Dear Friends

For hundreds of years, the Christian Church has played an important part in the lives of the people of Scotland.  Churches form important focal points for communities throughout the land.  But what is a church?  In one respect it is a building in which people worship God, but it is also the name given to the group of people who worship there.  The Christian Church is not a building but a large body of people.  In the book of Acts we can read of the very early Christian Church.

These people spread Christianity far and wide starting small communities or churches wherever they went.  Here and there in Scotland we find traces of early Christian worship.  On the Isle of Whithorn, for example, can be seen the remains of a chapel built by St. Ninian, a missionary whose work was to teach the Picts about Jesus Christ.  We can't be sure how long he worked there, nor how far he travelled but Whithorn became an important Christian centre for hundreds of years.

St. Ninian died about AD 432, and he is remembered on the 16th of September by the church.  He is also remembered at Whithorn, where many of the relics can be seen at the visitor centre.  But perhaps Ninian, and other great Christian teachers who worked before or after him in other parts of Britain would feel that their greatest memorial is a land filled with churches for the worship of God.

Oakshaw Trinity is certainly not a congregation which has been established as long as Whithorn.  

However, there have been Christian folk worshipping in Oakshaw for hundreds of years.  As a new session of church activity begins let us give thanks for those who paved the way for us and who now dwell in God's nearer presence.  We are the present church, charged with the task of carrying God's word and care to our parish.  We are Christ's folk in this place, let us have these thoughts uppermost in our minds as we seek to worship and serve our Lord and Master.

Your minister and friend

Hutton Steel.