there's our plans, and then there's Gods plan..

Hi Blog readers!

I suspect not only St Andrews year but many other churches year was very different than what was planned!

Certainly my year has worked out very different than what I was planning at the beginning of the year.

In second Corinthians Paul writes of his changed plans.

I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia and to come back to you from Macedonia, and then to have you send me on my way to Judea. 17 Was I fickle when I intended to do this? Or do I make my plans in a worldly manner so that in the same breath I say both “Yes, yes” and “No, no”? 2 Cor 1:16

No ministry leader of St Andrews was fickle when they wrote up their plans for this year but certainly the virus has changed things.

There has been many learning’s for me this year, including first that no matter what plans we make, events can take them out of our hands.

James says about boasting about tomorrow

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”

This “if the Lord wills” has been increasingly pressed onto my mind, on a pastoral care front I have come to realise the need to find flexible ways to do pastoral care when in a Level 3 lockdown and on a practical front I have been growing in my confidence in the use of Zoom and other video conferencing tools.

Nevertheless despite the interesting year as a church fellowship on top of our personal relationship with our Triune creator we have run home groups, the marriage course, an Alpha course, the Light party and much else.

As we look into next year and our plans for many different ministries we are trusting and know that no matter what happens the Lord is in it.

Alistair McNaughton