On Saturday 20 September people gathered from across Orkney in Firth Church for an engaging day of music and prayer.
Phill Mellstrom (centre with the guitar), the Worship Development Worker for the Church of Scotland and one of the editors for God Welcomes All, led a day of exploring the new hymnary supplement.
This included a morning learning some new songs with a scratch choir with singers from various churches and culminated in an afternoon of worship.
Rev Julia Meason explains the context for this event: "Orkney is home to eight distinct geographical areas, with 18 local worshipping communities—each faithfully served by its own minister. Alongside these, we also have one congregation in deferred union with the wider Orkney churches.
“For the launch, we wanted not only to gather all these churches in shared worship, but also to lift one another up in prayer. To make this possible, every congregation was invited to share their own prayer requests. These were then carefully swapped around, so that no one prayed for their own church—everyone was praying for someone else.”
Alongside Phill were Ruth Harvey, organist at East Mainland Church, accompanying on piano, Rev Peter Johnston, minister at Devana Parish Church, Aberdeen, who was one of the Hymnary Supplement Committee on guitar, and Alan Massey, organist at Kirkwall East Church, who taught parts to some of the musical items that were sang.
God Welcomes All (GWA) was launched at the General Assembly in 2024 as a supplement to the existing Church Hymnary Fourth Edition (CH4). It mostly comprises songs written since the publication of CH4 over twenty years ago. There is a broad range of musical styles contained within the 226 songs included. Contemporary themes such as the climate crisis, lament, healing, pilgrimage, ageing and dementia are amongst those explored in the contributions. These come from around the world. GWA also provided an opportunity for many Scottish contributions. Examples of these were sung as part of the event.
At one moment everyone was clapping their ‘cha cha cha’ while singing about building a new world with faith, love and hope, then singing a lament, “Sometimes our only song is weeping…” or celebrating that “you are welcome here, come as you are…” while keeping a sense that:
God welcomes all,
strangers and friends;
God’s love is strong
and it never ends.
This was the short song whose first line became the title of the book and was sung in harmony with great enthusiasm.
As these musical items were surrounded with prayer from across Orkney it provided an uplifting time of worship for all who participated. Julia goes on to say: “The result was something really special: a powerful sense of unity and fellowship across our islands. A huge thank you to all who shared prayers and to those who spoke them aloud on the day—you helped make it a moving and memorable celebration!"