THREADS is a DVD that asks the question 'What does it mean to be a Christian living in Scotland today?'.

The eight episodes of the DVD weave faith and life through the eyes of various people, places and situations.  While the video has been shown over 8 Sundays in 2010 it is still available if anyone would like a second look or missed the chance when it came round.  Please contact William Wallace at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or by phone-449 2951 or by speaking to him in person.

1 The Kirk’s Story

• What does it mean to be a Christian living in Scotland today? At what point would you say that exploring the faith became an important part of your life? What ‘roots’ your Christian faith?
• How aware are you of how the Church of Scotland works – in your own congregation; at presbytery level; at the General Assembly? Is it important to you to know and understand the tradition of your church and to have some sense of what being ‘Presbyterian’ is all about?
• How important do you think it is for people to be a member of a church?
• How has faith changed you? Would you describe yourself as a risk taker?

2  A Living Faith

• Rhona challenges your assumptions about what a Christian is or what being a Christian should be about. She talks about ‘doing a wee bit more’ and that a living faith is putting your faith into action. How do you do that? What do you think about her ideas of how church could be made more relevant?
• Eileen is very involved with the church in her local community. She says that doubt is the other side of faith... what doubts do you have? She says that people have an outmoded idea of what church is and that we might need to rethink what we mean by church. She asks, “Where does God want me to be at any one point in time?”
• David is a Minister. He talks about how he came to sense that God wanted him to make a new commitment to his faith and that there is a distinction between knowing about God and actually knowing God and God knowing you. He suggests that the church needs to always be on the move. How on the move is our church and how could we help it become more mobile?

3  Being Together in the Local Church

• This episode explores what it means to come together as a church. What does it mean to belong and how we might begin to understand the two main sacraments of the Church of Scotland: Baptism and Holy Communion?
  
• People talk about it being better to ‘love than to be right’. In this episode, people make the point that tension is part of the normal experience of life in a local church but that loving and caring go alongside it. Can you see this happening in your local congregation? How is it working out? How can you help? What makes a church creative and not something that just reruns the same routine every week?

4 Partnerships at Home

• In this episode we see two communities that have made attempts to reach out to the people in the communities around them. In one the emphasis seems to be on hospitality. How hospitable would you say your church feels? Do we find it easier to be more hospitable to some people in our society than others?
• Both congregations in this episode are making real attempts to build bridges between the church and the community. Bridges allow for two way traffic so who might you encounter if you build some? When we engage with people on the margins of society we learn so much – what the volunteers get in return is far greater than anything we can give, because we begin to discover what is important in life.’ If this is true, why does the church sometimes find it hard to be alongside the marginalised?

5 Being Together with Other Traditions

• What does it mean for churches to be in a relationship with other churches and denominations? Identity seems to be important in the various branches of the Christian church. How aware are you of what churches from other traditions or other faith groups in your community are doing?
• There are differences of opinion between churches and within churches and it seems that increasingly the key thing for the churches, in relation to the world, is how we can disagree in a way that is not destructive, that doesn’t mean division. How much do you agree with this statement? How can churches express differences of opinion in a constructive way

6 Church Partners and Projects

• This episode looks at the Church of Scotland’s work in Israel and Palestine; the HIV/Aids project and a congregational partnership abroad. How much do we know about partnership churches? Would you like to be more involved? Do you feel you have an accurate sense of what is happening in other parts of the world?
• How aware are we of the HIV/AIDS work in Scotland and of organisations that work with the HIV/AIDS prevention and care abroad.

7 - Being a Voice in National Affairs

• This episode explores how Christians speak out on issues of justice and how they engage in the political arena. Nuclear weapons, fair trade, climate change, alcohol and drug abuse, poverty, homelessness, domestic violence, human trafficking... how appropriate is it for the church to engage in these issues? A few contributors to the programme used the phrase ‘to be silent is to be unfaithful’. What do you think of that?
• What are the things happening today that you feel strongly about? What are the things happening in your community that you might want to speak about? What is your vision and dream for Scotland and in what way can the Church be part of making that vision come true?

8 - Living a Contextual Faith

• How do we incorporate work and worship? How do we live out being Christian in the world where our living contexts may be very different?
• In this episode we meet four people with four different experiences of what they consider ‘church’ to be. Two of them express a deep sense of faith and spirituality and relationship with God and yet they don’t go to church on a Sunday. The other two have found a real home in the church and feel that this is where they are supposed to work out their calling.
• Which of the people you met on the programme did you connect with most? Do you understand why?