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.
I had to write a note to my blog page today because of the date. It’s going to be such a long time until the 29th. February comes around again. I read somewhere during the week that the musical composer Rossini (born on 29th. February, 1792) had to wait until he was twelve til he had his second birthday. Doesn’t seem quite fair somehow.
Talking of things which don’t seem quite fair, I’ve had quite a week, not least because my computer got hacked and had to be deep-cleaned before I could start to use it again. All of that has now been safely done but I found myself with time to sit and read a book when before I would have been working at my desk. Maybe I have learned something from this event and will spend less time looking at a screen.
Rachel and I have also spent a couple of days this week painting one of the rooms in the Hen House so that it is now ready to have skirting boards and facings installed. We should have had all of this done such a long time ago but then Fogo Parish Church came along and the world turned upside down!
On Thursday several of us met to watch the first part of a mini-series about Masada. The programme was made a long time ago and starred, among others, Peter O’Toole, but it was fabulous, especially for those of us who just a few short weeks ago stood on Masada and looked down at all that lay below. I’m looking forward to part two next Thursday already.
On Friday I shall be going to the World Day of Prayer Service at Christ Church in Duns. The service has been prepared by Christian women from Zimbabwe and I’m looking forward to it. March is also going to be a month of meetings as our Presbytery sorts out our plan for the coming years. There’s an urgency to this as four of our neighbouring congregations will lose their minister in April and two others have ministers who will only be with us for another couple of years or so. I’m expecting that there will be several meetings held before the end of the month and am hopeful that this will enable a plan to be agreed by everyone at the April meeting of Presbytery.
Talking about hoping for particular outcomes, I’m really hoping that the weather will take a turn for the better. The ground is so wet when we walk the dogs every morning and the wind has been ferocious — it will be grand to get some weather when it might be appropriate to venture onto a golf course once again. Watching the professionals on television has made me forget my limited ability and I imagine that this year I will play like them! It’s good to dream.
This has been a good week – back to normal after the
trip to the Holy Land and the catching up that invariably results from such a
visit. There was a really good feeling in Church last Sunday. I felt it – and
other people felt it too. I got an email the following day from which I quote: “Was really
pleased to be at Fogo yesterday. There is such a joy there, you can almost
touch it!” I’m glad that other people feel it too.
I spent quite bit of the first part
of the week working on the communication channels which have been identified as
crucial by our congregational mission strategy conference. We are now operating
a web-site, Facebook, Twitter, an E-Newsletter, and a regular slot in the local
news section of our local paper. On our web-site I am trying to keep a weekly
blog going and I have succeeded in producing a short video and a sound copy of
the blog (both of which are on the web-site). There is still quite a lot to do,
the next task for me is to create a form for the web-site to allow new folk to
sign up for our E-Newsletter (our members are already subscribers). I’ll hope
to do this next week.
On Wednesday Tom Thorburn our
Presbytery Elder, Tom Stewart our Session Clerk, Olive Gardiner our Treasurer,
along with Bob Kay the Fabric and Glebe Convener of Presbytery, Roger Dodd the
Presbytery Planning Convener and I met with two members of the General Trustees
to consider our plan to purchase a cottage to use to bring retired ministers to
our area as our guests who will be invited while they are with us to conduct
services both at Fogo and in some of the other churches in the area who will
not have the services of a stipendiary minister. It would be fair to say that
some of our team found the meeting to be a frustrating one but we enjoyed
showing our visitors around our beautiful church and I hope that the General
Trustees will catch the enthusiasm which is shared both by our congregation and
by our Presbytery.
Looking to the near future we shall
be watching the television mini-series Masada over the first four Thursdays of
Lent, starting at 7 p.m. on 27th. February in the church. This has
arisen from our trip to the Holy Land where we spent our Friday being taken to
the top of Masada by cable-car having first of all been shown a presentation
about the importance of the fortress there. As part of the presentation there
were scenes from this mini-series and so we determined to get hold of a copy we
could watch in full once we returned home. Of course, this evening isn’t just
for those of us who visited Masada, it is an evening for everyone. It is an
exciting story and the film has been extremely well made.
Friday 6th. March is the
World Day of Prayer and this year a service is being held at 7 p.m. in Christ
Church, in Duns. It will be good for us to have the opportunity of joining with
members of all of the local congregations at the Scottish Episcopal Church. The
service is prepared by Christian women from a different country each year. This
year the service has been prepared by women from Zimbabwe and the theme they
have chosen is ‘Rise, take your mat and walk’.
During the week I have started
arranging meetings with elders from some of the congregations in the Gordon,
Greenlaw, Legerwood and Westruther grouping who will be without a minister when
Tom Nicholson retires soon after Easter. As I mentioned last week, I am to be
their interim moderator and this is the major reason that we have advanced our
plans to have a cottage to which we can invite retired ministers to assist us
with the many services which will have to be held in the very near future as we
move towards a time when services will be more usually led by lay members of
each congregation. It is going to be exciting times!
I started off by explaining that I
thought that we were now getting our communication act together. But what of
the message we are communicating? The message this week has been all about the
results of our Sunday afternoon conference in January. These are now available
on all of our media. I hope that they will be the subject of our discussions at
home and when we meet in church so that when we have our next Sunday afternoon
conference after a congregational lunch on 15th. March we can dot
the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s and agree our policy for the rest of this year. Of
course, work will already have begun on some of the plans which were clearly
agreed at the first meeting – such as, for example, strengthening our
communications strategy.
We value everyone’s opinions, so do
share them – and look out for another edition of this blog next week!
This is going to be a really exciting week for us. Tomorrow we meet for our service as usual at 10.30 a.m. but this will be followed by a buffet lunch and then we shall meet as a Kirk Session, Congregational Board and Congregation to start work on preparing our mission strategy for this new year.
I suppose that it must sound strange that we have waited until the start of our fourth year together before having such a meeting. But we did meet a couple of years ago and draw up what we thought were the important things we ought to be doing under the heading of mission. More than half of the congregation met in Clare’s home and we prepared a list of nine things we thought we could do and, looking back, we have achieved almost all of them.
But, truth to tell, over the first three years of our new existence we have been concentrating on growing our congregation (what’s that if it is not mission?) and making our ancient building fit for worship in the twenty-first century. With all of that done — with a wonderful congregation and a glorious building — it is now time to concentrate on what we really exist for, and that’s what we are going to discuss tomorrow.
I can’t give you, dear reader, any clue as to what will be decided because we are hoping that the ideas will emerge from our members and friends. It is important, however, that we don’t see mission as a period of frenetic activity which once done will allow us to subside into a well-deserved comfort zone, but rather that we see mission as being what we are about today, tomorrow and every day.
Watch this space for news of how we get on!
On Thursday evening we shall have the final meeting of our group who are going on pilgrimage to the Holy Land at the end of this month. There are twenty-seven of us in all and it looks as if it is going to be the trip of a life time with us spending a number of days in Jerusalem exploring the city and the surrounding area before setting off for Galilee (via Caesarea and Acre) and spending four days exploring the places in which Jesus taught and healed during his ministry. We’ll be spending eleven days in all in the Holy Land and, with a packed programme, we’ll see an enormous amount of the country but I’m particularly looking forward to sailing on the Sea of Galilee and looking around at the sky and the sea and the shapes of the hills all around and realising that what I’m seeing is very similar to what Jesus and his disciples will have seen so many years ago. I hope to be able to post updates on where we are and what we see while we are away.
Next Sunday our service will be led by the Reverend John Hunter, a great friend of the congregation, and one who was born here in Fogo when his father was minister here. Looking further ahead to a week on Friday at 7 p.m. we shall welcome back Frog and Henry, the St. Louis jazz musicians who entertained us so royally last year. Put the date in your diary and plan to be with us.
Frog and Henry played in Fogo in JanuaryRev. John Hunter conducted one of our Sunday morning services in JanuaryAfter Church on Sunday 12th. January we held a congregational lunch followed by a conference to prepare our mission strategy for this year.
Sunday, 12th. January, 2020. Today was a big day at Fogo Parish Church. Our service at 10.30 a.m. was followed by a congregational lunch and conference session of what we should be doing as a congregation during 2020. It was a meeting of the Kirk Session, Congregational Board and members of the congregation deliberately structured as such to enable decisions to be made. The session was conducted by Julian, one of our new elders and experienced in leading such sessions. He asked us all to identify what made Fogo Church what it was, what brand image did we have in our own minds when we thought of our congregation or what made us want to belong. Then we were invited to think of the people to whom we wished to reach out — a whole variety of responses was received, from an elderly lady with few friends in a nursing home, through families who were doing well and had no interest at all in what happened in their local church, to young folk who had previously had no involvement at all with matters of faith. Finally we were asked to think through plans to reach out to those people we had identified. A huge range of proposals was produced ranging through those which might be grouped under the heading of communication, through those centering on special events, to making more use of digital media to reach out, share and interact with those whose circumstances prevent them from being with us, seeking the assistance of young folk to enable us to communicate with the elderly. The results of our conference will now be analysed and a detailed strategy produced with a view to being implemented by Easter.
On 27th. January twenty-seven folk set off from Fogo for an eleven day pilgrimage in the Holy Land (returning safely on 6th. February).
Roger made a special desert for our congregational lunch. It was very much appreciated!
