December 2006
In our training we considered the role of elders in pastoral care and how this has changed over time; and continues to change to meet the needs of our members. We recognise the importance of visits to our districts as their main link with the life and work of the church.
We reviewed our autumn training programme and felt that we had rather compressed our discussion of the material we listened to but that the tapes had presented us with some important questions.
We picked up on the church meeting’s consideration of “change” and in a good discussion brought forward several thoughts and ideas for more detailed analysis in the future. We acknowledge that we are a varied congregation which has not at present a strong feel of togetherness in our approach to worship.
We noted that our Mission Partnership has grown to be nine churches; Hexham and Haltwhistle have joined our group. A programme of meetings with training and services has been arranged for the next few months, on the 17th of each month, up to June when there will be a united service at Hexham.
January 2007
We followed last month’s training by looking at “Other Ways of Ensuring Pastoral Care” with specialisation of an elder’s role, pastoral care groups of members and encouraging members to have increased care of friends and neighbours among the important points for us. We arranged our next training programme which will run for 8 weeks and will be powerful and challenging for us.
We arranged that a small group consider the ideas for worship from individual elders, group discussion and church meetings for us to address at our next meeting. We noted the need for new elders to replace four of our present members. We have continuing concerns over leaders for Junior Church and the numbers of children attending regularly.
Fred Milligan,
Church Secretary
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