On Tuesday 25th February we had a wonderful and memorable evening when family and friends gathered at Forres Baptist Church for the Commissioning Service of 26 street/school pastors by Sandy Scrimgeour, CEO of Ascension Trust Scotland. Thank you to Sandy, to all the speakers and to Forres Baptist Church for hosting such a successful and enjoyable evening.

The commissioning service was held to formally launch school pastors at Forres Academy.  School Pastors do the same work of Listening to, Caring for and Helping that street pastors do but do so in a school environment. There are currently School Pastors in Aberdeen, Elgin and Perth.

The Depute Head Teacher at Forres Academy, Catherine Reilly was there to welcome the new school pastors on behalf of the school.  There were ten Forres school pastors to be commissioned although only nine could make it to the ceremony. What was also very exciting was that there are were eight Elgin School Pastors to be commissioned as well as nine Elgin Street Pastors.  Councillor Graeme Leadbitter, the Deputy Convener of the Moray Council attended and Inspector Colin Mowat was also there to represent Police Scotland.  All three spoke very highly of the work of school and street pastors in Moray.

To have 26 people formally commissioned at once is absolutely phenomenal.  That is an incredibly high number being commissioned at the same time, and is an enormous credit to the congregations of the churches of Moray and shows their willingness to give their time and talent to help address issues in their communities.