Our Guild normally meets in the Session House every second Thursday from October to March from 2-4 pm. The Guild is open to all, men as well as women, and we meet for fellowship, friendship and fun. Our syllabus is always a mixture of music, talks (often about projects we support, both in this country and overseas), demonstrations and presentations. We always have tea and biscuits as well! This year, because of Covid, we have tried to have more local speakers to minimise travelling time for the speaker.
The Guild nationally was started in 1887 by Rev Dr Archibald Charteris. Today, almost 135 years later, with around 15,000 members, the Guild is one of Scotland’s largest voluntary organisation. Although women make up the bulk of our membership, increasingly, men are becoming members and taking active roles at local and national levels. When the new national convenor was installed at the gathering this year by her minister it was encouraging to learn that he is also a Guild member.
The Guild motto is “Whose we are and Whom we serve” and members across the years have lived up to this. The first mention of the Guild in the Session minutes of St Mungo’s was in 1896 when they were thanked for giving cloths for communion to the Church and over the years since then the Guild has contributed a lot both in items donated to the Church and time given to support Church projects. They also look outwards and have supported Guild projects across the world in recent years and sent ”comfort packages” to troops during the world wars. This year we have extended the hand of friendship to Ludgate Guild which has restarted with a view to sometimes holding joint meetings perhaps with project speakers.
The old stereotype of Guild meetings is long gone and the guild is prepared to tackle hard issues as well as more fun things. It provides fellowship to those who attend and over the last year efforts have been made to keep in touch with members while we could not meet in person. Each year the National Convenor sets a Convenor’s Challenge. Our challenge to you is to try a Guild meeting for yourself!
February 2022