Our first service tomorrow is at 10.30 a.m. and is a service of readings and music for Christmas. There will be prose and poetry, traditional and modern words which will start in the stable at Bethlehem, include the travelling Magi and excerpts from the diary of the Reverend Francis Kilvert who was a curate in the 1870s and recorded church life in days which are very different from today. We will be reminded of a Christmas in space and of the importance that Handel’s Messiah played in Yorkshire in times past . We’ll sing several traditional carols and listen to a number of musical items on the organ, including John Rutter’s Angel’s Carol, the traditional Scots Rorate Caeli Desuper and the popular Parade of the Tin Soldiers.
At 5 p.m. we have a service in which we remember those who have died and whose presence we miss, and whose absence we feel always, but especially at Christmastime. There will be a time for reflection, a ceremony of remembrance using the advent candles and a short communion service. Everyone is always welcome at Fogo Parish Church.
This Sunday, 22nd. December at 10.30 a.m, we celebrate the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. We would be delighted to be joined by anyone who wishes to come and sing their way through the Christmas story and join in several favourite carols.
We set up our giant Advent Calendar this morning. It looks superb!
It’s the Third Sunday of Advent and we shall be celebrating by reminding ourselves of the Christmas story using our extra large Advent Calendar with beautiful stained-glass panels behind the doors.
Once we have opened the doors, enjoyed the story, and sung appropriate carols, we’ll round off our service with the ceremony of the Christingle. Our Christingles were made this morning — the oranges, candles, ribbon and sweets have all come together to make something special for our celebration tomorrow. We are hoping that some visitors will come along to join us!
Remember — “You are always welcome at Fogo Parish Church”
We had an excellent meeting of the Kirk Session and Congregational Board tonight. It is quite clear that we shall end the year with all our bills paid and with money in the bank. We celebrated by agreeing to send £300 to Linus Malu, our Missionary partner in Malawi. This tiny sum of money here will enable him to help two people to set up their own businesses there. We’ve also committed ourselves to have a fund-raising event early next year to assist him in his work.
Looking to the future of ministry in our little church we have agreed to ask the General Trustees of the Church of Scotland to allow us to buy a small cottage to which we can invite retired ministers from Scotland, and from around the world, to come and stay with us in exchange for conducting our services. Our presbytery has already given us its enthusiastic approval.
Tonight we also arranged a special planning meeting for the afternoon of Sunday 12th. January. We’ll have a buffet lunch after our church service and then we’ll be helped to dream dreams and develop a vision about our mission strategy for next year.
And of course, we planned our Christmas Services and, after the meeting was over, we used the bodies present to carry our giant advent calendar from the gallery to the chancel where it will be used on Sunday.
2019 has been a good year for Fogo Parish Church. There have been sadnesses — none more than the untimely death of our friend Clare Fleming — but the congregation has continued to move forward over the year. Numbers attending worship are universally good and the family feeling in church is something we all greatly value.
The congregation has enjoyed a number of special events ranging from particular services in church to our summer music festival which attracted a huge audience over the period of an afternoon and evening. Learning events, film shows and preparation for our pilgrimage to the Holy Land have all been part of this year’s programme and we are approaching Christmas with a sense of excitement.
Of particular satisfaction to us has been the link we have established with our Missionary partner, Dr. Linus Malu. Dr. Malu is a lawyer, called to the bar in Nigeria and with a Ph.D. gained in Australia, now working in Malawi.
Dr. Malu is sponsored by the Church of Scotland. He works with young girls whose local culture often leads to their being given in marriage while only thirteen or fourteen years old; he works with women (and sometimes men) who are the victims of gender violence; he works to try to prevent and rescue the victims of human trafficking; he provides legal assistance for those who are arrested and then ‘left to rot’ on remand because they have no one to speak for them. One of our projects for next year will be to raise funds to support all that he is doing on our behalf.
Fogo Folk
A small picture of life within our lively congregation!
Dr. Linus Malu, our Missionary Partner
Tom Stewart (our Session Clerk) presents gifts to our two assessor elders, Bob Kay and Roger Dodd, who have guided us through our first three years of new life as a congregation. Bob Kay and Eck with Clare, one of our wonderful elders, who sadly died recently. Folk enjoying a meal in church after a recent service. John Arthur playing the pipes at this year’s Ceremony of Remembrance. More food, this time in our superb new kitchen. Our new Elders being ordained: John and Kirsten Arthur, Julian French, Pete Gibbens and Laura Thorburn. Fun during our Harvest Festival Service. Pete and Gill Gibbens celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary in church. Alison Wood after her recent Baptism, pictured with Laura Thorburn who was confirmed at the same service. Dane Sherrard
From the Minister’s Desk
With this edition of our Newsletter you will receive a Christmas card and a note of our services over the Christmas period. It would give us enormous pleasure to welcome you to your Church and to enjoy your company at one of our services.
So much has happened to us during this last year. We have completed our three years in Presbytery Guardianship and are now an ordinary congregation within the Presbytery of Duns. We have a fabulous congregation and a building which has been adapted to be appropriate for worship in the twenty-first century.
Our aim when we started was to restore the building and build a congregation which was sustainable into the future. Our building is now a wonderful one — the south aisle is filled with comfortable modern seating while we have, of course, retained the historic box-pews in the east and west aisles. The building is always warm and dry and has been totally redecorated. We have received many gifts, one of which is a huge painting hanging on the north wall, with words often found on the walls of old churches. Tom and Dorothy Stewart arranged for a Swiss mural painter to come to Fogo to create this work of art and it is much admired.
Our new work of art
We recently Ordained five new elders and there were sixty people in church for the service. We feel exceptionally fortunate and can look back over a year with special services of Holy Communion, Baptism and Confirmation. We also welcomed the Presbytery of Duns for a service led by our elders and have had many musical events organised for us by Heather and Harris. (Already we are looking forward to the return of Frog and Henry in January.)
Speaking of January, immediately after Frog and Henry’s visit more than twenty of our congregation will be setting out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and expect to return full of rekindled enthusiasm for helping to move our congregation forward into the next stage of our adventure together.
I value your support and kind wishes and I trust that this Christmas will be a very special one for you.
Clare Fleming was special. As soon as she heard that we were attempting to breathe new life into the little church at Fogo she volunteered her help. Almost as quickly she became an elder within our congregation and was soon shaping many of the plans which have led to our being where we are today. Clare was passionate about Mission. When we held a congregational meeting to make our Mission plans, Clare immediately volunteered her home as a venue. She set up our small library, she took the lead in our flower festivals, she bought books for our church children and she had been so hoping to come with us to the Holy Land.
I got to know Clare well. I learned of the depth of her faith; of her great love for her daughters, Ruth, Heather and Jane; of her commitment to the national Church, not least through its social work arm, CrossReach, on whose board she sat for many years. I gained from her enthusiasm, her friendly encouragement and her constant presence in churchSunday by Sunday. Quite simply, she was the most generous person I have ever met. Her death is a great loss to so very many people. She will be greatly missed.
New since our last Newsletter:
Harvest Pulpit Fall made by Rachel
Our new font, borrowed from Burnmouth Parish Church and originally from the King’s Own Scottish Borderers
Our new seats have finally arrived — we are very happy with them!Our Church — another beautiful picture taken by Molly Hodges, our photographer who has taken all of the pictures in our Newsletter. We are extremely fortunate to have her.
Sunday 1st. September, 2019 at 10.30 a.m. A large congregation gathered for a very special service. It was special because this was the first service since we completed the three year period of continued services which Presbytery allowed us following the retirement of the previous minister. The real challenge for us was to get over that line — and although it has been clear for several months that we now have a longer term future, it was really good to be worshipping in Fogo Church with the three year date now past.
But Sunday was special for real reasons as well! Particularly because we celebrated the Baptism of Alison and then the confirmation of both Alison and Laura. It was a most memorable service.
Alison’s Baptism
After some wonderful hymns, two Bible readings narrating the baptism of the Ethiopian pilgrim by Philip and the Philippian jailer and his family by Paul, and a short talk on the significance of these events for us today, Alison was baptised using the font lent to us by the congregation at Burnmouth whose church is closing.
Laura and Alison are confirmed
The baptism was followed by the confirmation of Baptismal promises by Laura and Alison, after which they were presented with certificates, books and flowers and invited not only to participate in the Sacrament of Holy Communion but also to share in leading the service by carrying out the bread to the congregation. The service then came to a glorious conclusion with the singing of the old Scottish paraphrase ‘I’m not ashamed to own my Lord’.
After the service there was a short meeting of the Kirk Session and Congregational Board to which all members of the congregation were invited to contribute. The most important item of business was the decision to show our thanks to God for his goodness to us as a congregation by making a donation of £5,000 to the development programme of Eyemouth Parish Church, one of the sister congregations within our presbytery.
Then everyone made their way to Liz and Jim’s home for lunch served in the Church marquee.
Pete, Alison, Laura and Melanie
It was there that Molly took this picture of Pete and Melanie with Laura and Alison. The significance of the picture is that Pete and Melanie were Alison’s Baptismal sponsors and will provide her with support within our church family.
Edrom Casals Centre musicians
At three in the afternoon musicians from the Edrom Casals Centre provided an excellent concert under the leadership of Lucy Cowan. They were ably supported by Heather Cattanach and Heather Playfair and the concert reached an exciting conclusion with a performance of Bach’s double violin concerto. It had been a splendid day.
Plans are afoot for our service on Sunday 1st. September when Alison will be baptised and Laura will be confirmed. It will be really special and the service will end with a short celebration of Holy Communion.
The church marquee has now moved to Jim and Liz’s home and after the service on 1st. September everyone is invited there for a celebratory lunch. Church seems to be a succession of celebrations at the moment but we shall soon be getting back into harness with preparatory meetings for our congregational pilgrimage to the Holy Land, with our regular film evenings and with our University of the third age course which we are hosting.
Later on the afternoon of 1st. September at 3 p.m. there will be a Chamber Concert in church. The concert will be led by Lucy Cowan and will include a piano and string ensemble, along with the Bach double violin concerto. This concert has been arranged by Bridget who says that, although there is no charge for the concert, donations to Operation Raleigh International would be most welcome.
We had an excellent service yesterday. It was led by Chris, our lay reader. None of us in Fogo are quite what we seem! I’m a retired minister, now working as a non-stipendiary parish minister; Chris is a trained lay reader, but trained in the Church of Ireland rather than the Church of Scotland. I’ve written to presbytery and hope that his Irish readership will be recognised here in our Scottish presbytery.
Not that, at the end of the day, it makes a great deal of difference to us in Fogo: we are a happy band of folk who are enjoying exploring what it means to be a congregation in the early twenty-first century, each of us gaining enormously from each other as we slowly grow from being a tiny congregation into a small one!
One of the excitements of last week was that the congregation of Burnmouth has loaned us their beautiful font. They have done this because their building is to be closed down and will probably be sold, the site cleared, and a house built in their beautiful situation overlooking the sea, halfway down the hill to the harbour. I am sad whenever I hear of a church being closed but I am happy that if this is how it has to be then at least their font will stay in the area and will be a reminder to us and to them of what once was a thriving little congregation at Burnmouth.
Tom and I moved the font to Fogo last week. It is beautiful: ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not’, and some traditional carving on each of the eight sides. As we carried the font we noticed that inside it was inscribed with the letters KOSB, standing no doubt for King’s Own Scottish Borderers, and an indication perhaps that this font has had an earlier history involving that illustrious border regiment. I am going to try to find out more of its history but the more I learn the clearer it becomes that this font really should remain in this area and we will be proud to provide a home for it until such time as the parent congregation decides that it wishes to use it in different way.
As it says in a post about the font (do visit it because there is a grand picture there) the font will not stand idle. It will be used in two week’s time for Alison’s baptism and, of course, as we all come into church, Sunday by Sunday, it will remind us all of our own baptisms. We may not remember the event as we were so young when it happened, but we are baptised. We are part of Jesus’ body, his church and are entrusted by him to work to build his kingdom and promised his support through the Holy Spirit. (I love the photo — no don’t go to the other post to see it, I’ll repeat it here — because the Holy Spirit poster is just behind the font and what a message it spells out!)
The Burnmouth font, kindly lent to us by their Kirk Session
The day of Alison’s baptism will be another party day. The church marquee will continue its journey around our parish. It started in the garden of Mount Pleasant for our Garden Party, Music Festival and Bar-b-cue, it moved on to Pete and Gill’s garden for their fortieth wedding celebrations and now it is moving to Jim and Liz’s garden for an after baptism party on 1st. September — and there is going to be a music concert in the church that afternoon at 3 p.m. So there is lots happening.
For me this autumn is going to be busy. We are engaged in preparing Alison for her baptism and Laura for her confirmation; we shall soon be starting a big programme of evening meetings to prepare everyone for the pilgrimage to the Holy Land which will take place in January, 2020, and I am to lead a group which is part of the University of the Third Age which will be looking at the story of the Church of Scotland from 1560 until today.
I was once before asked to tell the story of the Church of Scotland. It was when I was working in Italy, way back in the 1970s and I was invited to the Benedictine monastery at Novalesa to share in a three-day conference there. The monastery was high in the Italian alps and the people of the village community there looked to Bobio as being the place from which their Christianity had come, brought all the way from Scotland by Columbanus, a monk trained in Iona and a follower of Columba. So naturally the story of Christianity in Scotland was important to them. It was a wonderful privilege to share with the monks at Novalesa, something I was able to do more than once during six happy years working for the Church of Scotland in Italy.
Here in Fogo we have grown into becoming a small church but there is a great deal going on!
Chris and John prepare for a Service in Fogo Parish Church
Chris Scott, our lay reader, will be leading our worship on Sunday 18th. and Sunday 25th. August. Rev. John Hunter, whose father was minister of Fogo for many years during the twentieth century, has agreed to come and conduct our service on Sunday 6th. October.
Three special services for our folk to look forward! But there is more — on Sunday 1st. September there will be a service of adult baptism and confirmation followed by a celebration lunch in the church marquee which, on this occasion, will be erected at the home of Jim and Liz.
September being a five-Sunday month there will be a service of Holy Communion on the final Sunday, Sunday 29th. Rachel is working on a special musical communion service for us on that day.
All services in Fogo Parish Church are at 10.30 a.m.
