Category Archives: Weekly Blog

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 Sunday 22nd. March, 2020

Normally I would be in church at this time on a Sunday morning — in fact in the years since I took over at Fogo I have only ever missed one Sunday morning service and that was because we were in the Holy Land together.

This has been a very strange week. Strange because we are now all in lockdown, at least it seems that everyone I know is isolated in some form or other, it could that’s because everyone I know is quite old! And strange because we have been told we cannot any longer have services in church. And this came just as I thought that our service was really quite a safe one as regards the virus. We had put sanitizing gel by the door and everyone could have their own box-pew so social distancing would happen naturally. Of course, it is right that these precautions have been taken and we must all do everything we can to stay safe.

But people need to worship as well and congregations need to stay together. I wasn’t sure quite what we ought to do. I checked what some of our neighbouring congregations have planned. Our friends in Duns are experimenting with some kind of conferencing system which sounds quite exciting; while Andy at Eyemouth and Coldingham is streaming his service, presumably with a small group of folk all observing social distancing. Neither of these options is open to us because they both require internet access and that is something which we don’t have at Fogo. So we are putting something up on line and leaving it there just for Sunday. If we are able to, we shall replace it during the week with a reading, a thought and a prayer.

There is nothing more important than keeping our congregation together and I would love to hear ideas from you all about what we should be doing.

I broke off from writing this blog to drive down to church because I wanted to be there at the normal worship time. I met John B who was also sitting quietly in church. It is such a beautiful and peaceful place and one can feel the prayers which have been offered there over the centuries and over recent years.

I’m already getting feedback from our service this morning and everyone seems to have appreciated what we have offered. (Although Rachel has insisted that I have to trim my moustache and learn how to smile — I’ll try!) Please remember that if there is anything that anyone needs, we have folk here who will be delighted to help. Please keep safe and do remember that God loves you,

Weekly Blog Friday 13th. March, 2020

Sound Blog 13th. March, 2020

This is a difficult time to be writing a blog. The television news is full of the dangers of Coronavirus and no-one is quite sure how we ought to be reacting. In Church we have fitted a gel dispenser with appropriate gel just inside the door (we don’t have a water supply in our rural church so this is the best we can do). Normally we encourage folk to sit together but maybe our box pews are going to come into their own as each family can sit separated from other families and observe the social distancing which was being discussed at such length on television last night.

We would normally celebrate the fifth Sunday of this month with a special communion service and the advice we have at present from the Church of Scotland is that, providing certain safeguards are observed, this is still appropriate, however, I think my view is why create worries in peoples’ minds? I’ll use the opportunity to have a totally different kind of service and I’m quite looking forward to that!

On Wednesday of this week we had a visit from the Presbytery Planning Committee to Fogo Church for a meeting which was advertised as being for the congregations from our end of the presbytery (although, of course, everyone was invited). In the event we had Roger Dodd, the Planning Convener, with John Shields, our Moderator, and Susan Patterson, the Business Convener with us and there were folk from Fogo, Greenlaw, Gordon, Legerwood and the minister of Coldstream to hear to what was being proposed.

We learned that the future of our part of the Presbytery (and eventually, perhaps, the whole of our Presbytery) would be a continuation of our existing congregations but with each congregation taking responsibility for its own Sunday worship and for its own spiritual care of the parish entrusted to it. Tim from Greenlaw described it as a Commonwealth of Parishes to which stipendiary ministers would be called with responsibilities to support congregations to do their own thing; one perhaps to assist in training folk to lead worship and in preparing that worship; another to help congregations to develop their own spiritual care as well as to assist in that provision; and a third, should we be so lucky, to assist congregations to develop their own mission strategies — for unless we grow we shall surely die.

I found this to be exciting. I was so glad that we were moving away from the hub idea as I see some of our current ministers really weighed down under the existing hubs: Andrew with congregations at Duns, Bonkyl, Edrom, Cranshaws and Gavinton; David coping with Coldstream, Swinton, Leitholm and Eccles to name just a couple — and as the plan is to cope with a decrease in the number of ministers either the hubs would have to become significantly larger or many congregations would have to be amalgamated or closed down. In my opinion that really doesn’t work in rural areas.

Of course, change will happen gradually as it won’t affect ministers already in post but I think that plans such as this one will breathe new life into many congregations and can lead to the revival for which many of us earnestly hope. We’ve had a generation of secularism, long enough for folk to have enjoyed the freedom which that brings but also long enough to discover that secularism can’t answer any of the really important questions. We’ve also got past the generation of folk who had a passing knowledge of some Bible stories (just enough in their view to enable them to dismiss them as fanciful) to a new generation which is prepared to listen to the Gospel anew and fresh and to be challenged by it. These are exciting times and what a responsibility God is giving to this generation of disciples — but we do what we do in the power of his Holy Spirit.

This Sunday, after church and after a simple buffet lunch, we are having the follow up meeting to our January ‘Developing a Missionary Strategy’ get-together. The results of that meeting have been tabulated and converted into proposals to make that strategy a reality. I’m looking forward to great things and I’m sure that my blog next week will contain an account of what comes out of Sunday’s conference.

Weekly Bog 7th. March, 2020

Yesterday evening I attended the World Day of Prayer service along with Tom, our Session Clerk. This year it was held at Christ Kirk, in Duns. Christ Kirk is the Scottish Episcopal Church – some folk locally refer to it as the English Church but that really isn’t right as the Scottish Episcopal Church has as proud a Scottish tradition as does our own Church of Scotland.

It was a good service prepared by Christian women from Zimbabwe and was on the theme of ‘Rise, take up your mat, and walk’ a reference from the healing at the pool of Bethesda (which we had visited on our Holy Land pilgrimage just a few short weeks ago). It was good to see folk from several of the local congregations. I sat with Father Robert from the Roman Catholic Church and Andrew from the Duns and District Church of Scotland and enjoyed meeting up with them. I was, however, disappointed that from our large area we only managed thirty-six folk for such an important service – but that’s not to take away from the fact that those of us who were there really got something out of being there (and the congregation of Christ Church had prepared excellent refreshments for after the service). It was a really good experience.

On Thursday evening we watched the second part of the Masada mini-series which, I believe, everyone enjoyed. There is something very special about going into our church at night – the little lights walking us down to the church, and the warmth of the air-to-air heating hitting us as we walk through the door; and then the comfy seating and the teas and coffees that can easily be made. We are extremely fortunate.

Earlier in the week several of us – both Toms, Chris, John B and I – had responded to Tom S’s call to gather at the church to clear out the gallery above the vestry. We did that. It’s something that was needing to be done and hadn’t been done for years, I suspect. However, during the clear out we discovered that everything up there – pews, staging (to raise the pews up from floor level) were riddled with woodworm. Some of it was so bad that folk were taking fairly thick pieces of wood in their hands and breaking them in two. The good news is that the base floor itself appears to be quite sound. Tom has purchased a large tin of woodworm treatment and is going to treat the floor thoroughly both to ensure that we can use it and that the infection doesn’t spread to other parts of our beautiful building.

Looking ahead to next week: on Wednesday we are going to host a Presbytery Planning meeting which has been arranged to enable the Planning Convener, Roger Dodd, and his committee to present their thoughts on the future to congregations at this end of the presbytery area. These are difficult times with few ministers and smaller congregations but just maybe in finding new ways to go forward we will also find more appropriate ways of being the Church in our area. I find it all extremely exciting.

Also on Wednesday, this time in the morning, I shall be speaking at our University of the Third Age group which is looking at the history of the Church in Scotland. We’ve reached the time of John Knox and the Church of Scotland is just about to be born!

I’ve also just completed a new edition of our Newsletter which will be delivered this week. It’s on the website already but the important delivery is to the homes in the parish. Our members will not find anything new in the newsletter but I hope that those in the parish will catch something of our enthusiasm and commitment as they read of our mission plans and are entertained by a brief account of our trip to the Holy Land.

It’s going to be a good week!

Weekly Blog 29th. February, 2020

I had to write a note to my blog page today because of the date. It’s going to be such a long time until the 29th. February comes around again. I read somewhere during the week that the musical composer Rossini (born on 29th. February, 1792) had to wait until he was twelve til he had his second birthday. Doesn’t seem quite fair somehow.

Talking of things which don’t seem quite fair, I’ve had quite a week, not least because my computer got hacked and had to be deep-cleaned before I could start to use it again. All of that has now been safely done but I found myself with time to sit and read a book when before I would have been working at my desk. Maybe I have learned something from this event and will spend less time looking at a screen.

Rachel and I have also spent a couple of days this week painting one of the rooms in the Hen House so that it is now ready to have skirting boards and facings installed. We should have had all of this done such a long time ago but then Fogo Parish Church came along and the world turned upside down!

On Thursday several of us met to watch the first part of a mini-series about Masada. The programme was made a long time ago and starred, among others, Peter O’Toole, but it was fabulous, especially for those of us who just a few short weeks ago stood on Masada and looked down at all that lay below. I’m looking forward to part two next Thursday already.

On Friday I shall be going to the World Day of Prayer Service at Christ Church in Duns. The service has been prepared by Christian women from Zimbabwe and I’m looking forward to it. March is also going to be a month of meetings as our Presbytery sorts out our plan for the coming years. There’s an urgency to this as four of our neighbouring congregations will lose their minister in April and two others have ministers who will only be with us for another couple of years or so. I’m expecting that there will be several meetings held before the end of the month and am hopeful that this will enable a plan to be agreed by everyone at the April meeting of Presbytery.

Talking about hoping for particular outcomes, I’m really hoping that the weather will take a turn for the better. The ground is so wet when we walk the dogs every morning and the wind has been ferocious — it will be grand to get some weather when it might be appropriate to venture onto a golf course once again. Watching the professionals on television has made me forget my limited ability and I imagine that this year I will play like them! It’s good to dream.

Weekly Blog 21st. February, 2020

Spoken Blog

This has been a good week – back to normal after the trip to the Holy Land and the catching up that invariably results from such a visit. There was a really good feeling in Church last Sunday. I felt it – and other people felt it too. I got an email the following day from which I quote:  “Was really pleased to be at Fogo yesterday. There is such a joy there, you can almost touch it!” I’m glad that other people feel it too.

I spent quite bit of the first part of the week working on the communication channels which have been identified as crucial by our congregational mission strategy conference. We are now operating a web-site, Facebook, Twitter, an E-Newsletter, and a regular slot in the local news section of our local paper. On our web-site I am trying to keep a weekly blog going and I have succeeded in producing a short video and a sound copy of the blog (both of which are on the web-site). There is still quite a lot to do, the next task for me is to create a form for the web-site to allow new folk to sign up for our E-Newsletter (our members are already subscribers). I’ll hope to do this next week.

On Wednesday Tom Thorburn our Presbytery Elder, Tom Stewart our Session Clerk, Olive Gardiner our Treasurer, along with Bob Kay the Fabric and Glebe Convener of Presbytery, Roger Dodd the Presbytery Planning Convener and I met with two members of the General Trustees to consider our plan to purchase a cottage to use to bring retired ministers to our area as our guests who will be invited while they are with us to conduct services both at Fogo and in some of the other churches in the area who will not have the services of a stipendiary minister. It would be fair to say that some of our team found the meeting to be a frustrating one but we enjoyed showing our visitors around our beautiful church and I hope that the General Trustees will catch the enthusiasm which is shared both by our congregation and by our Presbytery.

Looking to the near future we shall be watching the television mini-series Masada over the first four Thursdays of Lent, starting at 7 p.m. on 27th. February in the church. This has arisen from our trip to the Holy Land where we spent our Friday being taken to the top of Masada by cable-car having first of all been shown a presentation about the importance of the fortress there. As part of the presentation there were scenes from this mini-series and so we determined to get hold of a copy we could watch in full once we returned home. Of course, this evening isn’t just for those of us who visited Masada, it is an evening for everyone. It is an exciting story and the film has been extremely well made.

Friday 6th. March is the World Day of Prayer and this year a service is being held at 7 p.m. in Christ Church, in Duns. It will be good for us to have the opportunity of joining with members of all of the local congregations at the Scottish Episcopal Church. The service is prepared by Christian women from a different country each year. This year the service has been prepared by women from Zimbabwe and the theme they have chosen is ‘Rise, take your mat and walk’.

During the week I have started arranging meetings with elders from some of the congregations in the Gordon, Greenlaw, Legerwood and Westruther grouping who will be without a minister when Tom Nicholson retires soon after Easter. As I mentioned last week, I am to be their interim moderator and this is the major reason that we have advanced our plans to have a cottage to which we can invite retired ministers to assist us with the many services which will have to be held in the very near future as we move towards a time when services will be more usually led by lay members of each congregation. It is going to be exciting times!

I started off by explaining that I thought that we were now getting our communication act together. But what of the message we are communicating? The message this week has been all about the results of our Sunday afternoon conference in January. These are now available on all of our media. I hope that they will be the subject of our discussions at home and when we meet in church so that when we have our next Sunday afternoon conference after a congregational lunch on 15th. March we can dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s and agree our policy for the rest of this year. Of course, work will already have begun on some of the plans which were clearly agreed at the first meeting – such as, for example, strengthening our communications strategy.

We value everyone’s opinions, so do share them – and look out for another edition of this blog next week!

Weekly Bog 11th. January, 2020

Saturday 11th. January, 2020

This is going to be a really exciting week for us. Tomorrow we meet for our service as usual at 10.30 a.m. but this will be followed by a buffet lunch and then we shall meet as a Kirk Session, Congregational Board and Congregation to start work on preparing our mission strategy for this new year.

I suppose that it must sound strange that we have waited until the start of our fourth year together before having such a meeting. But we did meet a couple of years ago and draw up what we thought were the important things we ought to be doing under the heading of mission. More than half of the congregation met in Clare’s home and we prepared a list of nine things we thought we could do and, looking back, we have achieved almost all of them.

But, truth to tell, over the first three years of our new existence we have been concentrating on growing our congregation (what’s that if it is not mission?) and making our ancient building fit for worship in the twenty-first century. With all of that done — with a wonderful congregation and a glorious building — it is now time to concentrate on what we really exist for, and that’s what we are going to discuss tomorrow.

I can’t give you, dear reader, any clue as to what will be decided because we are hoping that the ideas will emerge from our members and friends. It is important, however, that we don’t see mission as a period of frenetic activity which once done will allow us to subside into a well-deserved comfort zone, but rather that we see mission as being what we are about today, tomorrow and every day.

Watch this space for news of how we get on!

On Thursday evening we shall have the final meeting of our group who are going on pilgrimage to the Holy Land at the end of this month. There are twenty-seven of us in all and it looks as if it is going to be the trip of a life time with us spending a number of days in Jerusalem exploring the city and the surrounding area before setting off for Galilee (via Caesarea and Acre) and spending four days exploring the places in which Jesus taught and healed during his ministry. We’ll be spending eleven days in all in the Holy Land and, with a packed programme, we’ll see an enormous amount of the country but I’m particularly looking forward to sailing on the Sea of Galilee and looking around at the sky and the sea and the shapes of the hills all around and realising that what I’m seeing is very similar to what Jesus and his disciples will have seen so many years ago. I hope to be able to post updates on where we are and what we see while we are away.

Next Sunday our service will be led by the Reverend John Hunter, a great friend of the congregation, and one who was born here in Fogo when his father was minister here. Looking further ahead to a week on Friday at 7 p.m. we shall welcome back Frog and Henry, the St. Louis jazz musicians who entertained us so royally last year. Put the date in your diary and plan to be with us.

Weekly Blog

Friday 23rd. August, 2019

Plans are afoot for our service on Sunday 1st. September when Alison will be baptised and Laura will be confirmed. It will be really special and the service will end with a short celebration of Holy Communion.

The church marquee has now moved to Jim and Liz’s home and after the service on 1st. September everyone is invited there for a celebratory lunch. Church seems to be a succession of celebrations at the moment but we shall soon be getting back into harness with preparatory meetings for our congregational pilgrimage to the Holy Land, with our regular film evenings and with our University of the third age course which we are hosting.

Later on the afternoon of 1st. September at 3 p.m. there will be a Chamber Concert in church. The concert will be led by Lucy Cowan and will include a piano and string ensemble, along with the Bach double violin concerto. This concert has been arranged by Bridget who says that, although there is no charge for the concert, donations to Operation Raleigh International would be most welcome.

Weekly Blog

Monday 19th. August, 2019

We had an excellent service yesterday. It was led by Chris, our lay reader. None of us in Fogo are quite what we seem! I’m a retired minister, now working as a non-stipendiary parish minister; Chris is a trained lay reader, but trained in the Church of Ireland rather than the Church of Scotland. I’ve written to presbytery and hope that his Irish readership will be recognised here in our Scottish presbytery.

Not that, at the end of the day, it makes a great deal of difference to us in Fogo: we are a happy band of folk who are enjoying exploring what it means to be a congregation in the early twenty-first century, each of us gaining enormously from each other as we slowly grow from being a tiny congregation into a small one!

One of the excitements of last week was that the congregation of Burnmouth has loaned us their beautiful font. They have done this because their building is to be closed down and will probably be sold, the site cleared, and a house built in their beautiful situation overlooking the sea, halfway down the hill to the harbour. I am sad whenever I hear of a church being closed but I am happy that if this is how it has to be then at least their font will stay in the area and will be a reminder to us and to them of what once was a thriving little congregation at Burnmouth.

Tom and I moved the font to Fogo last week. It is beautiful: ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not’, and some traditional carving on each of the eight sides. As we carried the font we noticed that inside it was inscribed with the letters KOSB, standing no doubt for King’s Own Scottish Borderers, and an indication perhaps that this font has had an earlier history involving that illustrious border regiment. I am going to try to find out more of its history but the more I learn the clearer it becomes that this font really should remain in this area and we will be proud to provide a home for it until such time as the parent congregation decides that it wishes to use it in different way.

As it says in a post about the font (do visit it because there is a grand picture there) the font will not stand idle. It will be used in two week’s time for Alison’s baptism and, of course, as we all come into church, Sunday by Sunday, it will remind us all of our own baptisms. We may not remember the event as we were so young when it happened, but we are baptised. We are part of Jesus’ body, his church and are entrusted by him to work to build his kingdom and promised his support through the Holy Spirit. (I love the photo — no don’t go to the other post to see it, I’ll repeat it here — because the Holy Spirit poster is just behind the font and what a message it spells out!)

The Burnmouth font, kindly lent to us by their Kirk Session

The day of Alison’s baptism will be another party day. The church marquee will continue its journey around our parish. It started in the garden of Mount Pleasant for our Garden Party, Music Festival and Bar-b-cue, it moved on to Pete and Gill’s garden for their fortieth wedding celebrations and now it is moving to Jim and Liz’s garden for an after baptism party on 1st. September — and there is going to be a music concert in the church that afternoon at 3 p.m. So there is lots happening.

For me this autumn is going to be busy. We are engaged in preparing Alison for her baptism and Laura for her confirmation; we shall soon be starting a big programme of evening meetings to prepare everyone for the pilgrimage to the Holy Land which will take place in January, 2020, and I am to lead a group which is part of the University of the Third Age which will be looking at the story of the Church of Scotland from 1560 until today.

I was once before asked to tell the story of the Church of Scotland. It was when I was working in Italy, way back in the 1970s and I was invited to the Benedictine monastery at Novalesa to share in a three-day conference there. The monastery was high in the Italian alps and the people of the village community there looked to Bobio as being the place from which their Christianity had come, brought all the way from Scotland by Columbanus, a monk trained in Iona and a follower of Columba. So naturally the story of Christianity in Scotland was important to them. It was a wonderful privilege to share with the monks at Novalesa, something I was able to do more than once during six happy years working for the Church of Scotland in Italy.

Here in Fogo we have grown into becoming a small church but there is a great deal going on!