Working Together

Church leaders from across Dumfries and Galloway met in Lockerbie early this month to celebrate the first year of a local ecumenical initiative.

The Church of Scotland’s Presbytery of Annandale and Eskdale and the Scottish Episcopal Church’s Diocese of Glasgow and Galloway signed a Learning Agreement last year. The aim was to encourage links between the two denominations and to share learning and skills programmes.

During the first year, the two churches have jointly run two courses in training pastoral visitors, and an Exploring Ministries day. There was also a short course in good communication skills and handling tricky conversations, led by representatives from A Place for Hope.

Along with the two denominations, the meeting was attended by representatives of the Methodist, United Reformed and Roman Catholic Churches, and Action of Churches Together in Scotland.

Martyn Sanders, pastoral assistant in the presbytery’s Further Ministries Team, said: “We’ve seen in the last 12 months how sharing what we have in common and listening to one another’s different perspectives strengthens us all. That’s something we can learn from in all walks of life.”

The Rev Anne Tomlinson, ministry development officer for the Diocese of Glasgow and Galloway, said: “These are very exciting times for our Churches. We come from different traditions but we all want to achieve the same goals and we can do this so much better working together.”

Post Tags: ecumenical, dumfries and galloway

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