The congregation pictured in November 2021
Last week we held our Annual General Meeting for 2022. As well as being a legal requirement for charities, holding an AGM is one way we try to fulfil our obligation to do everything ‘decently and in order’ (1 Cor 14:40), and be transparent about what the money God entrusts to us is used for. The session report gives us an opportunity to look back at what God has done in our midst during the previous year, and you can read it below. Audited financial accounts are available to download from the OSCR website.
Session Report for 2021
2021 was a year that began with soaring Covid death rates in the local area, and the challenge of a second Scottish lockdown, but in God’s grace he preserved us and the year ended with new people at worship and the prospect of a new elder being elected.
Public Worship
While Stranraer as a town had avoided significant Covid outbreaks for most of 2020, that changed as the year drew to a close and 2021 began, with the local newspaper leading with the headline ‘Scotland’s Covid Capital’. Given the situation, session reluctantly took the decision to suspend public worship (with Stephen preaching via livestream instead) for the first two Lord’s Days of the year. However, a second Scottish lockdown was soon announced, which unlike other parts of the UK, included a prohibition on public worship. This ban was ruled unlawful on 24th March, and we resumed public worship on 28th March.
During the period of lockdown, Stephen continued to preach morning and evening each Lord’s Day from the church, with the services livestreamed via Facebook, and also available via telephone for those without access to the internet.
The average attendance for public worship during the year was 28 in the morning and 18 in the evening.
We urge our members to make the Lord’s Day the high point of their week, bookending the day with morning and evening worship, and devoting the day not only to rest and worship, but to fellowship with God’s people (Acts 2:42).
Preaching
Rev. Stephen Steele preached 84 times in Stranraer (20 via livestream). He also preached four times in Stornoway RPCS, twice in Airdrie RPCS, twice in Bready RPCI, twice in Knockbracken RPCI, once in New Life Fellowship, Letterkenny (RPCI) and once in Dervock RPCI.
Rev. Gerald Milligan preached six times. Rev. Stephen McCollum (RPCS) preached four times. Rev. Barry Galbraith (RPCI), Rev. Andrew Kerr (RPCI), Mr Ian Gillies (RPCS) and Mr Benjamin Lowery (EPCEW) all preached twice.
On two Lord’s Days during lockdown we joined North Edinburgh RPCS via Zoom, with our interim elder, Rev. Peter Loughridge, preaching.
Stephen preached on the following books and topics: ‘Behold your God’, Genesis 25-35, Colossians, Nehemiah, Luke 24 and Eldership, as well as a few topical sermons and a couple on the doctrine of the church.
Stephen also spoke at a Scottish Reformation Society meeting on former Stranraer minister William Symington (1795-1862), with over 100 households tuning in via Zoom.
Sacraments
· Communion – The Lord’s Supper was celebrated on 16th May and 14th November, with 18 people taking part on both occasions.
· Baptism – Isaiah Samuel Struthers Steele was baptised on Saturday 28th August by Rev. David McCullough (Woodstock RPCI).
In October, Session announced the decision to hold the Lord’s Supper four times per year from 2022.
Session
Session met four times (all via Zoom). We are grateful to Rev. Peter Loughridge (North Edinburgh RPCS) for his continued work as an interim elder.
On 20th November we had a congregational lunch at Henry’s Bay House to mark 40 years since Rev. Gerald Milligan’s induction as minister in Stranraer (something we had been unable to do in 2020 due to Covid restrictions).
In May, Session made the decision to pray and work towards an elder election before the end of the year. Stephen preached 7 sermons on eldership between October and December, and in mid-December Session announced their intention to nominate Dr James Fraser at an election to be held, God willing, on 18th January 2022.
Membership
It is with much sadness that we record the unexpected death of Mrs Betty McGowan, one of our long-time members, on 21st January. Due to Covid restrictions, her funeral was limited to close family members, but livestreamed to a wider audience. We continue to pray for God’s work in the lives of her family circle.
Bible Studies, Prayer Meetings and other fellowship opportunities
As soon as restrictions allowed, we resumed our weekly Bible Study to discuss the passage that was preached on the previous Lord’s Day morning.
We resumed tea and coffee after the evening service in May, and our monthly church lunches from August.
A men’s breakfast was held in November, and it is hoped that going forward we will be able to hold one every couple of months.
A series of five 30-minute prayer meetings were held via Zoom from November through December. This followed on from a sermon Stephen preached in the summer on ‘The Priority & Power of Praying Together’.
Outreach
A two-night mission was held on 16th and 17th September with the theme ‘Is there more to life than staying safe?’. We had one non-Christian visitor each night. We used the leaflet advertising these services to publicise the sermons on the following Lord’s Day under the title ‘A tale of two sons’.
Leaflets advertising these four special services were distributed by a week-long GO Team. The team also did some open-air psalm singing in the town centre, ran a drop in (offering free tea/coffee and a chat) in the church hall on two of the afternoons, organised a One Day Bible Club and cleaned every seat at Stair Park, as well as visiting Covenanter sites at Anwoth and Wigtown.
We were delighted that one of the team members, Miss Charis Wilson (Drimbolg RPCI), was able to stay on until December. Although the bulk of her time was taken up with an Open University course, having Charis with us enabled us to keep running the drop-in as a weekly event, immediately after our Wednesday morning Bible studies.
Children & Youth
We take the nurture and training of our covenant children very seriously – and see it as a great privilege. We exhort families to hold family worship daily, to bring their children to church morning and evening, and to involve them in the body life of the church as much as possible.
We were delighted to be able to begin two Sabbath School classes in the autumn, with two teachers and four pupils. We are grateful to Miss Charis Wilson and Miss Amy Bingham for caring for our covenant children in this way. We are also thankful to Rev. Gerald Milligan for taking up the teaching of Charis’s class after her departure.
Worksheets to help the children engage with the sermon were provided. While these are not tied to the particular sermon being preached (as they were in the past), specific worksheets on each attribute of God were provided during our series on ‘Behold your God’. Sweets were offered as a prize for completed worksheets, as well as the opportunity to have pictures of the worksheets shared on our facebook page.
A One Day Bible Club was organised by the GO Team specifically for our own covenant children. Six children attended and all were given prizes for taking part.
During Charis’s time with us she did a one-on-one Bible study with a young woman associated with the congregation, based around the book Lies Young Women Believe.
Financial Support
We continue to receive significant monthly financial support from a number of congregations and individuals in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland. We are grateful that this has meant we have not needed to call on our own Presbytery here in Scotland for financial support. We are also thankful that although the past year saw a decrease in outside financial support, giving from within the congregation increased.
We are thankful for God’s provision and remind our members of the Biblical requirement to return back to God at least a tenth of what he gives us.
Website
The church website continues to be updated with weekly sermons and news articles (including Stephen’s monthly ‘Pause for Thought’ page in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press). Over the course of the year the website received 7,681 unique visitors.
Conclusion
Despite the challenges that Covid and the related restrictions continued to bring during the year, we are grateful to God for the measure of unity he has given to enable us to move forward together. We enter 2022 confident that the church is at the centre of God’s plans and purposes for the world, since it is ‘through the church that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known’ (Ephesians 3:10). We look to Jesus that in the year ahead he will continue to glorify himself among us by saving the lost, building up saints, and seeing people added to the church.
Rev. Stephen Steele, Rev. Gerald Milligan, Rev. Peter Loughridge.