Dear friends,

Someone asked me today if I have any ‘big projects’ in the pipeline for 2017. I thought for a moment and answered ‘No:  I don’t have any big projects for 2017’. With our daughters now in full-time education in the UK it is a time in our lives to allow them to pursue their big projects, while we provide a degree of stability. God willing, the vacancy at the Scots Kirk Paris will be coming to an end at the end of March. As interim-moderator this vacancy has been my most recent big-project. There have been moments when the role has required focus, energy and time. However, testing experiences such as this, also provide opportunities for growth. There continues to be a number of vacancies in the International Presbytery and that means that, like many of our colleagues in Scotland, a number of the full-time ministers have been  challenged with additional work.

There are times  when we have to focus on the day in, day out tasks. In ministry this can be pastoral work, preparation for leading worship or Bible studies, administration and being available to the congregation for advice or counsel. These tasks are not big-projects, like the building of a new bridge across the River Forth in Scotland, but are more like the painting of the Forth Rail Bridge: general maintenance work that keeps things in good order.

2017 will see our congregation welcome a visiting team from Presbytery to carry out the five-yearly Local Church Review (LCR). The LCR team will meet the Kirk Session, speak to other office bearers, inspect the properties that the congregation maintain, be present at morning worship and meet the congregation over tea and coffee after the Church service. A lot of documents will be submitted prior to the visit, so that the team can come to Brussels with as full a picture as possible of the work that is done by many people to sustain the life and witness of the congregation.  After the visit, the LCR team will write a report of their findings and help the Kirk Session set goals for the further development of congregational life.

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Dear friends,

From 1^st December to Christmas Eve the Church of Scotland has been publishing a video Advent message online. I was asked to give a short message on the theme of ‘community’ at Christmas. The sort of Christian community that makes up our congregation in Brussels is varied in terms of age, origin and duration of stay in Belgium. Some people have been living in Belgium for decades while others are relatively new and might only be with us for a matter of years, months or even weeks. The increasingly transient nature of our worshipping community is nothing new to us; I have written about this before.

Many members of our Church will travel home for Christmas. This year, some of our congregation will visit loved ones in South Africa, New Zealand, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and France. I am sure that other people will be leaving for destinations that I have not mentioned.

The consequence for us as a worshipping community is that our congregation changes significantly over Christmas time. The Christmas Day service is attended mostly by visitors. In my previous congregation in Scotland there was no Christmas Day service and generally if there is an act of worship on Christmas Day, it can often be a small gathering of people who come along. Until relatively recently, Christmas Day was not a public holiday in Scotland. During my time as minister of Flowerhill Parish Church, in Airdrie, it was the Christmas Eve Watchnight service that brought in the crowds of visitors. This is not the case in Brussels. The habits and make-up of the two congregations to which I have ministered are very different.

I continue to reflect on our Brussels congregation. The worshipping community that we have become over the decades reflects the different ebbs and flows of life within the city over those years. Within the past two decades the congregation has become much more international; there are fewer British people who make up the core of the congregation and more people from the far-flung places of the world. There was a critical point in the congregation’s past when there were as few as 20 worshippers on a Sunday morning, but after that the congregation grew significantly. Since then, St Andrew’s has been a dynamic international church that offers Anglophone worship in the Presbyterian style.

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