Cornerstone CORNERSTONE_192_website_24_v2 | Page 3

Cornerstone No. 192, page 3 growth has fostered frustration or perhaps even annoyance in some. Dear friends, what God is doing in us can be hard and difficult to measure by results. Faithful patience is required as it can take years to see the flowering, but come it will! As I now prepare to leave Lausanne I am thankful for what I leave behind. A wealth of leadership in people: enabled, strengthened, permitted and most definitely, committed to loving and serving Christ our Lord in this world. With dedication to the Common Good and by remaining accountable to one another, YOU are the Body of Christ, that is this community of faith. I pray for you all and for the Love of Christ; … Ian Letter from the Interim Moderator Hi there, and greetings to you as we move into a new and exciting phase of the life of the congregation. New situations can be unsettling – and a Vacancy, as some of you may recall, can generate a mixture of emotions… the thrill of the unknown, and the sense of loss of the familiar – and it’s a situation that brings opportunity as well as challenge. So, patience, understanding and loyalty are very important… patience as we work through the sometimes convoluted and bureaucratic processes of finding a new minister, understanding as things don’t always go quite to plan or timetable – and loyalty as the life of the church continues and we meet for worship, to carry out the responsibilities, and as we support the work with our normal levels of commitment. Things will feel different, and we will need a good spirit of generous tolerance and flexibility as we pray, plan and work to find a new minister for this charge. There are scores of vacancies out there - across Scotland, and in Europe at the moment – and not a huge number of ministers available from whom to choose. This is the reality for church life in the Church of Scotland today, so the task entrusted to the Nominating Committee when it is formed in the early summer,