The National Gathering is on 3-4 May 2008 at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston near Edinburgh is in less than 3 weeks from now!
The National Gathering will be one of the most encouraging, stimulating and memorable events for the whole church in Scotland in a generation or more. There will be huge celebrations of worship, keynote preachers, kids & youth programmes (check out the BEBO Page, an area for reflective prayer, art exhibitions and outdoor theatre. Speakers include Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, Michele Guinness, Alister McGrath, Andrea Wigglesworth and John Bell. Modern singer/songwriter, Stuart Townend, is coming too.
Although Church without Walls is a movement within the Church of Scotland, all Christian denominations in Scotland are invited to participate in the National Gathering.
Have you booked your tickets yet?
We hope lots of people from your church will come along to this exciting event. Click on this link to visit the National Gathering website. There you’ll find detailed information about the Saturday and Sunday programmes and you can book your tickets online. The excellent value for money prices start at £10 - or less with group discounts. There are even more generous discounts for youth groups. Perhaps your church would like to buy a story-telling tent! There’s still time. See the website for details.
There are few conferences that I really wish I could go to, but TED is one, and not just for the very cool conference bags! The TED 2008 conference is almost here. You can follow the build up at the TED Blog and watch some amazing talks like this one from Isobel Allende and this one from LOST creator JJ Abrams:
I wonder… what would you talk about given 15 minutes with some of the smartest people on the planet?
Together @ MCT happens this Sunday from 5.30pm at Saughtonhall URC, Edinburgh. It would be great to see you there to walk our lent labyrinth and share some hot chocolate.
Morning. At least they tell me it is. I’m at FURY Assembly. It’s 9.25am. I’ve slept, a bit. Much more than lots of other people by the looks of it. I’m not great with not enough (at least 7 hours) sleep so events like this are always a bit of a challenge for me.Anyway, enough about me and my love of duvet time.
FURY (Fellowship of United Reformed Youth) have an Assembly every year in January. Young people from all over Britain get together for some worship, discussion, workshops and entertainment (and not sleep).I arrived at about 6.30pm last night after a nightmare 6 hour drive through the rain, fog and wind with my sat nav taking me an interesting little diversion through a lovely little village then back onto the main road again.
So, now that I’m here… what’s happening?Friday night saw some introductions, some worship (singing punctuated by ad-lib prayers), a chance to meet in regional groups and then in small groups to work out whether or not FURY Has Talent (more on that later). The evening finished off with a quiz and Mr Bean’s Holiday.So, so far it seems to be going ok in a random kind of way.
I’m going to spend most of the rest of the day creating a labyrinth for tomorrow morning (someone forgot to ask me to bring it!). Should be fun…
Rushing ahead a little to Epiphany, but our next Together @ MCT falls on 6th January and you would be most welcome to join us on our journey if you are in or around Edinburgh at 5.30pm.
It’s that time of year again! I’m at the URC Synod of Scotland until Sunday. It’s always an interesting weekend with reports and debates and discussions about our church and its work in the world.
I led a couple of workshops this morning on the Child Friendly Church Award that were really well attended and those there were enthusiastic. Hopefully that will translate into some of their churches working through the process of thinking about their church and its work with children and young people.
Later I’m reverting back to my past life, hosting Stewart’s Pub Quiz!
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