This year, our focus is on Thanksgiving and Prayer, giving thanks to God for all that he has done among us in the last 5 years and praying for the next 5 years.
The following piece has been written by Rev Neil Macmillan about Cornerstone Free Church in Edinburgh.
The Free Church’s Healthy Gospel Church vision is a vision for Every Community in Scotland. It is vital that we hold that outward facing vision for mission at the heart of all that the Free Church does. The way to congregational health in areas like relationships, prayer or preaching is to align the life of the congregation with the great commission. Mission and evangelism are the path to health in all areas of church life as they cause a greater and more realistic dependency on God and his word, and they bring the congregation together in pursuit of a shared vision. Mission brings life and health. Maintenance brings decline and death. Momentum is always a part of a healthy church.
We know that our vision is not that there will be a Free Church in every community in Scotland. It is a kingdom vision in which many denominations and networks will play their part. But we too will play our part as we evangelise people and plant new churches.
Cornerstone Church in Edinburgh is keen to make a contribution to this process and especially to the 30 x 30 vision that aims for the Free Church to plant 30 new congregations by 2030. In 2023 we committed to a Growth Plan that aimed to see the congregation grow in depth, numbers, finances, and congregations between 2023 and 2026. As part of this story Cornerstone is planting two new congregations; we are aiming to be one church with three congregations. We have our original church plant from St Columba’s Free Church, “Cornerstone Morningside”, and now we have also started a new congregation in the Gilmerton area of south Edinburgh, “Cornerstone Gilmerton”, and a Spanish speaking congregation, “Cornerstone En Espanol”. We are one intercultural church, sharing resources, leaders, staff, programmes and processes but reaching out together into new communities and new cultures.
Our commitment to growth has been exciting and rewarding. It has involved starting catechism classes and more training in theology, bible and spiritual disciplines for the congregation. It has meant raising more money from within the congregation and from without. It has meant starting new services in a new place, Gilmerton, and in a new language, Spanish. It has meant moving our Sunday morning worship from our building, the Old Schoolhouse, into a local school to allow the congregation to grow.
Praise God for the sense of life and health all this has brought. Cornerstone is growing. Growing spiritually, growing financially, growing numerically. Last year we saw more conversions than ever before, and we had two wonderful adult baptisms with more to come. So as the denomination spends time this year in gratitude and thanksgiving, do give thanks to God with us for new Christians and new congregations. Give thanks that a small church like ours is able to be part of God’s great mission to the lost and needy people of Scotland. Give thanks that what is true for us is true for your church as well. Mission brings life and health.
