our challenge will be to bring these folk into the worshipping congregation when all of this ends — or perhaps we shall have to continue to broadcast our service even when we are back in our beautiful church.
Tomorrow I am using the olive-wood communion cup and the bowl I brought back from Palestine earlier in the year. Both were used in services when we were there, the cup at Gethsemane and the bowl by the Sea of Galilee. Obviously with everyone in lockdown it was not appropriate for me to seek to get hold of our beautiful silver which is safely locked away!
So you have all my news. I thought I would have time on my hands but now it has been learning the skills I’ve described — and how much more there is to learn. I have loved the fact that several of our folk have volunteered to provide our five-minute daily services and we are all learning how to do these better as every day goes by. There are other plans in the pipeline and I’ll be saying something about them very soon but that’s where we are except to record that we, at Mount Pleasant, are all safe and well. If anyone needs help of any kind at all, please let me know and if I can’t help I have a team of volunteers who will be able to tackle almost anything at all!
Last Sunday, our first outside the church building, we managed to put together a short service helped by Chris and Tom. We learned a lot from the experience and had great plans for what we would do this week. However, new rules came into force — eminently sensible rules — but it meant that we no longer had the services of Chris and Tom who were isolated at their own homes.
So our service this Sunday was prepared at Mount Pleasant by the folk who live here — Rachel, Olive and me. We enjoyed putting something together and most of our congregation have shared it today. Many actually watched the service at 10.30 am just as if we were in church. Immediately following (well, allowing ten minutes for folk to make themselves a cup of coffee and get onto our zoom conference page) we had half an hour of congregational chat. It was just as if we were in church, absolutely wonderful and the undisputed highlight was the appearance of Molly who is staying longer than anticipated in Australia because of the virus. We all enjoyed hearing from her and sharing in her adventures. (She had been kayaking in 37 degrees earlier in the day.)
We had only managed to make arrangements to have our ‘after church video link’ last night so one or two people missed the email notification of it; and one or two emails bounced back: so if you didn’t hear from me with the link I hope that you will contact me. We will be doing the same next Sunday.
An innovation for this week has been a reading, a thought and a prayer for each day. I’ve done these this week but the one for tomorrow has been prepared by Tom and Dorothy, recorded in their dining room and sent to me over the internet. It will replace our Morning Service at midnight.
Have I felt ‘locked in’ this week? I’ve actually been too busy to think about it: busy learning new skills and new technology and really quite enjoying myself. It is awful, however, when one stops and considers all that is going on — the suffering that people are enduring, the worries that folk are being subjected to. I suspect we just have to follow the rules we are given and trust that there is a light at the end of this particular tunnel — that and to never forget that throughout all of this we continue to be loved by God, our Father who wishes nothing but good for us his children and who is suffering with each of his children who is suffering here just now.
Normally I would be in church at this time on a Sunday morning — in fact in the years since I took over at Fogo I have only ever missed one Sunday morning service and that was because we were in the Holy Land together.
This has been a very strange week. Strange because we are now all in lockdown, at least it seems that everyone I know is isolated in some form or other, it could that’s because everyone I know is quite old! And strange because we have been told we cannot any longer have services in church. And this came just as I thought that our service was really quite a safe one as regards the virus. We had put sanitizing gel by the door and everyone could have their own box-pew so social distancing would happen naturally. Of course, it is right that these precautions have been taken and we must all do everything we can to stay safe.
But people need to worship as well and congregations need to stay together. I wasn’t sure quite what we ought to do. I checked what some of our neighbouring congregations have planned. Our friends in Duns are experimenting with some kind of conferencing system which sounds quite exciting; while Andy at Eyemouth and Coldingham is streaming his service, presumably with a small group of folk all observing social distancing. Neither of these options is open to us because they both require internet access and that is something which we don’t have at Fogo. So we are putting something up on line and leaving it there just for Sunday. If we are able to, we shall replace it during the week with a reading, a thought and a prayer.
There is nothing more important than keeping our congregation together and I would love to hear ideas from you all about what we should be doing.
I broke off from writing this blog to drive down to church because I wanted to be there at the normal worship time. I met John B who was also sitting quietly in church. It is such a beautiful and peaceful place and one can feel the prayers which have been offered there over the centuries and over recent years.
I’m already getting feedback from our service this morning and everyone seems to have appreciated what we have offered. (Although Rachel has insisted that I have to trim my moustache and learn how to smile — I’ll try!) Please remember that if there is anything that anyone needs, we have folk here who will be delighted to help. Please keep safe and do remember that God loves you,
This is a difficult time to be writing a blog. The television news is full of the dangers of Coronavirus and no-one is quite sure how we ought to be reacting. In Church we have fitted a gel dispenser with appropriate gel just inside the door (we don’t have a water supply in our rural church so this is the best we can do). Normally we encourage folk to sit together but maybe our box pews are going to come into their own as each family can sit separated from other families and observe the social distancing which was being discussed at such length on television last night.
We would normally celebrate the fifth Sunday of this month with a special communion service and the advice we have at present from the Church of Scotland is that, providing certain safeguards are observed, this is still appropriate, however, I think my view is why create worries in peoples’ minds? I’ll use the opportunity to have a totally different kind of service and I’m quite looking forward to that!
On Wednesday of this week we had a visit from the Presbytery Planning Committee to Fogo Church for a meeting which was advertised as being for the congregations from our end of the presbytery (although, of course, everyone was invited). In the event we had Roger Dodd, the Planning Convener, with John Shields, our Moderator, and Susan Patterson, the Business Convener with us and there were folk from Fogo, Greenlaw, Gordon, Legerwood and the minister of Coldstream to hear to what was being proposed.
We learned that the future of our part of the Presbytery (and eventually, perhaps, the whole of our Presbytery) would be a continuation of our existing congregations but with each congregation taking responsibility for its own Sunday worship and for its own spiritual care of the parish entrusted to it. Tim from Greenlaw described it as a Commonwealth of Parishes to which stipendiary ministers would be called with responsibilities to support congregations to do their own thing; one perhaps to assist in training folk to lead worship and in preparing that worship; another to help congregations to develop their own spiritual care as well as to assist in that provision; and a third, should we be so lucky, to assist congregations to develop their own mission strategies — for unless we grow we shall surely die.
I found this to be exciting. I was so glad that we were moving away from the hub idea as I see some of our current ministers really weighed down under the existing hubs: Andrew with congregations at Duns, Bonkyl, Edrom, Cranshaws and Gavinton; David coping with Coldstream, Swinton, Leitholm and Eccles to name just a couple — and as the plan is to cope with a decrease in the number of ministers either the hubs would have to become significantly larger or many congregations would have to be amalgamated or closed down. In my opinion that really doesn’t work in rural areas.
Of course, change will happen gradually as it won’t affect ministers already in post but I think that plans such as this one will breathe new life into many congregations and can lead to the revival for which many of us earnestly hope. We’ve had a generation of secularism, long enough for folk to have enjoyed the freedom which that brings but also long enough to discover that secularism can’t answer any of the really important questions. We’ve also got past the generation of folk who had a passing knowledge of some Bible stories (just enough in their view to enable them to dismiss them as fanciful) to a new generation which is prepared to listen to the Gospel anew and fresh and to be challenged by it. These are exciting times and what a responsibility God is giving to this generation of disciples — but we do what we do in the power of his Holy Spirit.
This Sunday, after church and after a simple buffet lunch, we are having the follow up meeting to our January ‘Developing a Missionary Strategy’ get-together. The results of that meeting have been tabulated and converted into proposals to make that strategy a reality. I’m looking forward to great things and I’m sure that my blog next week will contain an account of what comes out of Sunday’s conference.
Yesterday evening I attended the World Day of Prayer service along with Tom, our Session Clerk. This year it was held at Christ Kirk, in Duns. Christ Kirk is the Scottish Episcopal Church – some folk locally refer to it as the English Church but that really isn’t right as the Scottish Episcopal Church has as proud a Scottish tradition as does our own Church of Scotland.
It was a good service prepared by Christian women from Zimbabwe and was on the theme of ‘Rise, take up your mat, and walk’ a reference from the healing at the pool of Bethesda (which we had visited on our Holy Land pilgrimage just a few short weeks ago). It was good to see folk from several of the local congregations. I sat with Father Robert from the Roman Catholic Church and Andrew from the Duns and District Church of Scotland and enjoyed meeting up with them. I was, however, disappointed that from our large area we only managed thirty-six folk for such an important service – but that’s not to take away from the fact that those of us who were there really got something out of being there (and the congregation of Christ Church had prepared excellent refreshments for after the service). It was a really good experience.
On Thursday evening we watched the second part of
the Masada mini-series which, I believe, everyone enjoyed. There is something
very special about going into our church at night – the little lights walking
us down to the church, and the warmth of the air-to-air heating hitting us as
we walk through the door; and then the comfy seating and the teas and coffees
that can easily be made. We are extremely fortunate.
Earlier in the week several of us – both Toms,
Chris, John B and I – had responded to Tom S’s call to gather at the church to
clear out the gallery above the vestry. We did that. It’s something that was
needing to be done and hadn’t been done for years, I suspect. However, during
the clear out we discovered that everything up there – pews, staging (to raise
the pews up from floor level) were riddled with woodworm. Some of it was so bad
that folk were taking fairly thick pieces of wood in their hands and breaking
them in two. The good news is that the base floor itself appears to be quite
sound. Tom has purchased a large tin of woodworm treatment and is going to
treat the floor thoroughly both to ensure that we can use it and that the
infection doesn’t spread to other parts of our beautiful building.
Looking ahead to next week: on Wednesday we are
going to host a Presbytery Planning meeting which has been arranged to enable
the Planning Convener, Roger Dodd, and his committee to present their thoughts
on the future to congregations at this end of the presbytery area. These are
difficult times with few ministers and smaller congregations but just maybe in
finding new ways to go forward we will also find more appropriate ways of being
the Church in our area. I find it all extremely exciting.
Also on Wednesday, this time in the morning, I shall
be speaking at our University of the Third Age group which is looking at the
history of the Church in Scotland. We’ve reached the time of John Knox and the
Church of Scotland is just about to be born!
I’ve also just completed a new edition of our
Newsletter which will be delivered this week. It’s on the website already but
the important delivery is to the homes in the parish. Our members will not find
anything new in the newsletter but I hope that those in the parish will catch
something of our enthusiasm and commitment as they read of our mission plans
and are entertained by a brief account of our trip to the Holy Land.
Our Congregation is planning a Mission Strategy for the Future!
Our big event in January was to hold a Sunday afternoon conference (after a congregational lunch) to discuss our mission strategy for the year ahead.
A detailed report has been prepared and is available on our web-site for all to see. But what might our church look like if the initial proposals were adopted? Here is a vision, a dream if you like, set at the end of this year of how things might be.
“It’s the final weekend of November, 2020, and our Sunday morning Service has just ended. It’s been a splendid service led by one of our elders with assistance from several of our members.
As has been the custom for a number of weeks, our service has been recorded – (there are three small, discrete cameras in the Church: one on the back wall of the south aisle, one behind the pulpit and one on the former Harcarse loft). Later this afternoon the service will be uploaded to our Church website and will be available for all to share.
We’ve had a lot of discussions before we reached this point. Why would we offer our service on-line when several of the bigger and more prestigious churches already do it? We came down to thinking that this was exactly why we should. We are a small congregation in a very rural situation. Folk in Berwickshire who might not identify with big congregations in the central belt would, perhaps, be intrigued by the adventures of a small congregation with which they could readily identify.
This morning, as if to prove the point, we had a new couple with us for the first time. They had been fascinated by all they had read about our little church, but seeing it on line made it real to them and they realised that if they came along there really would be folk here to welcome them!
We learned at Church this morning that progress has been made with the ‘young and old’ church service project — what a mouthful, but you’ll see why it’s called a ‘young and old’ project as I explain.
Over recent weeks some of our members have been working with young folk from our area to create six short services on video – but they are services with a difference. The theme of the most recent is ‘God’s Creation’ – the Bible readings, poems and meditations are presented by young folk and were read and filmed by the banks of the Tweed; the music for the hymns was recorded in our church but as it is played and the hymns were sung, the screen showed pictures of some of the most beautiful countryside in the Borders.
The talk this time was given by the minister, but some of the programmes don’t require a talk and some have talks given by our elders, and it is hoped that some of the youngsters will share in these talks, as well as in taking charge of the technology – filming, recording, editing and so on – in the future.
Later this week a team from the Church will start to visit the nursing homes, care homes and sheltered housing complexes within Berwickshire, concentrating particularly on those where there is no regular worship provided by local congregations.
The aim of the visit is to see if residents would enjoy seeing one of these short services perhaps once a week or once a month. The idea is that the video would be brought by one or two of our team who would introduce the service and share in coffee with the residents afterwards. It’s sad that there is so little spiritual care for older folk in our area.
Our technology is being used in other ways as well. One of the challenges for the future is that there are not going to be many ministers in our area. Elders are often keen to lead worship but less keen to regularly deliver a sermon.
So our team has started to prepare a number of sermon videos. Local people, speaking well, with the finished
article supplied on a memory stick or a disk to those who wish one, and can play them back on a television or project them onto a screen.
Some of the young people involved have written to the Moderator and to the Archbishop of Canterbury inviting them to speak to our congregations on tape, and already videos have been put together featuring several of the Church of Scotland’s missionary partners. Of course, it wouldn’t do to have a pre-recorded sermon every week – even if it were deliberately aimed at our own local situation.
Today we also learned that a retired minister will be moving into our Church cottage at the start of next month. He will conduct two services a month at our Church, but he will also lead worship at several of our neighbouring churches as well. We will all be getting in supplies for Clare’s Cottage to ensure that the minister and his wife feel welcome when they arrive.
We’ll learn all about him very quickly, not just by meeting him, but through our web site and facebook page. A great deal of work has been put into our Church web-site which is now not only up-to-date but contains a great deal of exciting material as well. It all goes back to a conference we had earlier in the year which identified communication as being at the heart of all that we are about.
Perhaps we hadn’t realised all of the opportunities available to us – our own Newsletter and web-site; our Facebook page, our local newspaper (all featuring superb photographs by our resident photographer), and the special tent which we had as part of our annual Music Festival, a tent which told the story of so many of our members and of the adventures of our small congregation.
Since last month we have also enjoyed our half-hour video ‘television programme’ hosted on our website. It’s been good to learn more about our own church, our own people, and the wider work of the Church of Scotland through this medium and again it has been a real bonus for us to have the assistance of young folk in putting all of this together and for the exhilarating musical items which they have added to our programme.
We always knew that our church provided an excellent musical venue, but the facility to share what is seen by a relatively small audience with people from much further afield is wonderful. It was suggested this morning that as well as taking out short services to care homes we might also include one of our video magazine programmes so that folk could be reminded of all that is going on in our area.
In time it is hoped to add the facility to stream events live from our church, but the plan is to take things one step at a time.
It is already such a lot of work preparing the material and making the videos, but it is also a great way of getting alongside youngsters, getting them to share the expertise they have. No doubt it will lead to other opportunities as well as we seek to respond to the challenges which they will bring to us – challenges about our faith and why we do, and believe, what we do; and that, ultimately is where we hope to arrive: to be in a real dialogue with our community; to provide Christian support for the elderly; to assist congregations forced to go through difficult change; and to show to the communities of Berwickshire that the Church is not slowly decaying but is steadily rediscovering its confidence and its faith in sharing the message which everyone needs to hear.
Today was also a special day in our church as during it the new prayer room in the former Harcarse loft was opened and dedicated, providing a small and comfortable place for private prayer and in which our church library will be housed. It will also be the base for some of our learning activities for our congregation and will be made available, as are all our facilities, to groups from our local community.
To mark this opening a small Christian book has been given to every child in the parish, including the sixty or so children of the local nursery. It is good to take every opportunity of sharing Christian resources with the families in our area.
And, of course, as this is the fifth Sunday of the month we had a congregational lunch after our service. Sometimes we have a speaker but today we watched a film together – a modern retelling of part of the Gospel story, which everyone enjoyed. There are so many wonderful resources available to congregations today and we gain so much from using them. We had a small sales table today, part of our fund-raising programme to assist our own Missionary Partner, Dr. Linus Malu, who works with disadvantaged people in Malawi. Linus had sent us a video message which we all watched together immediately after lunch. It has been a great day — but then Sundays always are!”
Of course, that is just a dream but there will be a follow up meeting to our January get-together to make definite plans and this will be held on Sunday 15th. March, after a congregational lunch following our morning service.
Fogo Church Pilgrimage to the Holy Land
Towards the end of January a large proportion of the congregation, with a few friends, set off for the Holy Land for eleven wonderful days walking in the footsteps of Jesus.
We flew into Tel Aviv and arrived at our hotel in Jerusalem in the wee sma’ hours — but what a wonderful hotel it was, situated right beside the Damascus Gate with views over the ancient city walls; and what a welcome we received — even although it was well after midnight there was a meal waiting on the table for us. We ate quickly and made our way to bed as we had an early start, as we did every morning of our trip.
That first day in Jerusalem was very special. We started by making our way to the Western Wall to see the place which is the most holy of all to modern Jews — the wall of the great temple and place where Jews gather to pray every day. From there we were allowed onto the Temple Mount, where we walked in the sunshine, admiring the Dome on the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque as special to Moslems as is the Western Wall to the Jews — and all the time we were walking where Jesus walked.
In a cave chapel at the Shepherds’ fields
A visit to Bethesda followed as we made our way out of Jerusalem to board our bus and transfer into Palestinian territory as we made our way to Bethlehem where, of course, we visited the Church of the Nativity on the site where Jesus was born and where Saint Jerome translated the Bible into Latin before we made our way to the field where the shepherds heard the news of Jesus’ birth and where we celebrated communion together.
What a day it had been but the next day was as special. We started with a service in the Garden of Gethsemane before visiting all of the places we read of in the Gospels on the Mount of Olives. After lunch we walked the Via Dolorosa to the Holy Sepulchre, site both of the crucifixion and the resurrection, before making our way to the Garden Tomb — an excitement on the way being that the city gates were temporarily closed because of the strength of feeling in the city at remarks that President Trump had made about his plans for lasting peace in Palestine.
We are in the courtyard of Pater Noster which marks the spot where Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer — and it is now on the walls in every language imaginable. (Nael, our guide, is on the right.)
And so it continued as we spent five days in all based in Jerusalem, visiting the Upper Room, Emmaus, the place where Jesus was tried and where Peter denied three times that he knew who Jesus was. We went to Bethany and visited Lazarus’ tomb, visited an Arab school and boys’ home, went to Masada, to Qumran (where the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered) and we floated on the Dead Sea. We also visited the Jordan and saw where Jesus was both baptised and tempted.
As we travelled around members of our group conducted short services and our fabulous guide, Nael, ensured at we were all fully aware of the significance of where we were.
When it was time to move from Jerusalem to the Sea of Galilee we travelled north by way of Caesarea — where Pilate was based and later where Peter shared the Gospel with Cornelius and his family — and Acre where the crusaders, in later times, established their Holy Land base.
Listening to our guide as we stand in the remains of the first century synagogue in Capernaum where Jesus taught.
The Sea of Galilee was every bit as wonderful as we had expected. We walked where Jesus taught and healed and rediscovered the feeding of the five thousand, the Easter breakfast on the shore, and the sermon on the mount. We also went off to Caesarea Philippi where Jesus took his disciples and Peter recognised that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, and we were taken to the top of the Mount of Transfiguration where Peter, James and John watched as Jesus met with Moses and Elijah, their clothes and their faces shining. We visited Nazareth where Jesus grew up and sat in the synagogue where Jesus had first preached and we explored a Bible Village designed to show pilgrims what first century life was like. Best of all, we sailed back across the Sea of Galilee. In the middle the boat stopped for our service as we looked at the hills, and sky and sea and realised that what we saw was what Jesus had seen so many years before. It was a memorable time together.
Now where shall we go next?
Dane Sherrard
From the Minister’s Desk
Such a lot has happened since our last Newsletter in December. We had really great Christmas Services, all of which were well-supported and every one of which was quite different. I will remember the service we had with children from our local nursery as well as the midnight service on Christmas Eve.
And then there was our congregational conference to which so many of our members came and in which everyone participated. We have the basis of an exciting plan and you will gradually see it taking shape over coming weeks.
January came to an end with a visit from Frog and Henry who took Fogo by storm with their music. The church was full and no-one wanted the evening to end — evidenced both by the standing ovations the band received and the encores they were pleased to share.
And then twenty-seven of us set off for the Holy Land for the pilgrimage of a lifetime. I had expected that the trip would be superb but my expectations were far exceeded by the kindness we received and the arrangements which had been made for us. It really was a visit we shall never forget
Now we are back! The journey towards Easter has begun and it will be special for many of us as we remember all that we saw while in the Holy Land.
The minister of four of our neighbouring churches will be retiring soon after Easter and I have been asked to become their interim moderator, in other words to look after them for the foreseeable future. It is going to be quite a challenge, but one in which I will be ably assisted by our wonderful team of folk in Fogo. There’s no getting away from it that these are difficult times for the church as ministers become ever scarcer but perhaps with so many members taking on responsibilities in new ways we’ll end up with something better than we had before.
