September 2024: Rev Louise Purden

Each month, the Church of Scotland's Talking Ministry series shares a personal story from those serving in Christian ministry, along with resources filled with questions, prayers and reflections to help encourage reflection on how God might be calling you at this time.

For September, Rev Louise Purden speaks about her role as minister of Bonnyrigg Parish Church in Midlothian.

Rev Louise Purden, Minister of Bonnyrigg Parish Church

Former family support, youth and community worker Louise Purden surprised herself by becoming the second generation of her family to go into ministry and following in the footsteps of her father.

She lives in Midlothian with her journalist husband Richard and their two children, Ryan and Christina, where she has been the minister at Bonnyrigg since 2020.

When did your relationship with the Church begin?

I grew up in the Church and I like to think that I brought my parents to faith. I started going to Sunday School and when my dad came to pick me up he felt a conviction that he had to be there. It was through taking myself and my sister to Sunday School, my parents got involved in the Church.

Faith and an awareness of God has always been part of my story, and I knew, even as a teenager, that I wanted faith to be part of every aspect of my life.

Faith and an awareness of God has always been part of my story, and I knew, even as a teenager, that I wanted faith to be part of every aspect of my life. I joined Youth With a Mission (YWAM), where my passion was telling people about Jesus and did missionships out to Ibiza. It was so amazing because after that the 24/7 Movement kicked off in Ibiza and there was a real sense of something taking flight there.

Your father is also a minister. Has he influenced your own journey into ministry?

My dad became a minister when he took early retirement, so I never grew up in a manse, but people would ask me if I was going to follow in his footsteps, and it was always a strong: "No!"

I found the institution of the Church off-putting and found more freedom outside the Church, so it has been really interesting in the time since my ordination to see us really thinking about how we do things outside the Church. It feels like the right time to be coming into the Church with all the changes and having to re-think things. It's a good fit now.

The advice my dad gave me was to just push the door and see what comes, but I was aware that I was going in with my eyes open. I knew the tough stuff as well as the good.

It made that sense of calling very important, knowing that this was what God was saying to me and there was definitely a confidence that God was leading, otherwise I would never have dreamt of it.

My father has been hands off, but I mean that in a good way. He has very much allowed me to carve out my own story and my own approach. We are very different in our styles and opinions, and he has always been supportive of letting me be me.

We have always been close and I think that having this common ground makes us even closer.

How did you find your journey into ministry?

I turned 40 when I was studying at New College in Edinburgh. Christina was at nursery, Ryan was in primary one, and I was at uni! It felt quite the challenge, but I loved it. Academia is not my natural fit, but I managed somehow to crawl my way through.

Training for Word and Ministry especially is such a challenge. You are training for a job that is so diverse that you wonder just how can you train for it when you don't know if you are going to be in some rural setting or some urban setting, with multiple congregations or just one. There are so many immeasurables.

I was a probationer under Rev Keith Mack at St John's and King's Park Church in Dalkeith, and then I was ordained at Bonnyrigg four weeks before we went into lockdown.

But that was actually very encouraging because I started in the job thinking "I have no idea what I'm doing" and I was seeing ministers who had been in post for 30 years in the same position, so it was a great leveller in that we all just muddled through.

In the first week of moving into the manse, I woke in the night with the first verse of a song clear as a bell in my mind. It was a Graham Kendrick song that says: "All Heaven waits with bated breath for saints on earth to pray". I really felt that was a rallying call, that we were going into a season where we really had to pray, and within a few weeks that was all we could do because we were all left in our own homes.

I was frustrated because I was so new that I didn't know what the needs of the congregation were or who its vulnerable folk were, so there was a sense of powerlessness. But within that, there were opportunities. We were able to get screens and cameras installed in the church and there was an adjustment and a moving forward that would have maybe taken a lot longer had it not been for Covid.

Obviously, the big lesson for all the churches was that the Church is not a building. Then, when we were able to run services, there was a very clear awareness that the Church is not a service either. I will never forget seeing people filing in, sitting apart from each other, and filing out again and knowing that this was not what we were about either.

What do you enjoy about parish ministry?

Bonnyrigg is ace! I absolutely love it, and it is a real fit for us as a family. It has increasingly become a commuter town and huge housing estates are forming all the time, but it has still got its own sense of identity and there are lots of things going on.

We recently employed a youth worker who we share with the local churches in Bonnyrigg. That is a great opportunity for us to develop our local connections more and more through having things like holiday club or our Toastie Tuesday initiative with Lasswade High School where we feed teenagers their lunch and we see about 300 teenagers come to that. All the local churches are involved with that, and we are passionate about partnership and building the Kingdom, not building up one particular church or denomination.

We are also passionate about inter-agency work of all kinds. We are realising more and more, as funding and resources are depleting, the importance of working together. And we love being part of that.

We have our Friday Pop Up Pantry, where we partner with the Cyrenians to offer a cheap source of food, and that has been a great way of connecting with and building the community, targeting isolation and poverty and making those connections with folk.

The Church is in a very important position where we can and should be rising up. In the past we have trailblazed in medicine and education and the Church has been so relevant, but more recently we have not quite known where to fit in, so this could be a great opportunity. For instance, in the schools where we are seeing cuts in music and arts, are there ways that we can get musicians into our churches to offer free music lessons? We are always thinking about opportunities like that.

What has surprised you about ministry?

There is a real readiness for change. For me, the wider changes in the Church of Scotland have allowed for an openness to change at a local level.

I think we are in exciting times. I recognise that change can be painful, and I don't want to brush over that, but I do think there are opportunities for us to re-think and re-imagine and to really press into God as well. We can get so caught up in systems and institutions that we can forget that.

It is a time to dream dreams and hope for new things.

What gets you out of bed in the morning?

Being part of something, being part of a movement. We are studying the Book of Acts at the moment, and it's been great to see this group of disciples who are doing the work of the Kingdom and look back at how small and fragile that movement was and then look at the global impact of it now.

We must remember we are part of that same movement. Those same stories we get to be a part of are our stories and the motivation comes from being part of God's story and being part of what He is doing and feeling the privilege of that and feeling the weight of that, but also the joy.

Being part of people's lives is exciting and every day is different. Ministry is a good fit for me because I get bored really easily and so I love the variety and having the honour of leading people through their faith when you are taking a funeral and then having the privilege of seeing new parents and supporting them and then choosing what songs we are going to sing for worship on a Sunday.

Having each day be so different is just a delight

September Discernment Resources: Ministry and me?

When we start feeling a pull towards ministry, our call can sometimes seem as if it were a call to a busier form of life for God. We didn't do much in the Church before, and now we're being challenged to do a lot more. Or so it seems. But is it as simple as this? Consider the story of Mary and Martha:

Now as they went on their way, he [Jesus] entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.' But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.'

Luke 10:38-42

This is a complex passage, which draws out some of the contrasts and paradoxes of ministry. We have the contrast of activity versus apparent inactivity. We see different understandings of what it means to listen to God, one focussed on tasks and another on spending time with Christ. We notice the contrast between a ministry based on practical service and administration and one focussed on teaching and prayer. We see that, though Martha opened her door to Jesus, we can open the door to Christ in one way while closing it in another.

Mary and Martha also remind us, however, that whether we seek to serve God with busyness or with deepening intimacy, God loves us the same. For while they served God differently, because they kept faith with him, he worked wonders for them, and raised their brother Lazarus from the grave.

Questions for Reflection

In my restlessness for something new, am I being called to do less or to do more?

Is ministry mainly about doing, or being who God wants me to be?

Am I being called to teach, or serve, or both?

Do I need to deepen my relationship with Christ before being ready to serve him?

What does it mean to lead?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, we do not understand ourselves. We rush to activity when we should rest, and slumber, when you would command our attention. Help us not to lean on our understanding, or on the opinions of those around us, but to lean into you, and there find our purpose, our identity, and our place. In your strong name we pray. Amen.

Each one of us has some kind of vocation. We are all called by God to share in His life and in His Kingdom. Each one of us is called to a special place in the Kingdom. If we find that place we will be happy. If we do not find it, we can never be completely happy. For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.

Thomas Merton

More information

If you would like to consider how God might be calling you to serve at this time, you may want to discuss further with your minister or be in touch with your Presbytery to explore local opportunities.

If you are interested in exploring a call to the recognised ministries of the Church, you can find more information on our vocations page and can contact ministry@churchofscotland.org.uk for a Discernment Conversation with one of the Recruitment Team.