11 February 2026

Last Sunday, I was conducting morning worship at Crail and St. Adrian’s. The latter is a union between St. Ayle, which is a union between Anstruther and Cellardyke, and Pittenweem. There are three church buildings in the union and the services in St. Adrian’s rotate around the three buildings.

This week, the service was in the Pittenweem Church and I was astonished to see how many people were there. Before the union, there would have been around twenty worshippers at Pittenweem. Now there were around a hundred.

This must have been an encouragement to the former congregation. In fact, to everyone. The singing was energetic with a strong lead from the organist. And because there are a number of men in the congregation, the singing of the tune ‘Desert’ was outstanding.

The former St. Ayle have been used to alternating between their two church buildings for some time now. It is remarkable how faithful members of the former two congregations have been in attending each other’s church building. They witness effortlessly to the unity which life in Christ establishes.

This has now continued in a rotation of three church buildings. It  has been a remarkable start to the new union and a great encouragement to the former congregations and me  as Interim-moderator. It just demonstrates what can be done to worship together and the encouragement harvested  from  greater numbers.

I mentioned Ennio Morricone’s famous piece of music, ‘Gabriel’s Oboe’ in my sermon. Laura, the organist, picked up on this. By her own confession, she worked out the tune in her head and added chords to make an eloquent and inspiring closing voluntary! Tea and coffee  and much chat followed!

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