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When Liz Geddes was representing St Machar’sRanfuly at Presbytery, she started a series of articles on the work of presbytery and its committees. That was in2008 and there has been nothing since! Well, Liz stepped down as Presbytery Elder in June 2008 and since there was only one volunteer to take her place, I was appointed hersuccessor. This is my second year as your representative and it is an appropriate time to reflect on another aspect of Presbytery work. I sit on the World Mission and Ecumenical Relations (WMER) Committee and hopefully you will be interested in a report on its major theme.
The first point to make is that this area of the Church’s work has undergone radical reorganisation. Gone are the days when each congregation was allocated a mission partner to support with prayers, words and deeds. Now the emphasis is ‘faithshare’, two way communication between twinned congregations. The Presbytery of Greenock and Paisley took an early lead and twinned several years ago with the Presbytery of Zimbabwe in the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa. Yes, it seems strange to have a whole country as your partner but we have roughly the same number of congregations. The two presbyteries are committed to this interaction and have expressed their intent by establishing a covenant between the two bodies.
The main task for WMER has been to foster this link, firstly with exchange visits. Thus representatives from Zim., as it is affectionately abbreviated, have come to Scotland on three occasions but, because of Foreign Office advice, there has only been one visit in the opposite direction from Scotland to Zim. We have been privileged to act as hosts on all three incoming visits and are beginning to understand what it is like to live in the failed state of Zimbabwe. Firstly there has been rampant inflation, worse than in Germany in the inter-war years. This has ruined savings and led to the failure of the Zimbabwean dollar and its replacement by the American dollar. There is much poverty, which affects all,ministers included, who cannot afford two meals a day. And then there is HIV/AIDS which is so widespread that average life expectancy has decreased to below 40 years. How has this affected the ministry of our visitors? Church membership is growing rapidly and the 35 ministers have multiple charges for there are 50 established churches and even more mission stations. Because of the severe poverty, churches outside Harare tend not to have collections but instead they share in the harvest, rather reminiscent of days of yore here. Ministers are affected on a personal level too. Tinashe, who stayed with us recently, has lost family members to HIV/AIDS and is thus responsible for the education of their children in addition to his own – and education is not free. But in spite of all these problems, one is immediately amazed at their resolute faith and hope and their ever present humour.
WMER is hoping to develop a programme of help for our friends, to which congregations here can contribute. Top of the Presbytery list is help for the dozen schools which the Zim church runs and the priority there is to assist in the provision of a constant water supply at each school. Another obvious step is to encourage twinning between congregations and this has already started - one local congregation involved is at the Old Kirk in Kilmacolm. There are also plans for reciprocal arrangements with the Presbytery of Denver, which is also twinned with Zim. Indeed, Denver already has programmes of assistance in operation, particularly with support for health clinics. To this end, a three way summit meeting was held in Denver in October, at which our representative was the Moderator (Rev. Alastair Shaw). The summit was chaired by Very Rev. John Miller, who some of you will remember was at Castlemilk before he becameModerator of the General Assembly. He now ministers in Zim. and he has promised to act as the local contact for aid operations.
So will the congregations in our presbytery support our Zim partner with prayers, words and deeds? I am optimistic that they will.
Donald Robb (Presbytery Elder)
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