Friday was one of those better days – our congregation in Dollar has been waiting for the arrival of their new Rector, Andrew Frearson. Here he is with his wife, Lynn, and Emily. The congregation was once described to me as a community who have learned how to ‘do mission through hospitality’ If we weren’t in the way in the photo, you could see them doing just that. And this is what I said.
Sometimes a series of events gives you the opportunity of working out things as you go ..
So I was glad to spend Saturday with our Casting the Net Liaison Officers in Crieff – they are another layer of linkage between our congregations and the diocese. Then I moved on to All Saints in St Margaret’s, Rosyth, and to Affirmation of Baptismal Vows with the launch of the Casting the Net Mission Plan in Holy Trinity, Dunfermline.
By the time I got there, I had outdistanced my ability to write scripted sermons. But I had worked out the difference between change and transformation – which featured in the readings we were using. I like change – strangely I get the impression that some people don’t. So it’s helpful that we aren’t actually selling change. We’re promoting the biblical concept of transformation. It seems to me that the good thing about transformation is that you remain the same, as it were. But you see God, yourself and the world from a different perspective and there is no going back.