STRANGE

It's interesting being here with Wally the weekend he resigned from the church he has seen grow remarkably over the past five years, rather than accept an ultimatum to take it back to the 80's.

Twenty three years ago I came to a similar place while pastoring in the north east of Scotland. The church was the strongest it had ever been. We put extra seats down the aisles and had to use an overflow room too on Sundays - the place was packed.

But the board didn't like the way things were being done and after a couple of contentious years, I felt the time had come to pull out.

It was strange how the timing worked out, because the Sunday I announced my resignation we had a scheduled guest preacher with us, all the way from the USA.

His name? Here's the irony ...

Wally Odum!