07/09/2026
(My article for the next parish newsletter.)
As I come up to a year living in Prestwick, and nine months as your minister, I’ve spent a lot of time listening — carefully, patiently, and occasionally with the kind of facial expression normally reserved for cryptic crosswords.
Some people think I’m sucking on a a wee ‘soor ploom’ sweetie, but that’s actually my ‘thinking’ face that you are seeing.
And do you know what I’ve discovered?
At Saint Nicholas, we are a congregation with good hearts and excellent ambitions.
We want change.
Just… not too much. Or too fast.
Or actually any kind of change that anyone would actually notice.
We want to shake things up, evolve gently, and keep everyone in the loop — ideally all at the same meeting, with nice chocolate biscuits.
We want young people in church, but at the same time we also want the service exactly as it has always been, at the exact same time it has always been, in the exact same seats we have always sat in.
Many of us secretly want to get rid of the pews.
Many of us would call in the army to fight off anyone threatening to take away the pews.
We would also like it noted that many of us are quite attached to the pews; emotionally and spiritually.
(That includes the minister).
We say the church is not the building.
But without the building, the church loses its identity.
So, can we keep the building exactly as it is… while at the same time modernising it completely?
(If you can solve this one, your talents are wasted here in Saint Nicholas. The UN is looking for someone to sort out the troubles in the Middle East and you should immediately apply!)
“We want a youth worker.”
“We do not have the money for a youth worker.”
“OK. Let’s have volunteers instead”.
“Wait a minute, are you saying that we have to be the volunteers, and that we can’t get someone to volunteer for us?”
"Can we not just pay someone to volunteer?"
"Does that mean they aren't volunteers any more?"
“Ah, but it is always the same people who are volunteers.”
“Do you know what, we are just sick and tired of volunteering.”
We want worship to feel relaxed and unstructured, with freedom to respond from the heart. At the same time, we would also like a children’s hymn every week, in the same place, without fail — preferably within a fixed order of service, so everyone knows exactly what is coming next.
We want more fun in church, and we love the busyness, energy, and unpredictability the children bring.
We also want space for quiet reflection — preferably on the same morning, without making the service even one minute longer than an hour.
We want to share our faith boldly and slip Jesus into every conversation.
We also want to be attractive to the unchurched, and not put anyone off by talking too much about Jesus.
We want sermons with lots of God in them, but see when that Minister of ours just stands up there and bangs on about God, he just unravels my knitting so he does.
We want fewer hymns and more modern music, ah but we still love singing the old hymns we grew up with... more of the same please, oh but I like that one the praise band did last week.
(Welcome to my world folks.)
It would be great to have a Saturday service for busy families, an evening service on Sunday, and a weekday morning one — all led by the minister, who should still have his one day off a week, and still be able to have Amanda’s tea on the table for her when she comes home.
(Walking on water is a skoosh after all of that)
We want to work ecumenically and be one living community of faith in Prestwick — but we also want it recorded that we were here in 1908, a continuous history here, longer than anyone else, so if you carry out some historical gymnastics, everyone should remember that in at least one sense, we were here before anyone else, even if technically we weren’t.
We want to be inclusive, welcoming, and open to all, as long as they like all the same worship music as we do.
Oh, and just in case anyone forgets, we would also like people not to sit in our seat.
We want all of the above done in a very small way, one step at a time, but starting immediately, and finished before there are none of us left.
If you’ve got this far without ripping up the newsletter and throwing it in the bin, all these different views say four very important things.
1) We love God.
2) We love each other.
3) We love our community.
4) We genuinely want our Church to have a future in this place.
If you leave all the contradictions to one side, then that’s actually not a bad place to start.
It means we care.
It means we’re paying attention.
It means we’re wonderfully, joyously and imperfectly human.
And it means that God still has plenty to work with.
In the midst of all this confusion, we have to keep reminding ourselves that God is already doing this work.
What does all this mean for us?
In the middle of uncertainty, God reminds us through Paul’s words in Galatians:
“Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
That is the encouragement we need to hold on to.
The challenges before us are real, and some of the questions are not easy to answer.
Our task is not to solve everything at once, or to carry the future of Saint Nicholas Church on our own shoulders.
Our calling as a congregation is much simpler, and deeper:
God asks us just to keep doing good; to keep trusting him, and to keep taking the next faithful step.
God has not abandoned this work.
God is already deeply in this work.
God is already ahead of us, and is already holding what we cannot hold by ourselves.
So don’t grow weary.
Don’t panic.
And above all, let’s not give up.
So we’ll keep taking one faithful step at a time.
Oh, and if anyone figures out how to have a quiet reflective service that is also full of energetic children, please let me know, and my next newsletter article will be all about miracles.
Reverend Andrew J,
(with thanks to Rev. Bryan Kerr of Kilmacolm)
