Our Vision Statement
Our vision for St John’s is to be a collaborative Christian community with a culture of service, growing in faith and proclaiming the good news of God’s reign.
Growing God’s Kingdom
In the SEC Baptism Service, after the sponsors have affirmed their commitment to the Christian life of discipleship and service, the priest says to the congregation, ‘This is the task of the Church’; and everyone replies ‘This is our task: to live and work for the kingdom of God.’ Living and working for God’s rule in the world is at the heart of what following Jesus is all about – just as it was at the heart of his own mission.
In November 2012 St John’s finalised a 5-year mission plan to clarify our thinking about the direction for our church and to illustrate how our vision for church growth can be implemented. The Ministry Leadership Team reviews the five on-going mission tasks in this plan every six months, so the plan is regularly updated to reflect short-term goals achieved and new longer-term goals set. We recognize that mission has two dimensions – the institutional and the individual. Projects that the church undertakes as an organization are often more obvious, but most of the work we do to fulfill the task of living and working for the kingdom of God is done by individual Christians getting on with their daily living in the name of Jesus. Members of St John’s:
- work in healthcare, education, religion, services, manufacturing and retailing;
- care for children, grandchildren and elderly relatives;
- take services in care homes;
- visit housebound and lonely people;
- work (and have worked) as volunteers in
- the Window of Time drop-in centre for vulnerable young adults,
- Rowlands (the Selkirk ‘dry bar’ for teenagers),
- Fresh Start Borders (which re-cycles household items for homeless people),
- Selkirk Fair Trade Committee,
- Selkirk Food Bank
- the Rotary Club of Selkirk,
- the annual Churches Together holiday club for children;
- ‘Monday Club’, a fortnightly social for seniors;
- are part of the Scripture Union Jesus and Me team at Knowepark Junior School;
- sing in local choirs and operatic societies;
- belong to local branches of the Scottish Women’s Institute
- belong to sports, political, arts, leisure and social clubs of all sorts;
- get involved in the life of several local communities.
All of this is mission and is a high priority for us. It’s central to our role as a church to support our members in these activities and help them to take their faith into them in realistic and meaningful ways. In some cases, members of St John’s engage in this sort of mission alongside fellow-Christians from other churches, but in most we do so with like minded people of good will who may or may not be motivated by self-conscious faith.
Institutionally much of our energy until a few years ago was focussed on the re-ordering of our church building to provide us with a flexible space that we can use for outreach activities of various kinds, as well as worship. Much of the £150,000 we needed for this, was raised through congregational giving. Now the work is complete the church building hosts a wide variety of activities including our own fortnightly Memory Cafe, for people with dementia and their carers, Winter Warmers sessions in the colder months, and our monthly Tea and Blether gatherings.