Services and Events

This Vacancy has been a long hard haul, and a lot of people have put in a lot of work over the past twenty months. We thank them all, as we look forward to a new regime.
Saltoun church can seat 160 people, with standing room for about another twenty. After that we have to start shoe-horning them in. On the evening of 27th September, at the Ordination and Induction service for Malcolm Lyon, that shoe-horn was very much in evidence!
In your editor’s twenty-odd years here, never before has the church been so packed. 200 Orders of Service were printed (remember, the church holds 160 people) and we ran out of them. And still the people kept on coming.
They came “frae a’ the airts” - from North Berwick and Belhaven, from Haddington and South Leith; from pretty well everywhere that Malcolm was ever known.

We have a small reputation in Bolton & Saltoun (sorry Humbie; sorry Yester) for being the best and most enthusiastic hymn-singers in the Parish Group, but I doubt if, in the last 200 years, Saltoun church has heard such full-voiced praise and such enthusiastic singing. The rafters rang. It was truly inspiring. Many people commented.

The Service was conducted by Presbytery, with its Moderator, the Rev. Dr. David Graham of North Berwick Abbey church leading it, and Rev. Muriel Willoughby of St.Clement’s and St.Ninian’s church preaching the sermon.
The whole service was a nice blend of serious ceremonial (for it was a serious occasion after all) enlivened with welcome touches of wit and humour and laughter.
A remarkable number of members of Presbytery turned up (not all of whom got seats, I fear) and they were augmented by some of our long-standing friends from other places and other denominations. All were welcomed to Saltoun that evening, and I hope they all felt uplifted by the occasion.

It is good to see matters progressing in the project by the International Burns Clubs, to commemorate properly the Burns family in Bolton. Already the first phases of restoring the family plot in Bolton churchyard, where Gilbert and many of his family lie, have been put in place, and more dramatic restorations may be expected soon. Anyone with a moment to spare in Bolton should have a look. (We note that the great-great-great grandchild of Gilbert recently visited Bolton church, from Florida as it happens. It’s nice to know that we can still claim a world-wide Burns connection.)