| East, Old and Inverarity Parish works closely with our partners abroad. We believe it is important to work with our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world and to share our faith and learn from others. We enjoy engaging in fellowship with our friends old and new and appreciate our reciprocal visits to each other’s churches and opportunities to worship and socialise together. |
 Budapest Zuglo Church |
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Firstly, East and Old Church started their twinning relationship with Zuglo Reformed Church in Budapest, Hungary in 2012 after applying to the Church of Scotland’s World Mission Council for a potential twinning partner. After a period of correspondence and getting to know each other, we decided to pay our new friends a visit in July 2013. This was the start of growing bonds between members of East and Old with discussions about our faith, church traditions, time of worship and social time, as well as plenty of sightseeing. A return visit in September 2014 saw 10 members of Zuglo church visit Forfar to learn of a more rural way of life and see how active our church community was. What followed was 3 return visits each way by various members of the congregations for different purposes. Themes of music, community, youth, education and the environment followed - we have learned a lot from each other. A Covid-19 hiatus led to visits being postponed, but we kept in touch by email and by video call, holding bible studies and social gatherings and sharing prayer requests. Finally in September 2024, members of Zuglo church were able to visit the newly united East, Old and Inverarity Parish and with some delay due to a ministerial vacancy, a group of 16 members from East, Old and Inverarity will visit Budapest in April 2026. This is a great opportunity for our new minister, Rev Thomas MacGregor, as well as our Inverarity members to visit our twin church for the first time. We are so excited to see our friends then. Meanwhile, our more informal partnership with the united congregations of Dubendorf and Schwerzenbach churches just outside Zurich in Switzerland continues to go from strength to strength. Forged from a friendship between our two former ministers, the respective parishes have visited each other twice each since the initial visit in 2018. We continue to learn more from each other around themes such as the environment and church organisation, as well as learning more about Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingly on an anniversary tour back in 2018. We hope to host our Swiss partners again in 2027. If you would like to become involved with our twinning partnership, please contact Twinning conveners Jim Stewart or Karen Liddle.
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