Survive or Thrive

Wednesday September 23 2020

Lynne Eland, Session Clerk of Mossneuk Parish Church in East Kilbride, explains how the church has flourished during lockdown.

The last five months have seen all of us having to deal with a situation with which none of us has any previous experience. Overnight we found we had to close our church buildings with immediate effect. So, what were we to do? How could we be church without our building?

Mossneuk is a small congregation in the west side of East Kilbride where the average attendance at Sunday worship is normally around 45. The charge has been in vacancy since 2016 when the Kirk Session requested Hamilton Presbytery to sist the vacancy to allow time to prayerfully reflect and determine a way forward. The objective was to thrive rather than just survive.

Since then the level of worshipping community has been maintained and indeed seen growth, including 12 children who regularly attend Sunday worship with their parents; something that hasn’t happened for many a year.

This article is written to share our experience at East Kilbride, Mossneuk with the wider church and may give some ideas of what can be done in these challenging times.

March

The Kirk Session, (totalling 12) set about thinking what this meant for the worshipping congregation. Zoom was mentioned as a tool to continue with worship although this was new to the Kirk Session. Holy Week was imminent and it was decided to test a Zoom service of worship on Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

April

We kept Easter worship as near to the usual format and order of service as possible and asked those joining worship for their feedback. It transpired that around 35 – 40 were joining worship.

We are fortunate to have elders who have attended training provided by Hamilton Presbytery and are authorised to lead worship in their home church. They have been leading worship at 10am every Sunday since Easter. We’ve had others participating each week in a number of ways e.g. recording and singing along with hymns, reading scripture and leading in prayer.

Within weeks we introduced our children’s Sunday Club to the Zoom format and this follows at 11am after Sunday worship. The children delight in catching up with one another and even our youngest child, Lewis who is only two, loves joining in. In addition to the Children’s Address the children have craft time, the details of which are forwarded to parents during the previous week and children love to complete these during Sunday Club time and sharing them with one another and the adults in attendance.

May

We enhanced ‘Lockdown Church’ to include intercessionary prayer and reflection videos which are posted to our FaceBook page and newly introduced YouTube channel, weekly on Wednesday and Friday. We introduced Fellowship Time for 15 minutes before Sunday worship when we were all ‘unmuted’ and had the chance to have a quick catch up.

Wanting to keep in touch with as many of our worshipping congregation as possible we have, since the beginning of May, produced a weekly communication, Mossneuk Update, in which we keep our worshipping congregation advised of any church news, along with a copy of the Wednesday Prayer and Friday Reflection. Those who are not on email receive a letter with a printed copy of the Wednesday Prayer and Friday Reflection. With the help of some elders, these are hand delivered to recipients with only a handful requiring to be sent by post. During full lockdown this afforded the opportunity to knock doors and check on our more vulnerable members.

Shortly thereafter, Zoom Fellowship Time began on Tuesday evenings, an opportunity to get together informally to see how everyone is getting on.

June

We celebrated the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper at the beginning of June. We are blessed to have a retired minister in our congregation who led us in the sacrament.

With the help of the leaders who delivered the books, the children received their Sunday Club books at the end of June.

June also saw our monthly Family Lockdown Quiz get into full swing. This has proved a great fun way of spending a Thursday evening together.

During this time we had a focus on having everything done to enable the submission to Hamilton Presbytery of the documents required to reopen our out of school club at the beginning of the new school term.

July

During the six weeks leading up to the new school session, we focused on Old Testament heroes and five of our congregation lead worship on those Sundays, receiving positive unsolicited feedback from many of the congregation. During this time one of our young adults recorded a weekly video based on the bible passage for our Sunday Club which we called Sarah’s Sunday Story. The children really enjoyed this. One Sunday we had two of our Sunday Club kids (aged eight and nine) record themselves reading scripture and this was played during 10am worship.

August

The Sunday before the schools reopened for the new session we had all age worship when the children joined worship at 10am and the congregation had the chance to see the children whom they had been missing. This was a great success with many happy, smiley faces being seen on the Zoom screen. A video was pulled together with photos of the children enjoying themselves at home during lockdown and a vocal recording of A Mother’s Prayer (written by Kristen Getty) by one of our young adult members. This was shown during worship.

We also surveyed the congregation to elicit their views on reopening our building for worship. 80 surveys were issued by email and post and generated at 51% response rate. 85% of the those reponding elected to continue with the current arrangements and to work towards a reopening when it was considered safe to do so.

One Sunday towards the end of August one of our elders visited two of our senior members who hadn’t been able to join Zoom worship, using her laptop and data to enable them to join in with worship. This worked without a hitch and was so well received that we are now about to expand this offering and have 6 other volunteers who are prepared to take Zoom worship to some of our more vulnerable members.

September

Having celebrated the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper at the beginning of the month, we are now planning the next few months, planning contingencies as the restrictions surrounding the pandemic evolve. We are currently thinking of ways to make Harvest Thanksgiving and Remembrance Sunday special and what we’ll do during Advent should we not be back in our building by then.

During the last five months the Kirk Session has met via Zoom around every three or four weeks. We have been fortunate in that we have had someone with the enthusiasm to pull together the order of service and the ability to prepare the Zoom worship every week.

The Future: What Next?

In some ways, lockdown has been beneficial for us. It has brought us closer together as a Kirk Session and we have grown in our spiritual journey. We have also connected in a number of ways with more members of our congregation than we did before lockdown. Throughout the last 5 months we’ve kept Hamilton Presbytery advised of our progress and we’re grateful for their support. Our prayer now is that as we ease out of lockdown we don’t just go back to our old ways and ‘throw the baby out with the bath water’. We will prayerfully consider how we go forward from here, learning from our lockdown experience and aiming to thrive, not just survive.

A quote from one of our elderly couples, Alastair and Helen Smith: “We have been shielding and have been blessed by the many ways in which our church family have supported us during lockdown. The biggest thrill for us was Elaine bringing Zoom worship to our home.”