We can’t wait for changes to take effect

In our church structure, the body responsible for making decisions on behalf of the congregation is called the Kirk Session.

This group of 65 elders are legally the trustees of the organisation for charity law purposes, but they are also responsible for the smooth running of the church, outreach into the community and the pastoral care of the members.

This is carried out through a series of working groups, with each elder playing their part. People often think that it is the minister who is responsible for much of the decision making in the church as it is in other denominations, but I’m glad to say that only worship and Christian education are my responsibility, and even in those areas, I work with teams of others.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the Kirk Session began meeting on Zoom, which was a steep learning curve for many of us, but through time we got used to conducting our business in that way. We appointed a small team to co-ordinate our response to the mitigations coming from both the Scottish Government and from the national church, which has its own Covid group. As a church we have been indebted to them for the amount of work they have put in, pouring over each announcement and applying it to our situation. We often joke with them that they’ve spent more time reading Covid guidance than their Bibles, but we would be lost without them.

From the outset, we decided on a cautious approach. By nature, I am a “rule keeper” so I was delighted with that. I also have an underlying condition because of an accident I had a few years ago, so I knew that I personally was in a vulnerable situation. I can honestly say that we have kept to the rules throughout, and when we were able to resume certain things, we have carefully considered our priorities. Last Easter, there was an unexpected announcement allowing churches to resume worship for Palm Sunday, Holy Week and Easter, and we worked hard to ensure our folks had the opportunity to worship.

In the days approaching last Christmas, guidance became tighter and again we went the extra mile to ensure that worship was available for our folks. We had teams cleaning between services, and tech folks ensuring the live stream was available for those who couldn’t attend in person.

Have we pleased everyone? Of course, we haven’t!

For some, we’ve been too cautious, and they rightly cite examples of things which are allowed, like meeting friends in a café and sharing hospitality, while they are unable to do so in the church. Throughout it all there have also been other churches allowing things to take place which are absolutely prohibited. It has not been easy.

All of this made my announcement that we would resume hospitality after the service from the first Sunday in February, so special. Our Covid team have done their homework and we can go ahead.

We can’t wait!