Local Ecumenical Partnership
The Local Church - Our Local Ecumenical Partnership
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Local Ecumenical Partnership |
At a service at Greyfriars at Pentecost 2002 the
congregations of our three churches of Augustine United Church (United
Reformed Church: www.augustine.org.uk), Greyfriars Tolbooth and Highland
Kirk (Church of Scotland: www.greyfriarskirk.com) and St. Columba's by
the Castle (Episcopal Church:
www.stcolumbasbythecastle.org.uk) signed a
covenant committing ourselves to worship and study together and work to
establish a united and positive Christian presence in the centre of
Edinburgh. We are members of Edinburgh Churches Together (www.edinburghchurches.org.uk)
and Action of Churches Together in Scotland (www.acts-scotland.org), and
in 2006 we were recognised as a Local Ecumenical Partnership by the
Scottish Churches National Sponsoring Body.
Joint services and
activities take place in Holy Week and throughout the year, and a Steering Group
consisting of the ministers and a minimum of two members of each church, a
representative from the Christian Fellowship of Healing and occasionally
observers from other churches meets every two or three months. These are some of
the matters discussed or reported and events announced at the Steering Group
meeting held at Greyfriars Kirk on 10 September 2008.
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* Membership of the group – Doneil Macleod (St. Cs. and a member of the Greyfriars Community Project committee) and Kathleen Munro (Session Clerk, Greyfriars) have joined the group, and it was decided to invite Johnathan Jones, the new minister of the Metropolitan Community Church, to future meetings.
* Augustine United Church hopes to appoint a new minister very soon. Members of sister churches were provisionally invited to hear the prospective minister preach on 12 October. Richard Frazer said that he and Alison Fuller had been invited to attend an AUC elders' meeting on 25 September, as the ministers of Greyfriars and St. Columba's.
* The NiteKirk at Greyfriars in the opening week of the Edinburgh Festival was agreed to have been a great success. Richard Frazer said that he would like to have another Nitekirk in the run up to Christmas, and perhaps ultimately two nights a week throughout the year. He was sorry that he was shortly losing two valued colleagues at Greyfriars, the church administrator, Craig Marshall and the assistant, Jane Blackley. The replacing of Craig might be the occasion to tackle the question of sharing administrative burdens.
* This year's Local Church visit to Incholm abbey at the end of August enjoyed good weather and there was a big turnout, including several members of the MCC (see pictures on St. C's website). But it has been suggested that the visit might be at an earlier and less busy time of the year for the boat, so that we could have more time on the island. The Sunday nearest St. Columba's day in early June was suggested.
* The group welcomed the proposal from Julia Fowler (St. Cs.) to have a Local Church 'Quiet Day' on St. Andrew's Day, when ACTS is sponsoring a National Quiet Day.
For up to date information on TLC activity visit http://stcolumbasbythecastle.org.uk/main/the-local-church-our-local-ecumenical-partnership/