Lynne Eland describes how a small congregation has flourished in lockdown.

MOSSNEUK is a small congregation in the west side of East Kilbride where the attendance at Sunday worship is normally around 45.

The charge has been in vacancy since when the Kirk Session requested Hamilton Presbytery to sist the vacancy to allow time to prayerfully reflect and determine a way forward. Since then the level of worshipping community has been maintained and indeed seen growth, including 12 children who regularly attend worship with their parents.

March

The Kirk Session set about thinking what this meant for the worshipping congregation. Zoom was mentioned as a tool to continue with worship, although this was new to us. Holy Week was imminent and it was decided to test a Zoom service of worship on Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

April

We kept Easter worship as near to the usual format and order of service as possible and asked those joining worship for their feedback Around 35-40 joined the worship.

We are fortunate to have elders who are authorised to lead worship in their home church. They have been leading worship every Sunday since Easter. We’ve had others participating each week in a number of ways, including recording and singing along with hymns, reading scripture and leading in prayer.

Within weeks we introduced our children’s Sunday Club to the Zoom format and this follows after Sunday worship. The children delight in catching up with one another and even our youngest child, Lewis, who is only 2, loves joining in.

May

We enhanced ‘Lockdown Church’ to include intercessionary prayer and reflection videos which are posted to our Facebook page and new YouTube channel, weekly on Wednesday and Friday. We introduced Fellowship Time for 15 minutes before Sunday worship when we were all ‘unmuted’ and had the chance to have a quick catch up.

Since the beginning of May, we have produced a weekly communication, Mossneuk Update, in which we keep our worshipping congregation advised of any church news, along with a copy of the Wednesday Prayer and Friday Reflection. Those who are not on email receive a printed copy.

Zoom Fellowship Time began on Tuesday evenings, an opportunity to get together informally to see how everyone is getting on.

June

We are blessed to have a retired minister in our congregation who led us in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper at the beginning of the month. June also saw our monthly Family Lockdown Quiz get into full swing. This has proved a fun way of spending a Thursday evening together.

July

During the six weeks leading up to the new school session, we focused on Old Testament heroes. Five of our congregation led worship on those Sundays, receiving positive unsolicited feedback from many of the congregation. During this time one of our young adults recorded a weekly video based on the bible passage for our Sunday Club, which we called Sarah’s Sunday Story. The children really enjoyed this.

August

The Sunday before the schools reopened, we had all-age worship when the children joined worship at 10am and the congregation had the chance to see the children they had been missing. This was a great success with many happy, smiley faces being seen on the Zoom screen.

One Sunday, one of our elders visited two senior members who hadn’t been able to join Zoom worship, using her laptop to enable them to join in with worship. This was so well received that we are now about to expand this offering.

September

We we are now planning the next few months, planning contingencies as the restrictions surrounding the pandemic evolve. We are thinking of ways to make Harvest Thanksgiving and Remembrance Sunday special, and what we’ll do during Advent should we not be back in our building by then.

The Future: What Next

In some ways, lockdown has been beneficial for us. It has brought us closer together as a Kirk Session and we have grown in our spiritual journey. We have also connected in a number of ways with more members of our congregation than we did before lockdown.

Our prayer now is that, as we ease out of lockdown, we don’t just go back to our old ways. We will prayerfully consider how we go forward from here, learning from our lockdown experience and aiming to thrive, not just survive.

Lynne Eland is the Session Clerk at East Kilbride: Mossneuk Parish Church