Lord,
I saw you were busy with some beginners last night.
I think you were talking to them about basic stuff.
You know,
basic discipleship.
They looked like children
I joined the group for a little while
I was standing on the edge of the circle.
I didn’t expect you to notice me
I listened in for a short time.

Lord,
If you don’t mind I’ll move on ahead.
Start journeying with some of the more advance disciples.
We know where your heading.
Its great to be in the vanguard,
We can begin to be more Spirit led,
move more with the flow,
explore faith issues that create a challenge.
Its great to feel the freedom of the Spirit,
be less restricted.

It allows movement at a different pace.
There is absolutely no point in going over things
that you know already.
I’m sure you’ll agree,
moving at the pace of the slowest is so debilitating.

What was that you said Lord?
They are your advanced disciples!
But I didn’t see anyone I knew.
No familiar faces.
In fact they were all children
What was that …of such is the Kingdom?

Following on from the visit to the Transport Museum last Monday, it was truly a walk down memory lane for me. The sight of this Standard Vanguard car, reminded me of Summer evenings organised by our Junior Bible Class Leader Glen Laing. He used to dress like a gangster wearing suits with big wide collars and flamboyant ties. He’d load a bunch of young guys in this car and take us out to the countryside for what we used to call a ramble, the truth is it was more like a rumble. We had some good laughs bumping around in the back of this old car, no safety belts in those days. I can still smell the leather and the petrol. Got me thinking, we never know what memories we are creating for young people. I’m sure he never thought he was doing anything really important, he was though. We loved it as teenagers.

So what iconic objects will create memories in the minds of today’s teenagers fifty years on? I bet Valley FM. will be remembered as a high point. Now if you don’t know about valley FM have a look at the web page http://

Last week was a bit busy and kind of disruptive, with the various commitments relating to the General Assembly. You can only go to a certain amount of receptions before you feel you’ve had enough. I enjoyed them, but there does come a time when you know you have to move on. It’s good to get back on track again, and catch up with the real meat of parish life.

Those of you who have been following the blog will remember I had been invited to say the prayer of dedication at the Mining Memorial, well it took place last Saturday, Rae was there and she filmed a bit of the event I hope to get the video up for everyone to have a look. Sunday was Pentecost and it was encouraging to see so many join in Craigmailen UF Church for the inter-church praise service.

We had a good Kirk Session meeting last night. In fact yesterday was a good day all round. We had a staff day out in Glasgow.

Guess what? We all went to the Art Galleries and the Museum of Transport. Thanks to Austin for driving the mini-bus and taking us on our day out. I was surprised how busy it was, but then I believe it is now one of Scotland’s top tourist attractions. I think over 3 million people have visited it since it was opened again last year after its refurbishment. We also heard the pipe organ blasting out over the visitors. Got me thinking that pipe organ music can be just as rock-us as rock music.
However others were more interested in being more quiet and reflective.

Have a look at the picture to the left , Lilias our youth worker and Aileen the church administrator are deep in thought reflecting about the coffee and carrot cake they both had. As soon as they both arrived in the Art Galleries, they headed for the cafe on the pretext that young Johnny our church technician had slept in and now needed his breakfast. Twenty minutes later this picture was taken.
Aileen is really saying to Lilias, ” I don’t know about you, but as I’m eating for two now, I think I’ll go back to the cafe and have have another piece of carrot cake.” Lilias replies, ” Oh yes carrot cake, I’ll join you, the doctor said its good for my eyes.

Then of course there was Liz and Marie checking out a masterpiece and conferring if they would make a bid for joint ownership.

After lunch we spent some time in what was known as the Kelvin Hall, which now houses the Transport Museum, this was a walk down memory lane. i’m going to save some of the pictures to share them with you over the next few days.

A lot has been happening since I last wrote about meeting Pudsy. It was great to meet up with so many friends at the Vine Trust Gala Dinner at the Inchyra Grange Polmont last Thursday. Many thanks to Tom Morton of the BBC for being our MC. The evening was a great success. I’m still waiting to hear how much we raised but I’m sure it must have been near £20,000. It was wonderful to welcome Paul and Marty Clark and to have them as our guests her in Bo’ness all day Sunday. I can’t help reflecting how the Vine Trust has developed and grown and how so many different people have played a part in getting us to the place where we are today. It’s like a huge chain of all kinds of people doing their bit. In the midst of all this the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in in full flight with a number of receptions to attend so the blog will have to take a back seat for a few days.

Neil and I visited BBC Scotland’s new £188 million headquarters this afternoon. We were guests of BBC Children in Need. Recently SAMYP received an award of £87,000 to develop work among children and families in our community here in Bo’ness. We are looking forward to developing a first class service to children and young families. Already we have seen quite spectacular success over the years in our youth work. This award, is an endorsement of our present work among youth, and will help us build on this success as we work with younger children and their families. We look forward to taking some of our young people through to Glasgow in the Summer to experience the scale and creativity of the new building at Pacific Quay in Glasgow.

We had an interesting afternoon in the building which will eventually be home to 1,320 workers. Our guide boasted their 34,000sq m building is the last word in digital design and claim it will become “a living, breathing, creative hub”.

An open-plan environment means that the building also has the potential to be a hi-touch place.The central feature of the building is a huge staircase rising through the five floors. Called “the street”, managers and those engaged with programme production will be able to interact more easily as they go about their work.

The five-storey glass-box building now houses three fully digital TV studios. One of them, at 790sq m, is only surpassed in size by the studio capacity at the BBC’s television centre HQ in London. We were told that the reception area will allow visitors to log on to computers, listen to different radio and TV output and even try their hand at presenting the weather. This area is hoped to be visited by many school children.

All this talk of new buildings got me really excited thinking about the plans w have for the redevelopment of the church buildings.

Interesting comment made by Paul, regarding the last post I made. His comment links to more info about the whole scientology organisation that I made mention of a couple of nights ago. I saw the Panorama programme, eventually last night, and it was scary. It is pretty clear that scientology doesn’t like people messing with them. Anyway I doubt if my two lines of criticism will create a major spam attack on my blog. However all this got me thinking how easy it is to keep quiet and keep your head down about systems and philosophies that are obviously evil and deceiving people. I think Sweeney is a pretty brave guy. In many ways, our believe anything stand for nothing, society, has created a whole generation that has become tolerant even of the very things that are seeking to destroy our freedoms and we don’t see it. We are like dead men walking into hell pretending that there is no such thing as evil. Yet we know deep down there will come a time when we might have to shout just like Sweeney in order to keep hold of reality.

We’re all dead men walking
Walking right off the planet
Pretending we’re going nowhere
But knowing we’re going somewhere
Like feet on a moving airport escalator
We walk
We don’t walk
Makes no difference
We’re still moving
We can’t stop
We’re moving toward the gate
We’ll soon fly away

We’re all dead men walking
Looking for resurrection
Longing
to breathe again
to smile again
to love again
to cry again
to be again
but dead men
Can’t walk backwards

We’re all dead men walking
Living as we die
Dying as we live
Listening to voices
Whispering in the background
In the static
Voices from the past
Your nothing
Your as the wind
Yet straining
To hear the one voice above the many
Shouting
You’ve got a future
Your alive in Christ
You’ve been born again
Your living to walk into eternity

BBC Panorama are broadcasting a programme tomorrow night highlighting a number of disturbing facts about the Church of Scientology. I hope I can watch the programme I think it will be interesting. It would appear that the BBC veteran reporter John Sweeney lost his cool with the people from the church. Here is a disturbing clip of Sweeney, who appears to just loose the plot.
It may be that guy was just so frustrated with the representatives of the church that he blew up. Have a look at the incident as posted on You Tube. It would appear the Church of Scientology are milking this for all its worth.

This picture is a reminder to me of the importance of sometimes just doing absolutely nothing. Its good sometimes to be busy doing nothing. The lesson we learned this evening I hope will prepare me and others for all the things that lie ahead of us this Summer. Our Thursday study group is reading through material based on John Ortberg’s book entitled ” The Life You Always Wanted” It’s a common sense approach to re-ordering our lives so that we begin to train for the Christian life rather than try to live it.

Tonight we were reflecting upon the importance of carving out space in our lives to encounter solitude. Ortberg describes the difference between being busy and being in a hurry. Being in a hurry is to have no time to stand and stare. Being busy is being fulfilled and balanced in Christian discipleship. So I know I’m hoping that I won’t be in a hurry and suffer from “hurry sickness”, but I do pray that we will have much success in delivering a variety of really interesting opportunities for service to many in the congregation over the next few months.

The next couple of weeks are going to be pretty busy, as is the next few months. Neil Maclennan and myself had an interesting meeting this morning with a consultant who we hope will be helping us to think about how we plan for the ever increasing opportunities we seem to encounter as a congregation. Our consultant is going to be helping us to think about how we can build capacity and restructure our organisation and put together a strategy plan. So you can see we have some interesting times ahead.

Meanwhile, as Chair of Vine Trust, I’m delighted to welcome Paul Clark and his wife Marty to Scotland. Paul is the General Director of Scripture Union Peru. During the next couple of weeks he will be touring Scotland making contact with the various supporters of our work.

Next Thursday is going to be a big night out for us all at the Inchyra. Thanks to the MacDonald Hotel Group we will be hosting an event to promote the work of the Vine Trust. there will be some great prizes, and Tom Morton of BBC Radio Scotland will be the MC. Let me tell you, I’ve been out there trying to persuade businesses to take a table at our event. It has been challenging but I think we are getting there.

Anyway the following week will be the General Assembly, and our technical team from St Andrew’s Bo’ness will be delivering the technical support for the streaming of the General Assembly. I’ll also be delivering a report to the Assembly on Wednesday 23 May reporting on the future plans for the CWW programme in 2008. i tell you a little more about this after i’ve been at our planning meeting tomorrow in Edinburgh.

Here in Bo’ness we will be preparing for the appointment of our new family worker to join our team. We will also be putting together our plans for the Summer programme. Lilias our youth worker and Craig our youth elder, have been up in Aberdeen this week connecting with Jim Richie and his team. Jim we hope will be leading a youth mission in the town at the beginning of July.

There is also another group of people preparing to set off for India towards the end of July. This group hope to meet up with some of our partners from World Without Walls. Also over the Summer there will be a group looking at the structuring of the King’s Club, reflecting on how we can best delivery a first class experience to the children who attend church on a Sunday morning.

I’m just thinking, what am I doing here trying to catch a line to find a hook for a talk. Oh I remember, the phone rang about six months ago. “Will you come and speak at our Presbytery Retreat”, I said, “yes”. Now its 12.30pm and later today I’ll be speaking to a group of fellow ministers. Can I say from the outset, this is a very dodgy thing to do. Ministers are not easy to talk to. As I drink another cup of coffee and I’m trying to put together a talk about “keeping fresh in ministry”

The truth is, I feel a bit of a hypocrite. I”m falling asleep talking about keeping fresh.
I know what! I’m going to talk later on this morning about the importance of “staying power”, yes that’s it.

In this job we call ministry, it is so easy to become disheartened. Let me give you an example. I’ve been anxious to see more young people in Bo’ness find faith. We’re in an interesting situation we have literally loads of young people coming in and around the church most days. Yet when it comes to seeing young people at worship the numbers are pretty low. I’ve been trying to set up a Youth Alpha, and I’ve had no luck in getting punters to attend.( Youth Alpha is Christian faith explained in 10 easy lessons), Sunday last was my fourth attempt. They all said they would come and guess what only one turned up. But you know what, I’m not going to give up. Next Sunday at 1.30pm I’m back again. And do you know something else, I’m also getting ready to throw my net in again and start fishing from the other side of the boat. I’m told it worked the last time.

So I’m going to rely on what I know best tomorrow. Sing them a song, read a verse from scripture and show them a clip from a movie and leave the rest to God.

The dark is where many of the street children in Lima say they have met the devil. Talking of Jesus they call him the man on the stick. Speaking of the forces of darkness they say, we know what your talking about, we meet the evil one when we’re hiding and sniffing glu in the dark.

The recent revelations surrounding the Angelica Kluk murder trial, is a reminder to all Christian Communities that we have a responsibility to those who serve and to those who are being served. Churches should be trusting places but we need to be sure that we do not act naively put unsuspecting people at risk. The whole sad sorry affair is intertwined with human weakness. It is a powerful reminder to all who lead in the church that we need to stay close to our Lord. As Van Morrison would say, We need to walk on the “bright side of the road”. the dark side of life is so close to all of us. I wrote this a few years ago as counsel to a younger Christian. It can be said as part of a liturgy.

The dark is not a safe place.

So walk in the light.

There are dangers lurking in the dark.
You tell yourself that it is not real,
You think there is no danger there.
You should not be afraid of the dark.
Fear is for children.
It is to scare yourself,
for the thrill of a scream
A laugh.
No, the dark holds no real danger.

Listen to me,
walk in the light.

The danger is real.
Yet, what is in the darkness
Has not been left for you by some bogeyman.
What is in the darkness, is not a monster
who, watches for you and waits.

Stay away from danger
Walk in the light.

For if you continue to walk in the dark
then what you will find there
is the thing most destructive of all to you.
It is what you bring with you
It is your own sin
And in the darkness you will come to believe
That you cannot be seen
And in the darkness you will come to believe
That you can conceal what you do
And who you are
And how you think
In the darkness
Away from condemnation
Sin will work upon you

So stay away from the dark
And walk in the light
Where sin has no hold upon you

Believe me in the dark
The power of sin grows
And seeks to have you for its own

So stay out of the darkness
And walk in the light

“If we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1st John 1:7)