Celebrating 25 years

No not our wedding anniversary, but 25 years in our church building, The King’s Hall.

To be strictly accurate, I wasn’t around in 1985 when the church, then called Edinburgh City Fellowship moved into an old Church of Scotland building that was being vacated.  I have heard the stories, rather like a family pass down its folklore from one generation to another, of digging the baptismal tank, tiling the toilets, and night after night being spent in the hall to make it fit for a young and vibrant congregation.

Last Sunday, we had an opportunity to recount those stories, not just of how the building was converted to a modern day worship centre, but also of the people, the worship, the teaching, the lives changed through those years.  Many of the stories were from olden days, but more recent attendees remarked on the sense of community and the space to think about faith for oneself.  The fruit continues.

Over the years, alongside the many wonderful and great things our God has done in the building and more importantly in the people who have come to that building (either for one off events or week by week, day by day to worship, learn or work) there has also been our fair share of pain and disappointment.  But despite the brokenness of human beings, God has brought beauty from ashes, gladness from mourning, and praise from despair.

When the building was bought from the Church of Scotland, they wanted the building to continue as a place of worship and that has been at the heart of what the church has been about the last 25 years.  One contribution last Sunday talked of the church being an oasis, a place where people would come to drink and be refreshed in the midst of journeying through the desert.  Some might only come once, others have made it their home.

I was inspired with a strong sense that this building, although only stones and mortar, is a place that people have come to meet with a God who loves them, and we need to continue that and deepen that, over the next 25 years.

Although we were looking back over the last 25 years, we were also looking forward to the next 25 years.  A new season is dawning, and new era of people are emerging who will continue to tell the story of a God who loves people, in the community of people we call “Community Church Edinburgh”, in Edinburgh and to the nations.

It was good to be reminded of some of what God has done, and great to be inspired of what lies ahead as we find the presence of God among us.