The Big Question

This month’s question is: ‘Does your church have any special harvest thanksgiving traditions?’

“In the years I’ve been at the Old Parish our celebration of harvest has changed. Corstorphine was once a farming village and what once were fields and piggeries remembered by people in the congregation have become houses as the city has moved westward.

“Our traditional sharing of tins and packets among the elderly has been replaced by bringing clothes and treats for people in hostels, and then with food and packets for nearby foodbanks.

“In autumn 2019 we asked people to bring food for others but also to bring something of themselves that could be shared with members of the congregation, and people brought photos from Sunday School days, or pictures they had drawn, pasta necklaces they had made or tricks they could do, and we spent time in the service moving around the building sharing and laughing and getting to know each other better.

“We felt harvest had become a bit easy – reaching into our cupboards, or buying extra at the shops, but didn’t ask much more from us, and this sharing service, the year before lockdown, allowed us to open up and celebrate on a different level.

“Throughout the year we use the bench at the door of the church as a place to drop off goods and foods for various groups, and the community has always responded generously and thoughtfully. Our most recent appeal was for nappies to pass onto the Ukrainian Welcome Centre based at nearby Gogarburn, and the bench was very quickly buried in packets of nappies of all sizes. People want to help, and sometimes the challenge is simply in finding the easiest way to make that help possible.”

“Harvest is a special time in Carnoustie Panbride as our church lies within a semirural parish and many of our members are either farmers or have been brought up in the farming community.

“Living so close to the open countryside means that we witness not only the beauty of the fields ripe for harvest but also all the hard work that goes into gathering in a harvest.

“So, harvest is always a special celebration.

“Over the years the congregation has celebrated Harvest Thanksgiving in a barn on a local farm in among the cattle and the straw bales. One Harvest Sunday we came out of the service to find that a new calf had been born while we were singing We plough the fields and scatter!

“As well as decorating the church for Harvest, our flower ministry team creates beautiful posies which are then given to members who are sick or housebound.

“Every Harvest we collect for the local foodbank at the Royal British Legion and over the years have collected for other charities at harvest such as Christian Aid Afghanistan Hunger Appeal and Haiti Earthquake Appeal (2021).

“Angus is also known as the ‘Berry Capital of the World’ with many soft fruit farms growing strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries right on our church doorstep, and so as a congregation we have recently supported Malawi Fruits, a community enterprise in Northern Malawi (2020). “

“Our harvest traditions for many years revolved around a display of food, not only on the communion table but in the entire sanctuary. The food was delivered to people we felt would appreciate it. The image is of God’s overwhelming generosity and a sense that no one should be left in need.

“More recently, we and three other congregations in Leith founded the NE Edinburgh Food Bank. All four came together as one for joint harvest worship services. Church members brought foods, toiletries, whatever was most in demand for the harvest display, and these were given to the food bank. The theme of these services was based around food issues – poverty, consumerism, justice, how the very existence of food banks should be seen as a scandal and a judgement on how life has been arranged.

“The pandemic meant we had to be creative to make harvest meaningful. Donations were financial only. It meant losing the important visual impact of harvest, so we asked members to contribute a digital photograph to denote something they had been thankful for in the past year and we displayed those. Again, it’s a picture of God’s generosity, even through difficult times.

“The gifts we make stem from God’s gifts to us.

“The display is a reminder of what truly brings hope, faith and love, and that joy matters primarily when others are enabled to share in it. Traditions are never static.”

“We have just had our Harvest Thanksgiving at Mwandi.

“The congregation is composed overwhelmingly of subsistence farmers, fishermen and small traders. Few are employed in the formal sense, but there is a smattering of better-off civil servants.

“The congregation is expected to make their harvest contribution from produce from the soil and water, in both their raw and processed form; things God has blessed us with. So we had a table with live chickens, fresh and dried fish, maize seeds as well as cornmeal, tomatoes, cabbages, kail, onion and other fruits and vegetables from the field and garden. There was sugarcane and granulated sugar, there was flour in sacks, and we were asked to bake some scones. Those in formal employment were given a brown envelope in which to make a special harvest offering in monetary form.

“Another more unusual aspect was that members of the congregation were asked the previous Sunday to donate something special and good they had at home, but did not really need, but nonetheless, a sacrifice to give. It could be clothes, shoes or household goods that would be needed and a real blessing to the recipient.

“The perishables were either auctioned off at an agreed price or kept, to give to identified needy families. It was the same with the donated clothes, shoes and household goods.

“The harvest is an expression of God’s love for us and the Church wants our giving to express our love for God, in gratitude for everything he has done and is doing in our lives.”

“Like many congregations, Ferryhill Parish Church has changed its focus for Harvest Thanksgiving over the years. As a congregation in Aberdeen, for many years the decorations on the communion table included local produce from fish to a large bottle of crude oil. Today there is no fishing fleet in the city any longer and we are all too aware of the mixed blessing that oil extraction has been for the planet.

“The focus in recent years has been more on how we share the harvest with others. The church is always beautifully decorated and those flowers are distributed amongst the community. Alongside our neighbouring congregations since 2020 we have had a harvest can/bottle appeal for a foodbank in the city, Instant Neighbour. This has also incorporated the local primary schools for whom we created our own animated film with ‘Peaches’, ‘Beanie’ and ‘Tom Tuna’ to introduce the appeal.

“In the first year we set a target of 1,000 cans/bottles and far surpassed that, last year we raised the target to 2,000 and again surpassed that thanks to the generosity of church members and people in our communities. We will be doing the same this harvest with even more concern for people who will be struggling during the winter months as the cost of living increases.

“Doing this as a joint challenge with neighbouring congregations has also deepened our sense of shared ministry and compassion for our parishes which bodes well for the future.”