From the Minister:

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

As most of you will know, at the service on 3rd January I intimated my decision to retire in July. I read in full my letter to the Clerk of Lothian Presbytery (see below) because I wanted everyone to understand the important steps I have taken to  emphasise the fact that my new life in Cockenzie will be as a member of the community but no longer as a serving minister.

Although the next five months will be busy, not least with the many arrangements to prepare the way for my successor, I will continue as far as possible with all regular commitments and duties until Communion Sunday 27th June, my last as your minister.

The more than 13 years Elizabeth and I will have spent with you have been amongst the happiest and most fulfilling of our ministry, which is why we are going to find it so very hard to leave the Chalmers Memorial Church family. However, I firmly believe it is the right time to go. Whilst I must leave it to others to make their own assessment as to what has been achieved over these years, I hope all can agree that at least two things can truthfully be said of our present situation – there is stability and there is variety.

I think it most unlikely my successor will be told, as I was by countless folks at the start of my ministry, that in Chalmers Memorial there were fixed ways of doing things, especially with regard to the choice of congregational praise. By contrast, at the same time a significant group of members were telling me that if I didn’t introduce particular changes within a year, they would leave – an impossible situation since these folk were far from being in agreement as to the changes they wanted.

I mentionwhere we have come from only to illustrate how far we have moved on together. I am sure that those of you who, with your loyalty, friendship, commitment and imagination have been such a joy to work alongside will want to ensure that the Nominating Committee you elect to appoint my successor is representative and able to interest potential ministers in Chalmers Memorial as a congregation that is marked by stability, with a variety of groups and styles of worship led by many able and willing leaders and certainly no one-man band.

Whilst many of you have said you don’t like change and there is on both sides an inevitable sadness in the letting go of pastoral ties which in many cases have become very close, I hope we will all take encouragement from the hymn we have often sung around New Year:            

This is a day of new beginnings,
time to remember, and move on,
time to believe what love
is bringing,
laying to rest the pain that's gone.
           
Christ is alive, and goes before us
to show and share what love
can do.
This is a day of new beginnings;
our God is making all things new.   [Brian Wren (b1936)        CH4 No.526]