...and there was light. Over the next months there will be a considerable amount of work taking place around the Church Halls as part of the St Andrew's Working for the Community Project to repair and renew parts of the building to better suit a big part of its purpose in serving the community.
The entrance foyer has always been a bit of a bugbear for many of us over the years as the large wooden doors blocked out so much light and generally we only used one very small door which made access tricky. What a transformation yesterday as a new set of large glass doors have been fitted with a roller shutter to protect them when the church is not in use.
It make a big difference to the entrance, actually making what is a quite small space feel much bigger and opening up the church to the community quite literally, in that there is no fortress like door in the way now! [There's more...]
A small group of us met this evening to look ahead in our Easter plans (I seem to be doing an awful lot of that at the moment) as part of our Magnification Action Group. It was a good meeting with much laughter and lots of creative ideas, which always makes things fun.
We've got a bunch of ideas for a second café church worship service on Easter morning themed around Jesus' resurrection apperance by the lakeside where he had prepared a fish breakfast. We're going to try out some kedgeree recipes to see if that will work! [There's more...]
On Sunday the Annual Report for 2009 was adopted by the Kirk Session. After sending the print masters off to Lanark where they were getting printed on the lovely swish colour printer at Greyfriar's Kirk, the completed reports arrived back in Blantyre today thanks to our administrator, Gill, taking a detour to work this morning via sunny Lanark. Click on the image above to link to the pdf version of the report.
While it is a lot of work putting together this Annual Report in the format we use with ample descriptions of the year past and photographic images from that year (the structure of the report is based on the OSCR regulated format that all charities have to use), it is always a good read to reflect on what took place in the year past. And again, 2009 contained many good stories of what Blantyre St Andrew's folks have been involved with during the year. Having reflected on those activities while writing the text parts of the report I was very thankful for the good and faithful servants of this Kirk. [There's more...]
I just got back home from another meeting all morning. I have lost track of the number of meetings this week, and still its only Thursday. Saw this video when I sat down to the computer and loved it! It is kinda how I feel at the moment.
It is the official video for the band OK Go's single "This too shall pass". Do yourself a favour and click through to watch it in HD. Kudos to the band and Synn Labs for getting it together.
There is an amazing article in the March edition of Newsweek telling of the latest archaeological finds in Turkey that seem to be turning our understanding of human development, civilisation and religious expression on its head.
The archaeologist Klaus Schmidt has dated these complex Temple structures (many of which still lay buried, though sensors can detect them underground) to 11,500 years ago. That is twice the age of Stonehenge and 7,000 years older than the Great Pyramids.
The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery,
domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of
civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after
the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the
spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that
followed.
Rather than organised religion, centred around places of worship being one of the developments that came after the formation of settled communities, as has been argued for many years, maybe it was the need to worship together that was the catalyst for settled communities.
It lends the shorter catechism's first question even more depth: What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
Worship had a slightly surreal edge to it this morning with a couple of researchers from a TV company with video camera recording the service and then a couple of interviews in the afternoon, before they headed off to get some footage of Blantyre itself and I dashed back home to pick up some papers before heading over to Uddingston for a meeting with the Nominating Committee there, drawing together information for their parish profile.
The TV researchers are gathering information for a possible series based around famous missionaries (Livingstone in Scotland's case, of course) and bringing together a pastor from the country in which that missionary was primarily involved and the community from which they hailed. [There's more...]
Most of today was spent in St Silas' Episcopal Church in Glasgow for Messy Fiesta at which those of us present spent some time with Lucy Moore (pictured above, second from right, explaining techniques for a paper-based craft), who began Messy Church back in 2004 in a church in Portsmouth.
I confess for the last half hour or so of the day I was trying to think of a Scots expression for 'Messy Church' that we could use if we do something similar in the future (just to be different!). For trad church there is Fusty Kirk, and for a Scots Messy Church Jonathan Fleming suggested Midden Kirk, Carolyn came up with Mockit Kirk, there's also Slitter Kirk or Manky Kirk. Any other ideas? Add your suggestion below! [There's more...]
Feeling rather tired today after a not very pleasant drive back and forth to Edinburgh for a meeting at the Church offices. Yesterday was a very long day but the next issue of The Grapevine was completed and printed ready for Gill to make all the copies today so hopefully it will be ready for distribution on Sunday. In the meantime the online version is already available.
I headed back to the church late last night after Beer 'n' Bible (no beer for me as I was driving!) to finish the magazine, but still chuckling over the events earlier in the evening... [There's more...]
Just finished a meeting at the manse with members of the Juice team to plan the March event which will have a fairtrade theme as it will be right at the end of Fairtrade Fortnight. A good meeting with a great group of folks.
I checked my facebook page after waving goodbye to everyone and saw that a friend was busy playing scrabble with his gran in his update. It suddenly brought a flashback of a wonderful animated film I saw as a teenager at the Edinburgh Film Festival back in 1985. The amazing powers of Google and the world wide web meant that within seconds I had found the film, The Big Snit. [There's more...]
Fairtrade Fortnight begins today. Find out how you can make a difference here. Swap something you normally buy for a fairly traded item... it's that simple!
This afternoon I had the privilege to join a few hundred folks in Hillhouse Parish Church for the service to mark the dedication and opening of their newly refurbished halls and beautiful new entrance foyer.
I hadn't seen it since it was completed, though David (minister at Hillhouse) had kept me up-to-date on developments over the autumn when the work was being done. I was very impressed by the space it has opened up in what was previously a rather cramped entrance area. It truly is a transformation and makes a huge difference. My cap is doffed to the folks at Hillhouse who have been working so hard over the last five years to raise the money and make all the plans. As Bill Wishart, who had been deacon at Hillhouse Parish Church for 12 years before moving to Paisley six years ago, said during the service, it is a testament to the people of Hillhouse and their commitment to make their church a meeting place for all the community. [There's more...]
Over the next year or so we are hoping to develop the ministries with young people through St Andrew's and our sister churches. While the current Juice event is aimed at P4-7 young people, we hope to extend that with an event for a wider age range of children (and their families) and one of the ideas I'm particularly interested in is Messy Church.
The Juice team have looked at a couple of the resource books and there are many ideas about things you can do with this, but we agreed it was for doing something a bit different than what we had in mind for Juice.
We are trying to arrange to release some funding that will allow us to develop this new ministry in the future. If you are interested in finding out more, or think that you may be able to help out (we will probably do it monthly at most to begin with), then please get in touch as there is an introductory training day about it in Glasgow in a couple of weeks. [There's more...]
Is it just me or is there something rather amusing about David Cameron's latest appeal on behalf of the Tories: the whole world appears to be leaning towards the right!
I dare say there won't be much from the Tories that I will agree with, but one announcement yesterday I would concur with was on removing creationism from the science curriculum of fundamentalist schools. The highly politicised creationist / intelligent design movement imported from the USA that asserts dogma over scientific fact is fine when contained within the right context: religious education. It has no place in a science classroom. More on this issue here.
It strikes me as rather ironic that the more conservative political party is making these noises: in trying to bend over backwards in liberal acceptance for the views of all groups, did the Labour party lose the plot on this issue?
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