Church of Scotland knees up!

A couple of weeks or so ago I got myself along to the Church of Scotland's National Gathering. Because everyone is so spread out thinly in Scotland someone had the idea of bringing them all together in a tented village. The highlight for me was seeing the Archbishop of York speak as he seems to be one of the few remaining Church of England clergy who has a believable faith and who seems to understand that there is a world beyond the 4 walls of his church/minster/palace! Through a distant relative (through marriage) I managed to get my account of the event on the Archbishop's website. Check it out for yourself

The report

It was a good event. It got a bit boring after a couple of hours, and the music was a bit tree hugging in style, and the venue was far to big. As someone said, 'it was like a size 8 foot in a size 10 shoe'. All that said, it was a unique opportunity to meet some of the Christians from around Scotland and actually support each other. When you go to these kind of gathering in England they are a bit competitive and you find that they are just full of people selling their wares...their latest book or resource that promises to change your church, another CD of 'Now That's What I Call Plinky Plonky Praise on those electric Piano's', 'Graham Kendrick: The Reggae years' and a new course that is slightly similar to the last one..in fact so close it's just an anagram of it 'Halpa'. Of course few of them deliver on their promises, and you come home fleeced of your pennies and annoyed at yourself for believing that some 'quick fix' answers to the problems of the church were out there. Without wanting to get into this idea of 'our church is better than your's' I shall look forward to the next Church of Scotland event and hope that it grows from strength to strength.