I've been fairly negligent in posting entries over the summer. There have been a variety of reasons - sheer business, illness in the family, frustration with an old laptop, etc., etc.
Another of the reasons has been, not that nothing was happening, but that not every story is mine to tell. Although one of the reasons for maintaining this blog is to keep a record of the church in its early days, it is essentially a story about people.
The summer generally has been full of ups and downs. We had commented at one point that there did not seem to be the level of spiritual attack on the church that we had been expecting, but in reality it has been there, but seen in struggles we have all faced as individuals more than corporately. There have been health issues, either personally, or as in my case, with family members. Others have struggled with employment issues and associated financial concerns. We have a few assylum seekers in the church who really seem to be struggling at the moment as problems with their assylum applications continue unresolved; to wait up to ten years with no answer is a situation that I can hardly imagine having to live with.
Corporately there have been less tangible issues to overcome - it has been more about the absence of events, than what has actually happened that has been the issue. Few customers, and low levels of income have caused their share of anxiety. We need to make contact with more people, and have the finance to stay open long enough to do that. This has seemed more acute, in that during the summer it was made clear that there would be no funding forthcoming from the Church of Scotland Emerging ministries fund.
All in all though, the reality is that this is very early days. What it does mean though is that we can't take anything for granted. We need to pray for one another, and constantly examine ourselves and what we are doing in the light of our sense of calling and God's direction. We are also very small in number and all of us feel time constrained; we need plan carefully how we use the resources that we have. We are coming up to the end of our first year though, and it is an appropriate time for reflection.
