Category Archives: Uncategorized
April, 2022 Newsletter
And now for a mask-free Easter!
It goes without saying that we are going to continue to take every precaution and do all that we can to keep everyone safe — but how wonderful that those who wish can now sing without a mask and can begin to enjoy again worship as it used to be!
Because our church is quite large and has some beautiful box pews, then those who wish to keep their distance and to wear masks can safely do that, while who wish to worship mask-free can do that as well!
As you will see from the list below, we have a busy programme of services for Easter — but this is only part of our offering for, in the evenings, following our service, there will be a programme of Biblical films exploring the Easter story. Some will be old favourites and some perhaps, ones which you may have forgotten about because they appeared once on television and then disappeared.
Of course, the coffee bar will be open during each evening and the beauty of our church is that it is always warm. The Coffee Bar is also always open on Wednesday mornings from 10.30 until 12 noon.
Why not make this an Easter which you devote to learning and worshipping? You will never be the same again!
Our Easter Programme
Sunday 10th. April at 10.30 a.m.
Palm Sunday Service.
We remember Jesus entering Jerusalem as a pilgrim, riding on a donkey.
Monday 11th. April at 6 p.m.
Service for Monday in Holy Week.
We remember the cleansing of the Temple by Jesus in Jerusalem.
Tuesday 12th. April at 6 p.m.
Service for Tuesday in Holy Week.
We remember a day of teaching in the Temple.
Wednesday 13th. April at 6 p.m.
Service for Wednesday in Holy Week.
We remember Jesus in quiet at Bethany while Judas prepares to betray Jesus.
Thursday 14th. April at 2 p.m.
A Service of the Stations of the Cross in the open air of our church yard.
Thursday 14th. April at 6 p.m.
Service for Maundy Thursday.
We remember Jesus sharing in his Last Supper with his disciples in the Upper Room.
Friday 15th. April at 6 p.m.
Service for Good Friday.
We remember the Passion of our Lord; his trial and his execution on the Cross.
Sunday 17th. April at 8 a.m.
A Service for Easter Day in the open air of our church yard, followed by breakfast in the church.
Sunday 17th. April at 10.30 a.m.
Easter Sunday Service of Holy Communion including the Ordination of new elders.
Our services are open to all and if you come to join us we promise you a very warm welcome.
What a beautiful world we live in!
We are so fortunate to live in this beautiful part of God’s world. That was a theme which came through a recent Presbytery conference held in Duns Parish Church.
As a result, as we reported in a previous newsletter, we decided to respond to the conference by creating a pilgrimage walk and a small chapel dedicated to telling the story of Saint Cuthbert who will have known our parish area well.
Work has now started on both of these projects and the first fifteen plaques can now be seen if you come to visit our church yard. Eventually there will be almost fifty plaques and these will tell the story of Saint Cuthbert and will include prayers, meditations and other thoughts to challenge our care of God’s world.
We hope that this pilgrimage walk will attract visitors to our church and will raise the profile of a Saint whom many people now only associate with his time in England — at Lindisfarne and later, after his death, with Durham. Of course, as know, his home was in Melrose and it was there that he started work as a shepherd, before the vision described on this plaque:
Meanwhile work has continued on our Saint Cuthbert’s Chapel.
Dave has wood-panelled the lower part of the walls — and has made a magnificent job of it. Rachel has painted the walls and ceiling a beautiful shade of duck blue and has added Celtic designs. The chapel is now ready for the prayer around the walls and the pictures of the life of Saint Cuthbert.
But work has now temporarily been halted because we are all working to create a home for a Ukrainian family. We have property available at Mount Pleasant and we have a splendid team of joiners and other workers within the congregation: so it is the obvious thing for us to do.
Making a Difference
No one reading this newsletter will need to be told that we are a tiny congregation in the smallest parish in Berwickshire. You would be excused for thinking that, small as we are, we would not be making much of a difference to the world in which we live.
We make more of a difference than you might think. In 2020, just before lockdown, twenty-eight of us visited the Holy Land and, while we were there, we visited the Jeel al Amal School in Bethany.
It’s a very poor (in financial terms) school in an area of great poverty, but as a school it never turns anyone away regardless of their religion or background (and that’s quite something where they are).
When we came home we sent money to buy some luxuries — you see the games they bought with our money in the picture. So far we have sent them £5,000 and we are committed to adding to this total each year.
Dr. Linus Malu is our Missionary partner. He is based in Malawi and there he works with folk who have no way of supporting themselves. Very often this is with women who have been abandoned by their husbands and who now have no way of supporting themselves or their children — but sometimes it can be men who have been abandoned by their wives.
Because the economy is so different from our own, Linus is able to set people up in small businesses of their own and each business can cost as little as £300 for something which is totally life-changing for those involved. Of course, Linus is there to provide on-going support.
In a recent letter, Linus told us that “sometimes the women make such a big success of their businesses that their husbands want to come back and re-join the family!” We have so far contributed to quite a few small businesses in Malawi and we aim to provide at least £2,000 a year to Linus for his amazing work.
The picture above shows our first consignment of medical equipment being loaded into a container for Ukraine.
Our first load of equipment was largely made up of responder first-aid kits but we are now gathering funds both to send directly to Ukraine and to support a family when they come to stay with us.
Of course, there are many other ways in which we help other people, many of which it would not be appropriate to include within our newsletter, but the message is clear: even a very small congregation in a very small parish can make a big difference to the folk in the world which we share. Next time you see the church as you pass by do remember all the love for others which is pouring from its doors!
From the Minister’s Desk
I want to tell you about the photograph you see here. The person with his camera photographing the view from Megiddo in Israel is Nael who was our guide when we visited the Holy Land early in 2022.
During the nearly two weeks that we were with Nael we saw so much. But, of course, in a limited time it is impossible to see everything; so now Nael is taking us on virtual tours of the Holy Land seeing all of the places we missed. Here he is showing us Megiddo, one of the most important sites in Old Testament times. Conscious that not everyone in our congregation was able to come to the Holy Land, Nael is now preparing a tour of Nazareth, where Jesus was born, for us all.
Isn’t technology wonderful? We can meet in our beautiful little church and share in a live tour of somewhere special with an expert guide just as people from all around the world can tune in and join us for our Sunday morning service and then we can keep in touch with them by email afterwards. Fantastic!
Tucked away at the back of the Newsletter
This is tucked away at the back because, while it may be of interest to our members, it really isn’t of much interest to other folk.. It’s what you might call our domestic business.
First, we are delighted to tell you that three new elders have been appointed: Molly Hodges, Alan Leighton and John Baird. They will be Ordained and Admitted to the Kirk Session on Easter Sunday (which will make Easter Sunday even more to be celebrated)!
Second, the Kirk Session received the accounts at a recent meeting. These show that last year even although we had all of the difficulties with lock-downs, we still ended the year with more money in our General Account than at the start of the year.
You will remember that when we all started together five years ago we didn’t even have two brass farthings to rub together (in fact we inherited a few bills).
Last year we spent a considerable amount of money on ensuring that our equipment to enable us to stream our services was as good as it could possibly be (and the result of that can be seen on our live-stream available through our web-site). We also continued our programme of improving the church — our new coffee bar as well as the glorious gifts of our Stations of the Cross and Christmas candle-holders.
But even having spent as much as we have, we have generated a surplus and have just under £50,000 in the bank (a little over £43,000 is what is left in our Mission Fund and £6,000 is available for general purposes). So we have done well.
In reality we are where we are because of the generosity of our members and, even although this is tucked away at the back of the Newsletter, it is important that you all know how much your generosity is appreciated.
Congregations exist to make the world into a better place for other people and together we shall certainly be able to do that during the remainder of the year and into the future.
But we shall be doing so much more besides. The regular Thursday evening film show will grow into something a little bigger. We are planning some meals together with speakers with something really interesting to say and we shall revisit our Mission and Education plans which were put on hold by the covid pandemic.
December 2021 Newsletter
December, 2021 Newsletter
Getting Back to Normal!
And soon it will be Christmas — we hope that you will join us.
Over recent weeks more people have been coming to church than we can ever remember and, what is really special for us, new folk are coming and joining our church family all the time.
That’s not to say that we don’t have some quiet Sundays because many of our congregation have families in different parts of the country to be visited and some have a penchant for foreign holidays but almost everyone is with us on a Sunday morning if they are at home.
What more can we ask for? Well, if you are reading this newsletter and you are part of our parish we would love to have you with us — and when better to come than at Christmastime.
Yes, we still have to wear masks but that won’t stop us from singing all of our favourite Christmas carols! And we promise you that we will keep you safe while you are in church, whether that’s taking part in a service or enjoying refreshments afterwards.
We do have one very special evening to which you might want to come. It’s on Wednesday 22nd. December in our Church starting at 6 p.m. with a sandwich, sausage roll and cake tea with some Christmas entertainment followed by a short Road-Show by the Presbytery on their plans for the future of the Church in our area.
These plans will be discussed elsewhere in this newsletter but if you would like to come and join us on this evening, we would love to have you with us.
You might like to know as well that teas and coffees are served every Wednesday morning from 10.30 a.m. until 12 noon. It is a very informal coffee and chat occasion and it is for everyone, no need to be a member or to ever have come to church. It’s a communal event for our Fogo community.
Our Christmas Programme
Sunday 12th. December at 10.30 a.m. A Service for the third Sunday of Advent.
Sunday 19th. December at 10.30 a.m. A Service of Nine Lessons and Carols.
Friday 24th. December at 6 p.m. Christingle Service
Friday 24th. December at 11.15 p.m. Watch-night Candle-lit Service
Saturday 25th. December at 10.30 a.m. Christmas Day Family Service with ‘fun around the tree’and a Christmas Celebration of Holy Communion (following all appropriate guide-lines).
Sunday 26th. December at 10.30 a.m. Boxing Day Service of Music and Christmas words from down the ages.
Sunday 26th. December at 5 p.m. A Service in which we remember those we love but whose absence we miss – an absence which we feel even more at Christmas-time.
Sunday 2nd. January at 10.30 a.m. A Service for a New Year.
We promise you a warm welcome at any or all of our Services. If you can’t join us in person then why not join in with our live-stream which is available at
www.fogokirk.org ….
…. and next time you might want to come in person!
What could be more beautiful?
All of the best pictures of our church have been taken by Molly — until now! This picture was taken by her son, Sandy, while he was home from Singapore and brought his drone with him. It really does remind us in what a beautiful spot our church was built all those years ago.
It is good to be able to report that the building is in a fine state of repair and that it survived the recent storms without a scratch. We are extremely fortunate.
One of our plans is to build a short pilgrimage walk around the perimeter of the church yard. This walk will tell the story of Saint Cuthbert on plaques made for the purpose. These plaques will also contain prayers and readings to guide the thoughts of those who choose to follow the trail which will end up in the church at the new little chapel which is currently under construction and which will also tell the story of the Saint who must have passed this way on several occasions during his life-time.
Saint Cuthbert has much more to teach us, however, for he is one who lived close to nature and taught his monks to care for the community of animals with whom they shared God’s world.
Caring for creation is not just an option for us today; it is an imperative if we are to pass on our beautiful world to those who follow us and our pathway and chapel will help keep this at the front of our minds as well as speaking to those who come here of the beauty of God’s creation.
Here is our St. Cuthbert’s Chapel. There is a lot of work to be done! The walls, from the wooden baton in the picture to the floor, will be oak panelled. From the panelling to the line you can just see, three feet or so above, there will be painted the life story of Saint Cuthbert, and, above that, will be a prayer of the Saint in lettering of about six inches high.
It will be a beautiful and a quiet place of meditation and we hope that it will be used by our members, by our community and by those who come to visit. All of the work is being done by our own members and we are extremely grateful to them all.
Now here is a picture you might want to keep and show to your grandchildren! This is how we used to have to go to church, all wearing our masks!
We hope that this won’t be the future for us all for all time to come but, while you are looking at the masks, do look and see how very beautiful our church looks as well.
It’s always warm, it has comfy seating, it is always well filled and it is ever so friendly. And, what’s more, the church is always open!
Big Changes afoot!
All over Scotland congregations are wondering what is going to happen to them over the next few years. Our traditional Presbyteries are going to disappear, to be replaced by fewer larger ones.
The Presbytery of Duns will join with the Presbyteries of Lothian, Jedburgh, and Melrose and Peebles to create the new Presbytery of Lothian and the Borders. This will take effect from the 1st. January, 2023 — just twelve months away.
The number of full-time ministers serving Berwickshire and the town of Berwick will drop to just four from the 1st. January, 2025. How will we cope?
The Church of Scotland centrally envisages that as many as forty percent of Church buildings will close. Those that remain will obviously have to be able to show that they have a viable congregation, that they have the facilities necessary to serve the needs of their members and their communities in the years ahead and that they can afford to pay their way.
We are not sure what the future holds for us in Fogo. Our presbytery appears to have accepted that we can’t just continue to make bigger and bigger parishes and expect one minister to look after more and more congregations and more and more people. Instead, the limited staff which our area will have will perhaps be used to support the members of congregations to look after themselves. That’s not something which frightens us. In fact it’s what we have been doing for the last five years.
We regularly conduct our own worship. We care for each other in our church family. We are adapting our building as we can to make it more appropriate both for our own use and for community use as well. We seek to reach out into our community. We learn about our faith and we seek to make a difference to the world.
This Christmas we are giving financial gifts to our Missionary partner, Dr. Linus Malu who is working in Malawi helping men and women abandoned by their partners to set up small businesses with which to support their children. It is wonderful work and Linus achieves so much with so little in our terms.
We are also sending money to the Jeel al Amal children’s school in Bethany. We visited the school when our congregation went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land last year and we saw how the staff of this school welcomed everyone and provided an education, and for many, a home, for those who otherwise would have nothing at all.
We’re not a rich congregation but our members are extremely generous and we are totally self-supporting and with enough to spare to help other people. Of course, in the world’s terms, we are extremely rich and so it is important that we try to make a difference: here in our own community and throughout the world.
From the Minister’s Desk
There is no doubt that Covid has affected us but now we are beginning to get back to normal. There are still one or two of our members who are not quite sure about returning to Church but several, I might also say many, new folk have come to join us and our numbers are now back to where they were before the pandemic hit.
We are all having to learn new skills! How do you sing while wearing a mask? How do you read the words from our Orders of Service without your glasses steaming up? How do you remember not to hug a friend or offer your hand to a stranger who has come to join us?
Remarkably, we have all learned to take these things in our stride! It is great that we are now permitted to share in after-church refreshments and to sit and chat with each other again.
I’ve had to learn all kind of new skills, not least learning to communicate with folk through video. One of the hardest things has been being unable to attend school assemblies but rather having to prepare my message on video and hand it in to the school on a memory stick — it’s certainly not something I was taught at college all those years ago!
Our Sunday service now is live-streamed, ‘broadcast’ might be a better word, on our website every Sunday morning. It’s watched by some of our folk who are unable to come to church but it is also watched as far afield as in America and in Switzerland from where we now boast ‘overseas members.’
In order to keep in touch with everyone I now prepare a Saturday email which I send out to everyone on our Church list (it is on our church website) and I try to keep everyone aware of all that is going on in our church community. Staying in touch is so very important.
Our Plans for 2022
If you haven’t visited Fogo Parish Church recently it would be worth popping in to see how beautiful the building has become and how suitable it now is for community events of all different kinds.
High on our list of plans for next year is to restart our programme of musical events. Already we have been approached from a number of different directions about the possibility of groups coming to perform in the Church. Our answer has always been that we would love to have them.
There are some groups totally new to Fogo and that will be great but we are particularly hoping that Frog and Henry, the New Orleans Jazz Band, who have made two visits to us before Covid, will return in the new year.
We are also going to start a number of congregational evenings in Church in the new year. Our plan is that each of these will be in groups of four evenings so that the commitment from those who come is not for an extended time.
We are talking about having a series of four special guest speakers: perhaps we might start the evening with a simple supper and then sit on our new comfy seats and enjoy hearing a really good speaker entertain or enlighten us.
We have some special films we might show. Again this might be best in a series of four and might end with some light refreshments while we talked about what we had seen.
Some folk have expressed a desire for some form of Bible Study — not the kind where we come along and open the Bible and all speak about what is written but rather where there is an introductory talk explaining the background and perhaps identifying what we can learn and why the passage or the book has been valued over so many years. So many of us realise that we don’t have the Bible knowledge that our grand-parents had and we’d like to learn.
And then there are those of us who would like to meet regularly and eat together, using the basic facilities which the church now has to enable that to happen. Maybe this could incorporate an after-dinner speaker or a musical entertainer.
The sky really is the limit and now that we have such a very beautiful community facility we want to use it and share it with everyone in our community.
“You are always welcome at Fogo Parish Church”
November 2020 Newsletter
Such a lot has happened!
How we have coped — and are coping — in these difficult times.
Our last newsletter was delivered to your door in March, just before we all went into lockdown together. Our March Newsletter was an optimistic one; several of us had just come back from the pilgrimage of a lifetime which had taken us from Jerusalem to Galilee as we had walked in the footsteps of Jesus.
We had also just completed, as a congregation, a mission plan which set our in some detail all that we were about to attempt in our parish. In fact immediately before lockdown we had held a congregational buffet lunch to launch our plan. All of that had to be abandoned as we started to live in a world in which we were no longer even allowed to go to church and worship on a Sunday morning.
Not, of course, that we disagreed with the decision which had been made to keep us all safe — it was just all so unbelievable: one day we were filled with enthusiasm of all that we were going to do and the next we were in lockdown. For us that has proved to be not nearly so difficult as it has for people in other places in our country. It has been brought home to us how fortunate we are to live in such a beautiful place. We have been able to enjoy walks in our glorious countryside and our area had not been affected nearly as badly as have many other areas. What must it have been like to live in a small flat in a big city?
Keeping in touch with our members.
We have also tried to keep in touch with each other over these times, not least during lockdown with a weekly Zoom meeting after church. I say ‘after church’ and that needs a word of explanation. As soon as the lockdown began we started to produce a church service which we put online. Because it was online anyone could have drawn it down at any time, but we asked all of our members to access the service in their homes on Sunday morning at 10.30 a.m. — the time of our normal Sunday Service. It was good to feel that although we were in different places, we were still worshipping together. After the service everyone was allowed five minutes to make themselves a coffee and then we all joined together for a Zoom Coffee and Chat.
Preparing Online Worship
We have brushed over quite quickly the putting of a service online each week. In fact this was a major learning experience. A small recording studio was set up in the summer house at Mount Pleasant — a couple of lights and a couple of cameras with everything being recorded onto tape (we were using equipment which was bought in the 1990s).
The completed tape was then taken to a computer room which had been adapted to allow the film to be edited using a sophisticated video editing programme. It was here that the music was prepared at well. We thought long and hard about what to do about music. Some other congregations have drawn down musical items from the internet (and these look fabulous) but we were concerned about copyright and so we prepared every item of music individually, writing a midi-file of each tune, converting this midi-file to a wav-file, then matching the music file to a set of pictures which matched the words of the hymn (often of our local area and also using the pictures we had taken during our recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land). Finally we prepared the words of the hymns and superimposed
them on the pictures. In reality, we created many short films, each of them of one hymn, which we can fit into our Sunday service. To date we have created about one hundred and fifty such films!
Most of our services have been recorded in the summer house at Mount Pleasant but occasionally we have recorded the service in the Church itself — with the added challenges of an outside broadcast! We did this at Easter and at Pentecost and on each of these occasions we also held an online service of Holy Communion. Each of our members had wine and bread already to hand in their own homes and we shared together in our own different places. It’s not something we would have thought of doing before lockdown but difficult times challenge us to adopt different solutions and these services were certainly appreciated.
Sometimes we are asked how our online services differ from what we used to do in church. Probably our services have become a bit more educational — we have spent a number of weeks journeying right through the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, using maps and pictures, something which it is harder to do in our church building.
Childrens’ Online Worship
While the children in our congregation were in lockdown, we also provided a special service for them. Each one of these films consisted of a story, a short prayer and a song and many of the congregation have told us that they enjoyed these as well. We quickly developed a shape for these stories, imagining that a group of children were spending time with Jesus’ special friends, the disciples, in the weeks after the very first Easter. It was a framework which enabled each disciple in turn to tell a story and seemed to work very well. Also during lockdown a team of congregational members put up a daily reading, thought and prayer on our website. These were very much appreciated.
And then our World Expanded!
We were well into lockdown when the minister of Gordon, Greenlaw, Legerwood and Westruther retired and, after a delay caused by the virus regulations was able to move to his new home in Orkney. We were asked to take over the care of these congregations which, it had been agreed, would not get a replacement minister for Mr. Nicholson now that he had retired.
Initially this meant that we started to put out several versions of our online service with one branded for each of these additional congregations and in some cases we were able to hold Zoom meetings as well. Meanwhile, we had a great deal of planning to do.
First of all we had to discover what each of these congregations wished for the future. One of these congregations, Westruther, wanted to close down. It had been struggling for the last few years and had regularly had a Sunday congregation in single figures. It was arranged that once we came out of lockdown a Presbytery Service would be arranged to close the church formally, the congregation and parish area becoming part of Gordon Parish Church (as incidentally it was until 1647)!
The other congregations wished to continue with the worship patterns which they had adopted over previous years. There would be a service each week in Greenlaw, twice a month in Gordon and once a month in Legerwood.
It was also agreed that each of these congregations would set out on a journey which would lead to their becoming more and more responsible for their own worship, mission and pastoral care. This journey, which is also the journey on which our own Fogo congregation is on, will take at least a couple of years and will be supported every moment of the way, not just for a couple of years but into the long term as well.
But how were we to make this happen? The first thing that we did was to recruit a ministry team to provide the support and initially to conduct services in these churches because it was not felt appropriate to expect congregations to run their own services immediately — not least because of the covid-19 difficulties, the start of a new ministry in a difficult situation after Tom Nicholson had had to leave without any of the farewells which were planned, and after a twenty-five year ministry, and to enable us to build up trust with our new friends. A team of four retired ministers agreed to take on responsibility for this — joining our minister were Rev. Dr. Ken Walker, Rev. Veronica Walker and Rev. John Hunter. (You will maybe remember John Hunter as a son of the Fogo Manse — his father was minister in Fogo during the middle years of the twentieth century and he is delighted to be back sharing with us in this adventure.) Over recent months John has conducted our service on the first Sunday of every month.
Moving Out of Lockdown
So far we have described our plans for coming out of lockdown but now for the reality. Once a date for reopening had been given to us for our churches we immediately had to complete a detailed risk assessment and make arrangements to ensure that anyone coming to worship in Fogo Parish Church would be safe.
The toilet was removed. This was partly because toilets were no longer to be available because there was a risk in their being used by several people between deep cleans and partly because it was recommended that every church should have a one-way system with folk leaving through a different door than the one by which they entered.
A number of small green men signs were made and placed on seats which could be used, with red men signs on those that should not be used: that way social distancing would be observed. A sanitising station was set up and a routine for those arriving at church established. Everyone is met at the gate by an elder and asked to walk to church in a socially distanced fashion. Members are met at the church door by another elder who ensures that everyone is wearing a mask, takes their contact details (which, in accordance with the law, are held for twenty-one days) and allows them into church where they are met by another elder who allocates them to a seat. At the end of the service, we exit in the same way.
Having established a system that works, two of our elders helped establish a similar system at our sister congregations and a worship pattern began. There is a service every Sunday in Fogo, Gordon, Greenlaw and Westruther on the first Sunday of every month; every Sunday at Fogo and Greenlaw, and also on the third Sunday in Gordon, and our ministry team moves around the churches so that we are getting to know the different congregations.
But worship is not how it was! The major difference is that we are no longer able to sing. I don’t think that any of us had quite understood what a difference this would make to our worship. We still listen to hymns, we still follow the words, some of us read the words out loud, others hum gently to themselves. How we shall develop as time goes on, we don’t yet know.
Also our numbers of people coming to church are lower than they were because, not unnaturally, many of our folk are still shielding and are unwilling to take the risk of coming to meet with other people. For this reason we continue to offer an online service each Sunday. This service is normally, but not always, a reflection of the service which our minister is conducting in one of the services throughout our grouping.
Moving Forward
You may remember that before churches were allowed to open for communal worship they were permitted to open for private prayer. Quite a number of people regularly made use of our church for this purpose.
You may also remember that very severe woodworm and rot was discovered in the former Hog gallery in the church and, as a result we had to strip out the old pews and make significant repairs to the loft. What has now been done is to convert that gallery into a quiet meditative room. We think that it is very beautiful and will be extremely useful for us, not only when we come out of lockdown but also at present when people are often feeling like going somewhere special for private prayer. We recognise that having such a facility upstairs is not ideal. We have had a handrail installed on the steps but we would like to know at once if there are people who would wish to use this facility but who are unable to use the stairs even with the existing handrail.
There are a number of other changes which have happened within our church in recent weeks. We have already mentioned that the congregation at Westruther decided to close their building. Much of what was within the church went to Gordon Parish Church which has now taken over responsibility for the parish of Westruther. The communion table and lectern was originally offered to Greenlaw Parish Church but, after considering the matter, the Kirk Session there thought that their own existing communion table should be retained because it matched the pulpit. It was then offered to us and we have accepted that generous gift because the increased size of the table is much more appropriate for us now that we have a larger chancel than we did before. The lectern matches the communion table (as well as our new font) and is something of which we have been in need for a long time. Our existing communion table now has the place of honour in our new quiet room in the former Hog gallery and so everything has worked out perfectly! I know too that it is important to the folk of Westruther that their treasures remain in this area and continue to be used in worship.
The other difference you may notice (but only if you look very carefully) is that the church has now been equipped with broadband. This is to allow us to start to stream our Sunday morning services. This might be as an alternative to a pre-prepared morning service online and will allow people who are at home to share in what is happening in church as it happens.
It will also enable us to interact with other churches in our group. Gordon and Greenlaw will shortly be equipped with large televisions similar to the one which we have and, once the system is up and running it will be possible for all of us to share in a sermon (for example) preached in one church and watched in all three as it happens.
These are difficult times but we have moved forward as well and we look forward to welcoming you to your Parish Church — there is a warm welcome waiting for you!
We hope that in our next Newsletter we will be able to report that some of our activities will have restarted — we shall certainly be able to share our Christmas plans and hope that you will join us. In the meantime, do keep safe and well and remember how very grateful we are to all of you for your support.
From the Minister’s desk
My remarks in this newsletter need to be words of thanks. It would have been so easy for our church family to fall apart in the face of all of the current difficulties, but, in fact, we have become stronger and everyone has been ‘going the second mile’ to help each other and others of whom they are aware.
I must thank everyone who has joined us online and those who, now that we are back in church, have been joining us Sunday by Sunday. Many congregations have discovered that without a congregation meeting Sunday by Sunday their finances have slumped alarmingly. That hasn’t been our experience. Our treasurer has received cheques through the post and quite a number of our congregation make their giving by standing order. This has been hugely appreciated because our costs haven’t dropped during lockdown — really because our two major expenses are the insurance of the building and our heating (which is a twenty-four hour a day permanent system).
I have been able to share with several folk in our parishes at difficult times and I appreciate how difficult these times have been. As well as meeting and talking with folk, we have had several funeral services and, also, one very, very happy wedding. Even in the middle of this pandemic life goes on.
At present one of our concerns is how to celebrate Christmas. I love Christmas carols but it looks as though there will continue to have some very special services and I am committed to ensuring that this Christmas in church will be just as special as it has always been. We shall celebrate God’s love in sending his Son into our world to bring us back to him and we shall find appropriate ways of doing this — so watch this space!
Do remember, that no matter what the situation is, I am here to help and am always available. You can catch me on 01361 882254 or on my mobile ‘phone on 07582 468468. I would love to hear from you and to listen to what you have to say.
“You are always welcome at Fogo Parish Church”
Weekly Blog Saturday 9th. May, 2020
Saturday 9th. May, 2020
It has been a good week not least because I actually had all the different services prepared by Friday night, rather than Saturday night as it has been in recent weeks. So I spent today outside painting. I had intended to do this all day and the morning was wonderful but then this afternoon the rain arrived. It was really heavy and I expect that it will have gladdened the hearts of farmers and gardeners alike.
This week I have enjoyed watching ‘Innocent’ on ITV, a really good detective four-part thriller starring Lee Ingleby. It was really good and it kept all of us at Mount Pleasant on the edge of our seats.
We have also enjoyed accessing the performances of the National Theatre and the Globe which are now available free on television.
I also shared in a zoom meeting of ministers in the presbytery on Wednesday morning. The suggestion certainly seems to be that that folk believe that church will be different after the lockdown comes to an end. The follow-up to that is that we ought to start thinking about what we shall be offering when that time comes.
I got an email from Janice at Gordon today telling me that forty-seven folk shared in the Gordon Service on-line last week – that’s many more than normally attend church. I wonder what that says to us? Does it suggest that there may be more folk coming to church in the future? Or does it suggest that we have to continue to reach out to folk using digital media so that we can keep in touch with more people than we would otherwise do? There is a lot to think about!
We continue to be grateful that we have fields around us and that because the farmers have provided wide borders we can walk around them. Those who remember Ditto, Clare’s black Labrador, will be pleased to know how he has quietened down and is responding to Rachel’s training regime.
I hope that you are all keeping safe and staying well. It’s always good to see everyone’s faces on Sunday after our service. There is a lot on our web-site and John B has started to reorganise it. If our Sunday service isn’t to your liking, you could always try the service on-line for our partner congregations at Gordon, Greenlaw and Legerwood. These, too, are now on our website. Have a very good week.
Weekly Blog Saturday 11th. April, 2020
Saturday, 11th. April, 2020
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!
Keep safe!
Weekly Blog Sunday 29th. March, 2020
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.
Keep safe!
Weekly Blog 12th. February, 2020
On the face of it, with no weekly blog since the middle of January, it looks as though I have fallen at the first hurdle in my determination to provide a weekly blog to our web-site. However, when you consider that we have been away in the Holy Land from where there has been a blog entry every day, I trust you will forgive me!
It has been a tremendous experience for all twenty-seven of us. All of the arrangements worked perfectly. Our hotels were superb and very different. We lunched in a different environment each day and each day was superb. Our guide, Nael, was magnificent and our driver Hassan was calm and capable.
And then there were the sites we visited. We started in Jerusalem which we explored in considerable detail, and from which we moved out to explore the surrounding areas (what a wonderful afternoon we spent in Bethlehem) and then we moved north to the Sea of Galilee where we walked in the footsteps of Jesus’ ministry there. I’m not going to describe in detail our trip because that can be found under the title Holy Land Pilgrimage on the Home Page. Suffice it to say that the trip was everything we hoped for, and a lot more besides.
Earlier today I continued a series of talks I’ve been asked to give as part of the University of the Third Age here in Duns. My subject is to look at the history of the Church of Scotland, or better perhaps, the Church in Scotland from the beginnings right up until today. It is a story of faith and courage, of history shaped by events and by individuals, and today we were looking at the two decades between 1540 and 1560, exciting and difficult times which shaped the Church today.
This next period is going to be a challenging one for us in Fogo — and for me as well. I’ve been asked to act as Interim Moderator in the charge of Gordon, Greenlaw, Legerwood and Westruther which will become vacant when the current minister retires at the start of May, although he will leave his post at Easter because of accrued holiday entitlement. I think that in some minds at least it is hoped that the pattern we are attempting to adopt in Fogo of a congregation which can stand on its own feet without a stipendiary minister is one which may be appropriate in at least some part of this charge as well. Today I have been asked about a course to enable some of my Fogo members to train as worship leaders, something a little bit more formal than the hands on training we have been sharing together. So that will go on the agenda for the coming weeks.
We also have to take forward the planning which started last month to create a mission strategy for this year. Our conference after Church threw up a lot of ideas and some of these have now been processed. My task is to take these ideas and draw up a vision of how our congregation and church might look if these plans were adopted. This plan will then become a discussion document or video which would be used as the next stage in the consultation process which will, I imagine, involve another congregational lunch followed by a congregational discussion.
So that’s where we are — and there will be a number of special get-togethers, I’m sure, to share photos of the Holy Land trip and perhaps to watch the old film ‘Masada’. We visited Masada while in the Holy Land and in the introductory display we saw clips from that film. I’ve bought it now from Amazon and am just waiting for an opportunity to show it!
Our Christmas Services
Christmas Services in Fogo
Sunday 15th. December at 10.30 a.m. Advent Calendar Service with Christingles.
Wednesday 18th. December at 11 a.m. Christmas Service with the children, parents and staff of Fogo Nursery.
Sunday 22nd. December at 10.30 a.m. Service of Nine Lessons and Carols.
Christmas Eve at 11.20 p.m. Christmas Eve Watch-Night Service with carol-singing from 11 pm.
Christmas Day at 10.30 a.m. A short, informal service for Christmas Day.
Sunday 29th. December at 10.30 a.m. Service of Music and Readings for the Christmas Season with Holy Communion.
Sunday 29th. December at 5 p.m. Service in which we remember those we love and who we miss especially at this time of year.
Sunday 5th. January at 10.30 a.m. A Service to celebrate Epiphany — the arrival of the Wise Men to visit the baby Jesus.
“You are always welcome at Fogo Parish Church”
Friday 24th. January at 7.30 p.m. Frog and Henry New Orleans Band return!
Service of Nine Lessons and Carols
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.