Jamie Grant, Rachel MacInnes, Barry Dennis & Hector Morrison met on Sunday evening to reflect on how things are going and to discuss how all the groups might be strengthened. The remit of the DT is to oversee, encourage and support the various activities that work in the church to try to disciple people. The Guild, Creche, Kingdom Kids, Sunday Club, P6/7, Teen Scene, Night Life, Youth Mentoring, the children’s and adult Libraries and of course the Home-Groups.Those who organise and serve in these various groups deserve our thanks and our prayers as they faithfully work hard towards making the activities a success. Below is a brief synopsis of the sort of things the DT considered at our meeting:-
The Guild have had a good session based around the theme of ‘Let’s Live; Body, Mind & Soul’. An average of around 15-20 have enjoyed their meetings but the Guild would love to welcome more people into their midst. During Guild week in November they are hoping to participate in one of the worship services.
In Sunday Club Morag MacRitchie and her helpers do a great job in bringing the scriptures alive to the children. Morag is always looking for helpers and would love to see more men volunteering. It is important for boys to have male role models! They are also considering the best way of acknowledging the children as they move on to the next session or stage.
In Kingdom Kids Emily MacQuarrie is encouraged as they see an average of 16 kids coming along week by week and also one or two new helpers. Again they are always looking for new folk to help and would love to see the parents putting their names on the rota for helping. As the re-development of the Old manse gets under way we need to think about accommodation for this group.
Laura McCheyne leads the group of P6/7 and again we will need to think about accommodation issues for this group as the Community Project gets under way.
The Creche is as lively as ever and houses around 10-12 babies every Sunday. Jane MacLean and Pat Spence would love to get to grips with the room as they feel it isn’t particularly child friendly. It wouldn’t take a huge budget to freshen it up with paint and murals and put in some proper storage so look out for a re-juvenated Creche facility in the Autumn! They are also looking for baby bouncers. If any of our Bloggers have one stored away in a cupboard let us know. Jane & Pat find it rewarding to see parents being able to participate in the worship knowing their children are in good hands and again would love to see some more male helpers volunteering for the rota.
Chris says there are lots going on in Teen Scene, Night Life and with Youth Mentoring. Around 8-12 young people meet for Teenscene every week with 4 leaders taking it in turns lead the group. Since Nightlife moved to Sunday mornings the numbers have increased and Chris is hoping to see this group attend the second service regularly to take in Rob Barlow’s Christianity Explored series over the next 12 weeks. There are 7 young girls currently being mentored but it doesn’t seem to have taken off with the boys. Mentoring involves the teenagers meeting together regularly with some of our young adult Christians on a more personal level perhaps for a chat, a meal or bible study and to discover and pray for the issues that matter to these young folks. Youth work is an area of special interest to our new Assistant Jonathan and we are hopeful of Chris and his team working together to build a strong Youth Work in Hilton Church.
Libraries:- At the DT meeting we acknowledged the faithful work of the late Jean MacLellan in faithfully displaying and manning a good quality adult library every week. Mairi Ross does the same and we are blessed to have up to date quality Christian literature available to the people of Hilton. The libraries are there to be used and look out for some blatant plugs for both adult and children’s books over the coming months.
Finally the Home-groups. There are 9 Home-groups meeting at different times of the week. They are well established and perform an important function in the church allowing for fellowship, bible study and prayer during the busy week. It is always difficult to encourage, stimulate & develop these groups and the DT would appreciate your prayers as we already look to the session after the summer. Keep your eyes and ears open for news of a potentially exciting way of spiritual renewal being introduced to Hilton in November that could impact positively our groups and indeed the whole congregation! Hope we’ve whetted your appetite!
The DT can only function with the hard work that all the above teams put in and again we say a huge thank you to all who are involved and for the feedback that they give. As a congregation we are truly blessed in the spiritual life that these groups bring as they ‘Go and make disciple of all nations’. Hold them dear in your prayers.
The Discipleship Team
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