After carrying out interviews on Saturday 31^st July, meeting candidates over refreshments and showing them round the six parishes, we (the Nominating Committee) deliberated together a few days later and are delighted to report that we have chosen Rev Dr Tony Foley as sole nominee.

Tony will conduct public worship across the West Tweeddale Linking on Sunday 29^th August as follows:

Broughton at 9.30am
Newlands at 10.30am
St Andrew’s West Linton at 12 noon

It is planned that the West Linton service will be available to watch via Zoom and details of this will be communicated via the usual channels.

The meetings of the Nominating Committee had to be treated with the strictest confidentiality, but a brief account of the proceedings is as follows:

We met together for the first time on Friday 25^th June via Zoom. Kevin Scott was appointed as Convenor, Jean Howat as Vice-Convenor and Neil Robinson as Clerk. Rev Calum MacDougall was present, as he was at all our meetings, and members of Vacancy Advisory Board also attended.

The vacancy was added to the Church of Scotland’s ‘vacant charges’ page and advertised via our websites, social media outlets and locally via poster.

We met again on 14^th July via Zoom, at Newlands Church on 21^st July and had one more Zoom discussion on 28^th July. These meetings were used to review the applications we had received and finalise the questions we would ask at interview.

All committee members were able to watch or listen to several online services conducted by our candidates and we felt this removed the need to see them do this in person, especially in the current circumstances.

Thanks to everyone on the committee and to Calum for answering our questions and giving guidance on procedures.

We all agreed that we were looking forward to this new chapter together and to seeing more of each other in future. 

Julie Gamble
17 August 2021