March 2020 Newsletter

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“You are always welcome at Fogo Parish Church”

Beautiful Music in an Idyllic Rural Setting

Music has become a very important part of all that goes on at Fogo Parish Church. It’s important on a Sunday morning when we enjoy a service which is full of music, which is always joyful and which enables us all to sing enthusiastically as well. We also have been delighted to welcome several local (and not so local) musicians to play in our church and in so doing have been able to share our building with many more people than would otherwise come to visit.

We are very grateful to Heather Cattanach and Harris   Playfair who live just next to the church and who have arranged all of our special concerts over the last eighteen months. Usually these concerts have involved pupils from the Berwickshire High School (where Harris teaches), or the pupils have been supporting other artists; sometimes they have performed on their own supported by Harris and Heather.

On the last Sunday evening of May we welcomed Jenna Reid, a celebrated Shetland fiddler. To support her, Harris brought the Berwickshire High School Folk Band, six fiddlers and a bass player, who provided some spectacular music and who are pictured at the top of this page.

All of us who were present — and the church was very well filled for the occasion — were simply blown away by the music. Jenna took us from Dundee to Newcastle and Perthshire but most of the music came from Shetland, some of it old and traditional, others contemporary, some slow and melancholy, others   gloriously exuberant and played so fast that we  wondered how Jenna’s fingers were able to cope.

At the interval folk from the congregation had provided a finger buffet and although there were more in our audience than we had anticipated there was still food left at the end — and what a superb buffet it was! The money raised by donations — there was no charge for admission but folk donated extremely generously — was given for music projects at the school and we hope its musicians, and Jenna, will return to us again quite soon.

Some of our audience — not a lot of room!

Jenna with members of the Folk BandJenna Reid — celebrated Shetland fiddler

John and Kirsten take charge!

John and Kirsten welcoming Clare and Bridget to church

We had a particularly special service on Sunday 3rd. June. It was conducted by two of our own members, John and Kirsten Arthur.

It wasn’t the first time that they had led worship as they explained to us during the service, but it was the first time they had conducted a service in a church in Scotland.

Kirsten explained that a number of years ago they had lived in Saudi Arabia where Christian churches were not permitted. As a result members of the British community would meet in the Embassy on a Friday and conduct their own service. Occasionally there would be a visiting minister who would come and administer a communion service but on other Fridays it was down to the community itself to make its own arrangements using its own resources.

Later on when John was in Afghanistan with the army where he served as a doctor, he would stand in for the chaplain because the chaplain had such a large number of units to cover. Kirsten worked in education and became accustomed to leading assemblies, so together John and Kirsten brought a great deal of   experience to this Sunday in Fogo.

We all enjoyed the service enormously — really good hymns, a great talk from Kirsten with the children during which she explained that we were all members of several families: our own personal one, the larger family of Fogo Church and the huge family of the Church world-wide. All of this she did using a large collection of family bibles and little figures to  represent the folk in the family.

Kirsten talking with Alice and Eck during the service

John spoke about prayer and particularly about the way that prayer can be used to help healing which is something which all of us need. Prayer is what the Church does.

It was a good service, very well attended, and  afterwards all of us were invited to Kirsten and John’s home for a wonderful lunch. There were tables in the garden and in the house and an abundance of good food and great company, itself a picture of what Church is all about.

Our church plan for the future is based on the premise that some of our services will be conducted by members of our congregation. John and Kirsten have given us a grand start and reminded us of the  considerable talents we have within our congregation. We are looking forward to their next service.

One of several tables filled with happy lunchers after a very happy service!

Kirk Session Report on the Way Forward: our Mission Plan for 2018/19

Our Kirk Session and Congregational Board met on Wednesday 6th. June for its regular meeting. Our numbers have increased dramatically over the last year and the complement of our combined Board and  Session is now seventeen — surely a healthy sign for the future!

We heard that our finances continue to be sound and our income has exceeded our budgeted target. We heard too that exterior work on the building has been almost completed and we agreed to proceed with a  complete redecoration of the church during these   summer months.

Most of our meeting, however, was given over to discussing mission — one of the fundamental purposes of the Church. In preparation for this meeting an open-to-everyone meeting had been held in the home of one of our elders; a meeting which was attended by more than half of our congregation.

After talking about the way forward, a way forward which will demand real commitment from us all, we moved on to talk about what mission really means. It’s not, of course, something that we engage in from time to time — ‘Oh, let’s do mission this week!’ — but rather something which has to be at the heart of     everything we do. When we seek to involve new folk in our worship, that’s mission. When we talk with our friends and tell them how much our church and our faith means to us, that’s mission.

But there does need to be a framework of events to help us to keep mission right at the forefront of our consciousness and at our Session we discussed nine different ideas which had grown out of that initial meeting.

With limited space this article can only outline the proposals but each will be more fully fleshed out in coming editions of this Newsletter.

First of all we are going to have a special service on the third Sunday of September. It will be a Harvest service but it will be even more than that. Our working title is an ‘Everybody Here’ service. There will be special invitations and we will end the service with a picnic lunch and maybe even a late season bar-b-cue.

Our second proposal is to offer to run a course, not aimed at Church members, but at folk who don’t come to church at all. We’ll base it on the story of how our Bible came to us — it’s a really fascinating story and one which might be of real interest to folk who have not considered it before. We’ll use one of our member’s homes as a venue and we’ll see what happens!

Music, especially with young folk, is hugely important. We live in a gloriously rural setting, we have great musicians in our community, so we are going to plan a small afternoon and evening open-air family music festival to which we invite some of the folk who have already entertained us in church and share in a bar-b-cue.

Mission is also about developing ourselves. We are making plans to conduct a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and spend a year preparing for it with a monthly meeting learning about all we will see. We are possibly looking at January or February in 2020 and we hope other folk from the area will want to join us.

Many come to visit our church — making it more accessible and ensuring that visits can be really  informative is our fifth proposal. We are also conscious that our presbytery is struggling with lack of staff and extra large parishes so our sixth idea is to offer to help by taking on some of the load of visiting a larger area than we do at present.

Our seventh proposal is just a bit of fun. Our small congregation seems to have folk in it who travel the world. Next time folk set off we are going to ask them to take one of our Church postcards and have a picture taken holding it in an exotic location and then give us the picture. We’ll make up a board which shows just how widely we reach into our world.

Another idea about creating identity is to produce some church mugs. They will make splendid conversation starters when folks come to our homes for coffee.

Our final proposal is to start now to prepare for a summer fayre next year. We’ll be planning holiday stalls, a stall where everything on sale is of one colour, and we’ll be making up some funfair games and organising a tea tent.

Now these are just the sketchiest outlines of what exists as a five-page report but the important thing is that a discussion has now begun and we hope to begin to be seen by our community as a church which is really active, which has good things to say and exciting ways of saying them, and, of course, everything will centre around our Sunday morning worship every Sunday at 10.30 a.m. to which everyone is and always will be welcome. We would really love to know what you think of our plans.

Flower FestivalA display from last year’s Festival

Please Come to Our Flower Festival

After the success of our first Flower Festival last year, we are having our second festival this year. It will be held on Saturday 16th. and Sunday 17th. June and will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and from 12 noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday.

Clare Fleming who is organising the Festival tells us that she is gathering historic facts about the role of Fogo Kirk in Christian worship and this information will be linked with the decorations throughout the church.

Refreshments will be served during the time that the Festival is on and everything will come to a climax with a Songs of Praise service on Sunday 17th. June at 4 p.m. to which, of course, everyone is invited.

If you have only heard of the changes which have been made to our beautiful church over the last year or so, and haven’t had an opportunity to see these for yourself, then why not plan to look in at our Flower Festival and see all that has been going on? We can promise that you will be made very welcome.

From the Minister’s DeskDane Sherrard

This is a joint edition for May and June. There wasn’t a great deal of special news to share in May and it may be that there is going to be too much news for June but I didn’t want to put out an edition which just seemed to be saying the same things over and again. It is true that things are going well for us and it is true that we are moving forward month by month but by now I expect that all of our readers know that.

In particular I wanted to be able to include the plans made at the Kirk Session on June 6th. These are  exciting times. We now have the Trustees in place for our Fogo Parish Church Community Trust. These are the people who we hope will eventually take  ownership of the Church on behalf of the community. It is an excellent team, eleven strong with one outside expert, Bob Kay, who has been Property Convener of the Presbytery of Duns for many years and is currently an assessor elder in our Kirk Session, and ten local trustees, six of whom live within the parish of Fogo and four very close by. Five are men and five are women and all are members of the congregation.

The complete list of Trustees is John Arthur, Liz Casey, Heather Cattanach, Clare Fleming, Olive     Gardiner, Gill Gibbens, Bob Kay, Chris Scott, Tom Thorburn, Fergus Torrance and Alexander Trotter.

Alexander Trotter will be the first chairman of the Trust, Olive Gardiner the secretary and Liz Casey the treasurer. At present the Trust is being registered as a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation with the Scottish Charity Regulator.

I should also tell you that we are trying to share the information in our Newsletter more widely than before — and with it the invitation to join us at worship any Sunday at 10.30 a.m. There is always a good crowd in church so you can count on being made welcome.

Plans are afoot for our next concert which will be in September. The date is not yet finalised, and will     include the flute quartet who played at our very first concert and whose return has been long anticipated. Our plans for next year include a Family Festival of Music building on what Heather and Harris have begun with their regular programme of concerts.

We now have our own church website. It can be found at www.fogokirk.org and information can be accessed there in between the times when our newsletter is published.

This next year is going to be an important one for us as we move from trying to establish a congregation and stabilise our building to setting out detailed plans about our worship, mission and education programmes for the future — our preliminary thoughts are included in our Kirk Session report on page three.

Newsletter16

It is possible to enlarge the pdf file above and read the newsletter. However, I have set out each of the articles below in a form which I hope will make it easier to read and enjoy:

Easter Season in full swing!

Sometimes small pictures tell big stories! This is the little table just inside the door of the church. There’s a vase of daffodils which have almost come to symbolise Easter and Spring and the start of everything coming back to life. There’s the glass decorations with the flowers because someone has taken enormous care to decorate the church for this special time of year. There’s the basket of eggs, another Easter symbol, all carefully dyed and ready for church rolling — and so many of them. We expected a full church and we certainly weren’t disappointed. There’s a small pile of Orders of Service, a reminder of the care and attention which goes into the preparation of every service — most have already been distributed but there are still a few left over because we always plan for more people to come and join us.

Of course, numbers are not the most important thing, but we did take satisfaction in having more folk this Easter than last Easter; we rolled more eggs, we ate more cake and we really celebrated the most wonderful day in the whole year!

One of the particularly happy coincidences this year was that on Easter Sunday we had people with us in every decade of life: children, teenagers, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties. A real family Easter!

On Good Friday we had the simple wooden cross with a single red rosebud on the upright. On Easter Sunday we had a beautiful display of lilies around the base — a symbol of new life and of the fact that Jesus who was dead is now alive.

It was a lovely visual picture of what Easter is all about and we are grateful for Erica for preparing it for us.

Erica at work on the Easter decoration.

One of the highlights of Easter is Easter  Communion. This is always particularly special for us because we use what we are told are the oldest silver communion cups still in use anywhere in   Scotland. They were donated in 1662 by the Trotter family.

It is quite something to remember that not only are we sharing in a sacrament which goes back to Jesus himself, but we are drinking from the same chalices which have been used for over three hundred and fifty years — a real link with those who have gone before us — and which will  continue to be used for at least that time in the  future. Others will drink from these silver cups and remember those of us who worshipped in this special place in years gone by.

Mission Discussion Evening

It grew out of the last meeting of the Kirk Session and Congregational Board. We spent too much time talking about all that we planned to do with the building and too much time discussing out finances and, as a result, we left ourselves with too little time to talk about   mission and the way forward for our congregation — the really important matters, although the other things matter too!

It wasn’t that we had run into particular difficulties. On the property side, the last bits of damp in the building were to be removed by cutting out the plaster,  removing the rubble underneath (which was holding the damp) and replacing the plaster work, all of which has now been done, and then planning to have the building redecorated, both inside and out.

On the financial side, we learned that we had ended last year with a surplus of around £10,000, money which will enable us to develop our future plans for this year with confidence that whatever problems we run into, they won’t be financial ones!

As we ran out of time we agreed that we would hold a special meeting in Clare’s home and we would invite everyone who wanted to come along and share in a discussion about where we are going to be in eighteen months’ time. (The significance of that timescale is that we are now half-way through the three years of presbytery guardianship agreed when Alan Cartwright retired.)

Almost half of the congregation turned out for this evening meeting and to say we were delighted would be a huge understatement! Everyone contributed to the meeting and we had some grand discussions. Several people wanted to ask what would happen at the end of our three years and we teased the answer to this out together. The building of Fogo Church has been  declared surplus to requirements and, as a result, we have been engaged in creating a Community Trust, to take ownership of the building sometime next year and to hold that ownership on behalf of the community of Fogo and for the ongoing use of the congregation.   Local trustees have been recruited: more than half live within the parish of Fogo, there are the same number of men and women on the trust, and there is a wide range of experience and background represented. By the time the trust takes ownership of the building we will have ensured that it is in a really good state of repair for the future.

A church building, even an historic one like Fogo,  requires a congregation. So how are we getting on in that regard? We have around thirty-four folk who we can count on always to be in church if they are at home but our folk do get about: last Sunday we had members in Australia, China and the West Indies and several were on holiday in different parts of England. We also have around another dozen or so who come from time to time and then there are the occasional visitors. To ensure that we are fully sustainable we need to push that thirty-four up to fifty. That’s not beyond us; in fact it will be achieved if every two of us succeed in bringing along one friend, and it is less that the number of new folk we have welcomed in the last year!

What then about ministry? There is, of course, no way that the presbytery will be able to provide us with a minister. So the choices are that we would ask to be put in with another grouping of churches, or that we would attempt to go forward on our own. Several  people present at our meeting encouraged us not to be afraid of going on forward on our own. John spoke of services conducted in a foreign embassy in a country where Christianity was not permitted. The community held their own services at a Friday Coffee Club,  several folk took a turn of leading worship and the  little congregation thrived. Taking worship  responsibility ourselves would enable us to continue to worship together in Fogo every Sunday, something which it was felt was important.

Everyone agreed that it was important to us that we remained firmly as a Church of Scotland congregation. Even although we would own our own building and be responsible for our own ministry we would continue to pay dues both to Presbytery and to the Church of Scotland. We would also continue to have the parish responsibility of Fogo under the oversight of the   presbytery.

As we talked more about ministry, it was hoped that our present ‘minister’ (technically our interim  moderator) would continue for a while to come but that we explore ways of using our members fully in leading worship — most Sundays already, several members share with the minister in leading the service.

It was also suggested that we explore the possibility of having a church cottage to which we might invite   retired ministers to come and spend a summer in  exchange for leading our Sunday worship. We may be short of ministers but we have so many retired ones — and the borders is a beautiful place to spend some time.

It was an enthusiastic meeting — plans were made to hold some special events and some additional  welcoming material is to be produced and we all went home feeling enthused about the future.

Steve Hunter

Steve Hunter’s funeral was in Fogo Kirk on Thursday 19th. April. Friends and family from all over the country and from Cothill filled the church for the service and I print the words I spoke on that day about a very special gentleman.

Steve was born at Walkergate in Newcastle sixty-nine years ago. It was there that he grew up with his Mum and dad and with his younger brother, Laurence. It was here too that his education began. At school he concentrated on chemistry and biology, loving also to spend time playing and watching football, naturally supporting Newcastle, and playing drums in a band, although his real and growing passion was for animals.

He kept guinea pigs and showed them as well. He also kept snakes and mice, rabbits and slowworms. With Laurence, he would explore and look for wildlife, taking delight in discovering frogs under stones. Steve bought Laurence his first fishing rod and Laurence, I’m told, has been fishing ever since.

When it became time to go to University, Steve enrolled at Glasgow to study agriculture. He would have liked to become a vet but there were not enough places available at that time. Steve returned home every two weeks to support Newcastle. By this time he was also into motor-bikes and cars –- uncle Robert was an engineer and taught Steve all he needed to know to keep them on the road. Unfortunately he had a motor bike accident but, always positive, he bought a bubble car because he could drive it on his motor bike licence. He never lost his love of cars and driving.

University successfully behind him, Steve moved out of the family home which he had shared not just with his parents but with his grandparents and Uncle Robert as well. He sold his drums and bought a home in Chapel House in Newcastle and got his first job working for West Cumberland Farmers selling animal health products, partly from the depot in Hexham and partly out on the road.

In 1974 he married Marilyn at Newcastle Civic Centre. Their families had long lived in the same street and both Mums travelled to work on the same bus. Marilyn recalls that Steve had been sent up on an errand to hand in a pair of football boots for her brother Paul, but while at the house ran into Marilyn and invited her out for a drink. So began the courting which led in time to the wedding. They danced, listened to music, went to the clubs and visited the cinema before setting up home at Haxby near York where Steve worked for Pfizer before moving to Chester where he made the change from working on animal welfare to human health, gaining additional qualifications and working for Astra Pharmaceuticals in which company he rose to become the National Sales Manager.

The call of animals and also of being his own boss was strong and in 1992 Steve set up his own Aquatic Business based in the Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor Garden Centre. Now his life centred around fish and aquariums and ponds, and leisure time often saw Steve and Marilyn on their narrowboat ‘Cat’s Whiskers’ which they sailed on the Shropshire Union canal and from which Marilyn and their daughter Ailsa have so many happy memories.

In 2007 Steve retired, the canal boat was exchanged for a motor home and together Steve and Marilyn   explored so much of the country, enjoying everywhere from Devon and Cornwall to the Lake District and sometimes stopping off in Wales where their friends Lindsay and Ann had a hotel which they loved to visit and sometimes to help run to allow the owners to go on holiday, and where they met their great friend Judith.

They loved these times but Steve and Marilyn yearned for somewhere quiet to call home. Cothill was absolutely perfect for them –- secluded and quiet, with a site on which they could build their ideal home to their own specifications and, of course, not too far from Newcastle, their spiritual home.

These then are the bones of Steve’s life, but what was he really like? Let me share some of the words Ailsa and Marilyn used when they talked of Steve. They described Steve as ‘a bit of a joker’ and as one who could be forthright and assertive but as one who was very kind –- nowhere is that natural kindness seen more clearly than in his love of animals, something which stayed with him throughout his life. Here at Cothill it was the hedgehogs which caught his attention. He built them little houses and rigged up cameras so that he could watch how they were getting on. He rejoiced to see the deer in his garden of a morning –- he really enjoyed his garden and being a handyman he was able to do a great deal to make it the way he and Marilyn wanted it to be.

If he wasn’t in the garden you might find him listening to music, probably Jimmy Hendrix, or Led Zepplin, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. If the television was on it was probably Formula One motor racing, or football or golf. You wouldn’t find Steve’s nose in a book –- not unless it was a book about Newcastle United — he had so many treasured mementos of his team and its players and managers over the years — or perhaps about Winston Churchill. He loved to be involved in local politics and gave his time unstintingly to the work of the local community council, enjoying working with other local people to make this area better for everyone.

Sitting with Marilyn you might have found them talking about their love of walking –- together they climbed lots of mountains in Scotland, England and Wales –- and Steve loved taking photographs.

His firm friends were Peter and Alan and he always enjoyed their company. But if you asked him what was most important in life he would speak of Marilyn and Ailsa. He was so proud of Ailsa and it was quite simply Marilyn’s love that made life the joy that it was to him. Steve will be missed. He will be missed by so many people but it is Ailsa and Marilyn who will miss him most and we offer them, and all the family, our love and our prayers today.

Dane Sherrard

From the Minister’s Desk

By the time you get to this part of the Newsletter you will probably already have read everything else but I hope you won’t mind me highlighting something of what this issue is about. Naturally we have started with a bit about our Easter celebrations. The Church is about Easter: Jesus, who was dead, is alive. We know how much God loves each one of us and we can face the future, whatever it is, in the confidence of that love — even in a world where so much appears to be so wrong, so unfair, so callous and so pitiless. If we can learn to share, to stand up for what we believe, to love each other then we can start to make a difference where we live and in turn can start to change the world — there’s no doubt at all that those eleven disciples locked in an upper room in Jerusalem never thought that they could change the world in the way they did but they reckoned without the power of God’s Spirit and I suppose that we often make our plans thinking too that it will all be down to us.

This edition also sets out more about the way forward for us as a congregation, describing some of the discussion at our special meeting (but making no mention of the wonderful food which has become such a part of all that happens at Fogo!)

A number of people said things that night which have stuck with me. Pete said that in his experience new folk often chose to come along for the first time on one of the ‘special’ Sundays in the year in part because they knew there would be quite a lot of people there and they wouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb. Maybe we need to have a special Sunday when everyone is there and let that be known so that others can feel that it is safe to join us. The other thing that is important to say is that we have now reached the stage when there are always a good number of folk in church so no-one needs to worry about arriving and sharing the service with just a handful of others.

Clare spoke about the importance of other events to enable visitors to see the church and to enable us to meet them and invite them to join us, possibly to  suggest we meet and come along together because once folk come they always seem to want to stay! We have some concerts planned and a flower festival about which there will be more information to follow.

Molly undertook to prepare a small welcoming card to ensure that visitors and others we met knew how welcome they would be — and this has already been done! (Thanks, Molly — your photos throughout the Newsletter are great, as always.)

I realised from what was said by so many that mission is not about special events and organised activities, although these are important: it is about a new  mindset. Everything we do has to be about mission. Welcoming new folk is what we are about. As we welcome others we often end up meeting Jesus in the guise of a stranger — that’s the message of the Emmaus Road and it’s quite a thought that we too may be the face of Jesus to others.

Finally you will notice that I have included the words which Marilyn and Ailsa helped me prepare about Steve for his recent funeral. I enjoyed meeting him as I delivered Newsletters round the parish. He was a real character and he will be greatly missed.