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The Kirk Session met on Wednesday 14th. August,
2002, in the Church hall and was constituted with reading and prayer.
As this was still holiday time, it was always going to be less
well-attended than normal meetings and, in the event, apologies were
received from May, Retta, Margaret, Jimmy and Jamie.
We began our meeting by approving the minutes of
the last meeting and then we began to review all that happened in
recent times. Discovering Faith - our introduction to 'Wednesday
Evening at Arrochar' was judged to have been a great success. People
had enjoyed coming and sharing in a meal, learning, discussing and
worshipping together before returning home two hours later. As a
result a further two month programme of Wednesday Evenings was
planned and these would be from the start of September until the end
of October by which stage everything would have been reviewed once
more. The programme to be followed will be based both on the 'Seasons
of the Spirit' programme which will also drive our agenda at Sunday
worship and at Sunday School, and on a number of special evenings,
one of which will be an introduction to our Bible.
The Songs of Praise evenings were being supported
each Thursday evening and those who came were enjoying the
opportunity to sing favourite hymns. A welcome too was given to the
third edition of the new joint magazine with Luss Parish Church.
Called 'Boundless,' this had been produced by Tom and Dorothy Stewart
who were thanked for their hard work.
Mention was made of some of the youth activities
which formed part of our Year of the Child programme. The service
conducted by young folk shortly before the summer was adjudged a
splendid success and it was hoped to repeat this in future months. So
too was the young folks' outing to Inveraray Jail (followed by tea)
under the leadership of Jimmy Kelly - next on the agenda might be a
ten pin bowling outing! And it was hoped to start work on 'Joseph and
his Technicolour Dreamcoat' once the evenings began to draw in.
The minister's summer had not been the quiet
summer which he had anticipated at the previous meeting. We noted
that the shortage of ministers was now really beginning to be felt on
the ground (or at least in the parishes!), and plans are moving
forward for the creation of a Parish Grouping of those congregations
which border Loch Lomond (and Loch Long.)
Looking further forward, it was agreed to move
the start of our morning service to 10.15 a.m. from Sunday 6th.
October and to keep this earlier start through until Christmas at
which time the appropriateness of this would be reviewed. It was also
agreed to celebrate Holy Communion on Sunday 6th. October - the extra
fifteen minutes might come in handy (they would certainly remove any
need to rush). Two weeks earlier than this, on Sunday 22nd.
September, it was agreed that we would again have our Congregational
Lunch at the Loch Long Hotel and that we should mark, in our service,
the completion of the Church Restoration programme. This is
ambitious, as there is still some work to be done - but it was felt
to be important that we move on from being a Church under
reconstruction - to a Church with other matters higher up our list of
priorities - mission, pastoral care and congregational development;
and so we resolved accordingly!
Casting our minds still further forward, elders
hoped that our Christmas programme would again include a Service of
Nine Lessons and Carols, a Christingle Service and a special service
built around the Memory Stars.
Eric brought up the idea of moving the war
memorial from its present site to somewhere within the Church
grounds. This idea had grown out of an initiative of Councillor
Petrie who had some money to spend and wondered on what it could best
be spent. The Session expressed its view that should the village wish
the war memorial to be sited within the Church grounds, and should
our colleagues in the Roman Catholic Church feel this to be
appropriate, we would be happy to have it within the Church grounds.
Thinking back to last year and thinking forward
to the completion of the restoration programme gave us much to feel
both excited and thankful for, and after some general sharing of
enthusiasm and expectation the meeting ended with prayer, shortly
before 9 p.m. |