Moderator-Designate pledges to bring ‘myself and my faith’

The next Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland has pledged to bring ‘my faith, my hope, my passions and my enthusiasm’ to the role.

The Rev Rosemary (Rosie) Frew, minister of Bowden and Melrose Parish Church in the Borders, was announced as ModeratorDesignate in October. She will become Moderator at May’s General Assembly.

She said: “It is incredibly humbling that other people see in you the qualities and experience that they think a Moderator should have,” she said.

“A very small number of people knew I was going forward for interviews and they all said the same thing: ‘You have got to be yourself.’ That’s what I will bring to the job: I am bringing myself and my faith, my hope, my passions and my enthusiasm.

“Someone described me as ‘a cheerleader for the Church’ and I love that. I still have that passion and enthusiasm that I had when I was licensed for ministry despite all the hard times we have gone through.”

Rosie comes to the role with not only experience of parish ministry in Fife and the Borders, but of church involvement at presbytery and national level including as convener of the Faith Nurture Forum.

Originally from Clarkston on the south side of Glasgow, she began attending Sunday School at Giffnock South Parish Church. Her family moved to Linlithgow, in West Lothian, when she was 14 and she joined St Michael’s Church, going on to become a member of the youth fellowship and the hill-walking group and a Sunday School teacher.

It was around the time of the family’s move to Linlithgow in West Lothian that she read about the first married couple in Scotland to be licensed for ministry. “It was a kind of epiphany,” Rosie explained. “My experience up to that time had just been of older men in ministry and this realisation that a woman could be a minister was the planting of a seed of call at the age of 14. That seed was nurtured by a whole load of people, experiences and opportunities until, by the age of 21, I felt that call had to be tested.”

These experiences included working at a Christian outdoor centre, Compass Ski Centre at Glenshee Lodge, where she took a gap year while deciding if she should study for ministry.

It was a very special place for Rosie, perhaps not least because it was where she met her husband Dave, with whom she shares son Pete (29) and daughter Bex (26).

Accepted as a candidate for ministry, Rosie studied theology at New College in Edinburgh. During her studies, she and Dave married and the couple moved to Fife. Rosie completed placements at Abbotshall and Viewforth churches in Kirkcaldy and her probationary period at Markinch Parish Church, before being ordained and inducted to her first charge, Largo and Newburn with Largo: St David’s, in May 1988. After 17 years in Largo she moved back to Abbotshall, followed by a move to Melrose in 2017.

While in Fife she served as Clerk to the then Presbytery of Kirkcaldy, and among her roles at national church level she was the last convener of the former Ministries Council and the first of its successor, the Faith Nurture Forum.

She added: “I’m looking forward to meeting congregations and learning more about them and the challenges they face, but also about what excites them and the good things that are happening and using the particular platform the Moderator has to showcase that.”