26th June 2026

Merry and I can now report achieving our ambition to spend a night on the beautiful island of Iona – in fact, we had three. The weather was mixed, but this is the Scottish West Highlands after all! We heard corncrakes, exchanged ‘hellos’ with countless passers-by, enjoyed wonderful skies and the sea in a variety of moods and shades of blue. It was so good that we hope to do it again!

I can’t claim any special, mystical experiences while visiting this sacred place, but I was struck by a contrast and a connection. Some of you may recall that I recently led a brief act of worship for those members of the Tyndale congregation who couldn’t make the combined service we’d been invited to at St Mark’s Baptist Church on Trinity Sunday. We used a liturgy from the Iona Community, adapted slightly to reflect our urban context. Exactly one week later, Merry and I attended worship in Iona Abbey when the very same liturgy was used, a liturgy originally created to reflect life and faith in God in a context far more rugged and dramatic than Whiteladies Road.

In the familiar surroundings of Tyndale, we knew one another pretty well; in the Abbey, we were a one-off gathering of strangers, speaking with a variety of accents and coming from many different lands and Christian traditions. Same words and responses, same focus on God’s grace to us through the gift of his Son, Jesus Christ, same desire to share God’s love with a needy world. Suddenly, for me, those two distinct Sundays, congregations and settings revealed their true oneness in Christ.

Ken Stewart