Cornerstone No. 192, page 5
Presbytery Meeting, Lisbon March 2018-05-01
The meeting was actually held in Cascais, which is a tourist resort west of
Lisbon on the coast. In fact, the hotel was right on the beach and very nice,
too!
We had all our meals and meetings in the hotel which was very convenient but
made me feel a little cut off from the actual congregation as the church was
some 40 minutes away on the train in Lisbon. The upside was the easy access
to the little lanes with shops and restaurants which we made the most of when
we weren’t in meetings, of course! There were plenty of places to walk, parks
and museums. The first two days, Thursday and Friday, were very blustery and
we had some rain, but the rest of the weekend improved and we had plenty of
sunshine.
The Friday committee meetings started at 9:30 and in the Mission committee
we had a presentation from David Williams who is in charge of the “Go For It”
fund of the Church of Scotland. This fund has grants available to congregations
to “encourage creative ways of working which develop the life and mission of
the local church and are transformative for both communities and
congregations”. The scope of possibilities is very large and the amounts
available adapted to the scale of the project.
We also discussed new Mission projects and how to encourage our
congregations to bring forward new ideas to reach out where help is needed.
We were dismayed to hear how little has been collected from our congregations
for the current dual two year project. We were encouraged to promote more
giving before the end of 2018.