On Saint Adamnan’s day, Sepember 23rd, each year a group of people walk from Newburgh and meet another group who set out from Collieston. The meeting point is a roofless, medieval church close to the beach and on the edge of Forvie Moor.

Once there was a village here but now the only sound is that of the wind, the sea on a rough day, and sometimes a helicopter passing overhead, going to or from the oil installations far out to sea.

The village disappeared hundreds of years ago when the Sands of Forvie overwhelmed it during a great winter storm. The Church has been excavated and its walls stand four or five feet above the present ground level.

The Church at Forvie is thought to have been founded by Saint Adamnan, the third Abbot of Iona, and each year since 1977, on Saint Adamnan’s Day, people have walked to Forvie and a Eucharist has been celebrated.

In 1977 the group were there at the invitation of the laird, Toby Sutton, and they included the then Bishop of Aberdeen, the saintly Ian Forbes Begg, and the equally saintly, John Murray, the last resident Church of Scotland minister in Collieston and the last person to have Minister of Slains and Forvie as his job title. All three of these good men are remembered at this annual Eucharist.

But it is not all looking back. Christians are people who look forward not backwards. The great truths of faith are to be made fresh for every generation. Adamnan, Bishop Ian, John Murray and Toby Sutton all knew that and sought to live it out in their lives.

As the group walk away from what was once Forvie Church they know that old stones do not a Church make. What makes a Church is people who know God - loving and caring people, ready to reach out in care and concern to the world around them, bringing God’s love into places of unease and disease.

It is good to remember that there were such people at Forvie centuries ago, and many too in the last twenty-five years, but our remembrance of that is only complete when the love and care given in past years is offered to those around us now.