LIFE and Work has been informing, uplifting, moving, connecting and occasionally enraging the Church of Scotland for over 140 years. This summer, we are offering churches the chance to celebrate that.

Life and Work Sunday will be marked on August 29 with a celebration and the team are delighted to offer a collection of resources, including a specially-written prayer and short reflection, and suggested readings and hymns for inclusion in worship if you wish. Alongside that, there will be a slideshow and printable exhibition of past covers.

The magazine was founded in 1879 by Archibald Charteris, who had identified that there was a demand for a distinctively Scottish Christian magazine for ministers to circulate in their parishes. He established the template that in many ways remains to this day: news of the Church at local, national and international level, commentary on the key issues of the day from a Scottish Christian perspective, spiritual guidance and Bible study, interviews and profiles of key figures within the Church.

Later editors would recall that the new publication faced scepticism and even ridicule from elements of the Church establishment but, distributed through the parish churches with a supplement for local news, Life and Work quickly became part of the furniture and - with the exception of a two-month break because of a printer’s strike in 1959 – it has published monthly ever since – even, more recently during the Covid-19 global pandemic.

At the Union with the United Free Church in 1929 it became ‘Life and Work: the Record of the Church of Scotland’, and with the coming of the internet acquired an online presence, www.lifeandwork.org You can now also read the whole magazine in digital form which also helps the Church of Scotland move to a Net Zero position over the next decade (meaning greenhouses gases are equivalent to those taken away).

Special digital supplements also underpin our service and resources for the Church of Scotland.

But however you choose to read, Life and Work remains an essential news source and platform for discussion for the whole Church.

The Very Rev Colin Sinclair, Moderator of the General Assembly in 2019-20, writes:

“I have found over the years that (Life and Work) has enlarged my understanding of the Church I am glad to serve. It is given me material to reflect on that shows the width of our Church. There has been a warmth in it which has meant that I have felt included ‘as part of the family’. It has helped me keep in touch. It has made me not only part of a Church of Scotland congregation but part of the Church of Scotland.”