‘God sends each person into this world with a special message to deliver, with a special song to sing for others, with a special act of love to bestow. No-one else can speak my message, or sing my song, or offer my act of love. These are entrusted only to you.’

Our Church is the community of the hopeful. Love and hope go hand in hand in the community of believers, the redeemed, and the hopeful.

Last month’s General Assembly was a challenge to us all in so many ways as a national and Presbyterian denomination. It brought a greater recognition that our churches are inextricably connected to one another as we step into a period of opportunity and experimentation in new models of ministry and church planting - working with the limited resources we have available to us. Sharing what we have is an important part of what it means to belong to a national church. This means that our commitment to providing ministry across the whole of Scotland is contingent on the sharing of the resources that we have.

We’ve known in every period of our history that the very nature of the Church provokes some form of resistance. We can be, and going forward have to be, more effective in bringing hope to a new generation using every means possible at our disposal. There is a challenge for us to look to our own locations, Parishes and Presbyteries in this present time and hope for, pray for and work for better communities. The church has become too used to not taking risks. For far too long we’ve let secular society prevent us from doing what God called the church to do and to be. We are letting others dictate the role of church in our communities and forgetting that Jesus told us to feed his sheep.

Take the Guild motto, ‘Whose we are and whom we serve.’

We know who we are, and this gives us confidence as local congregations representing Christ and His church to do a lot more than we might think. We’re called to free captives to slavery and captives to addiction. We’re called to serve those that others neglect, and to comfort those who others won’t touch.

We’re called to give resource to those in need and to use our spending and voting to impact the way that institutions and our government work.

We are called to advocate for those who can’t speak for themselves.

We only need to look around us at the people we live with and share a neighbourhood with, to see where we can and do give of ourselves and make a real difference. This might be a call on our time, our expertise, our financial resources, our friendship, our forgiveness, our open-heartedness, our commitment to loving our neighbour, a willingness to learn and make a commitment to act in small, practical, loving ways to serve them and bring life to them in whatever way we can, even when it hurts us to do so. We do all these things and have the opportunity to do more. What we don’t do, is tell of it enough.

Rev David S Cameron

Convener of the Assembly Trustees