My church

Paul Riley, elder, St Andrew’s in the Grange, Guernsey reflects on his faith journey in the Channel Islands.

“Preparing and delivering a sermon with our worship team requires an honest examination of one’s faith before stepping bravely into the pulpit.

IN 1979 I travelled from Edinburgh to Guernsey to continue my medical career as a family doctor and hospital physician.

Pressure of work, or is that an excuse, meant that I attended the one Church of Scotland on the island, sporadically. Saint Andrew’s in the Grange has survived many upheavals, even German occupation of the island for four years during World War Two. In 1979 it was kind, comfortable, reassuring, dependable but not exciting.

Like most people who now attend, and certainly my fellow elders on the Kirk Session, I have taken part in a number of church jobs. Preparing and delivering a sermon with our worship team requires an honest examination of one’s faith before stepping bravely into the pulpit. My efforts on the flower rota exposed a lack of other skills. The first arrangement I came up with was based on the Garden of Eden, but it couldn’t be distributed to deserving folk afterwards because of the nettles and thistles I had used. I had not realised how stressful was the magazine editor’s job until I took on that role.

I now have a greater appreciation of the excellent background work quietly done in the running of any church.

Along with the organist I organise a Scottish dance band and this for me has been more successful.

I have glossed over a difficult time in my life when work, at that time single-handedly running an Oncology Department, pushed me mentally as far as I could go, perhaps further. Good friends in our traditional church helped me through. Reassurance and dependability are great things; kindness is terrific. Even when they are there we don’t always see them.

Of course we would love to have a bigger congregation including more children. The resistance to change is frustrating. But the good things we do would not be the same if we did not do them in the name of Jesus.

In Guernsey, the established church is the Church of England. In order to flourish, or even survive, our Scottish Church has to fight for our identity and the excitement I did not see in 1979 is returning.

We do beach cleaning, sing carols in the cobbled streets of St Peter Port, take a big part in many island charities, such as Christian Aid, do away-days on other Channel Islands and open our church doors as wide as we can.

One immigrant worker from Kenya has attended our church these last three weeks. He told us: “You are my new family!” There’s a challenge.