Another busy day. Our September morning communion service has traditionally been our all-age celebration of communion. Today was no different in that format, but was very different in feel. During the week I was assisted by Jim and Brian (thanks guys!) to rearrange the sanctuary. We brought the communion table off the chancel and down into the middle of the sanctuary. We then rearranged the seating around the table in four quadrants.

If anyone noticed, the seats formed a St Andrew's flag! So appropriate!

Being a cheeky soul I set up a video camera to record people's reactions as they walked in the door - some of which were priceless - it can be so disconcerting to walk into a space you know so well and find it looking very different. I think it worked really well despite the initial shock. [There's more...]

Tonight we had our first Juice Children's Event of the new session. We used the film Toy Story 2 to explore friendship. One of the gathering activities that some of the young people took part in was creating a friendship wreath made up of their own hand-shapes with their thoughts on what friendship was about written in each hand.

The wee thing in the middle of the ring is a Slinky Dog - we all created one of these before leaving. Oh the fun Carolyn and I had earlier in the week cutting out all the cardboard! If you haven't seen Toy Story 1, 2 or 3 you will not know why on earth we made Slinky Dogs - if you have the reason will be obvious! [There's more...]

It has been a long day. I've just got back in from a night enjoying food and ideas around the manse dinner table at Trinity Church Manse - thank you Karen and Callum for your hospitality. Some of the team that worked on the Spill the Beans pilot booklet and some new faces joined to think about the future of continuing to develop worship and young people's resources.

We learnt a lot from the first pilot from local churches in Scotland, but also from churches across the world that picked up the pilot booklet and have used it in their own situations. We are going to aim at creating another taster for Lent 2011 that will allow us to explore how best to work together, increasing our efficiency of creativity, and, God-willing, fulfilling the varied and encompassing demands of creating a resource for all-ages. Exciting stuff. [There's more...]

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Now, if you were on a plane and saw the propellor doing this what would be your reaction? Scream? Call the flight attendant and demand to be let out? Wonder how on earth you are not on earth with a large bump? [There's more...]

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned an evening that some of the Magnification Action Group spent finding out more about Sanctuary First, a new worship programme being developed and used in a number of churches around Scotland. This evening we visited Claremont Parish Church in East Kilbride to experience a Sanctuary First event organised by the folks from St Andrew's in Bo'ness under the leadership of Albert Bogle.

This was a taster of what they are up to and they used material they called "Cross Shaped Space" which they had used earlier in the year at Pentecost to help worshippers to link the events of Pentecost with the Cross. [There's more...]

During the morning service today the younger folks helped me to set a banquet table ready for a feast, just waiting for the guests to arrive. We were thinking about Luke 14 and Jesus' conversation in the house of a Pharisee as they gathered around the table to eat.

As a responsive time for everyone gathered instead of the normal prayers following the sermon, we did something a bit different. Strategically stashed under chairs before the service began were plates, post-its and pens. Everyone was invited to write their own prayers on the post-its, add them to a plate and then bring all the prayer platters (I wish I had thought of that name for this morning, but it just came to me now) forward to lay on the banquet table already prepared by the young people.

I found it moving, the thought of all these individual prayers being offered to God on this symbolic table representing the heavenly banquet, the table of grace, the visual representation of the Kingdom - open to all.

I saw a couple of weekends ago Toy Story 3 for a second time and it was equally as good the second time - really allowing me to appreciate the skill in the animation. After seeing it for the first time a month ago I wrote my earlier reflections.

This formed around the idea that the film is an allegory about growing up, parenthood and old age. But Simon Hardy has also written about a religious allegory that can be applied to the film which is a good read. Be warned if you haven't seen the film and want to, that there are spoilers ahead!

Like any great story that deals with huge issues, the allegories that can be drawn from it will be many, varied and fascinating.

I just finished watching the BBC1 Scotland documentary A Church in Crisis? that was broadcast this evening. You should be able to catch it on iPlayer if you are UK resident for the next week or so. Partly history lesson and partly an assessment of where the Church of Scotland is today, I thought it was a fairly balanced piece of documentary work by Reevel Alderson, the Social Affairs Correspondent for BBC Scotland.

It was rather providential timing for me as I spent most of today, through three different presbytery meetings, thinking about and putting into place how our presbytery grapples with the changes required over the next few years in order to balance the spread of ministers across the presbytery with the financial constraints imposed by the General Assembly this year.

There were a number of images of church buildings in the documentary in various states of disrepair or dereliction and I was reminded of our recent trip to Tintagel Castle in Cornwall. [There's more...]

In this morning's service we created our own foosball teams on the Communion Table - many thanks to all the very imaginative football strips that adorned the players! It was a game with a difference with Jesus as referee... a good thing, you may think. That omniscience sure would help out with the offside rule or with goal-line quibbles, it would even once and for all determine whether a player deliberately dived ("You know my thoughts even when I am far away..." Psalm 139:2).

But Jesus caused mayhem by ignoring the rules and stopping the game in order to give one of the players who had been left out, never included in the game, ignored by his other team mates, a chance to kick the ball and enter the game. [There's more...]

This evening a few of the members of the Magnification Action Group travelled over to the Maranatha Centre in Motherwell to hear from Neil MacLennan about Sanctuary First. It was not intentional in my timing, but what we talked about at this Practitioner's Seminar fit well with one of the themes I mentioned in the sermon on Sunday.

On Sunday I mentioned the need we have as a community church to stretch ourselves more and provide opportunities for community and worship beyond a Sunday morning at 11 a.m. It is something that has been happening over the years naturally, but I believe we need to be more intentional about it today.

The raison d'être of Sanctuary First is to provide a different opportunity for the web-connected generation to build an online community of disciples that meet together to worship once a month. If you have never heard of Twitter, Facebook or Web 2.0 this might not apply to you... but if you are reading this I guess you do! [There's more...]