Short Strand and Lower Newtownards Road in east Belfast have been flashpoints in a time of increased sectarianism in the North before and during the marching season.
Presbyterians intend to meet the challenges presented in this east Belfast area. Westbourne is a Presbyterian church situated on the Lower Newtownards Road amidst a declining Protestant population suffering under widespread social deprivation and outbreaks of sectarian violence.
The Rev Mervyn Gibson has been called to Westbourne to minister in this situation. While he believes that the good work and traditions which survive in Westbourne from bygone years must be respected, he is convinced that a radical change must be made by church members as they bring a Christian witness to bear on the conditions in this east Belfast area. Traditional methods and structures have to be reconsidered.
Mr Gibson hopes to develop a new kind of ministry in Westbourne: it will be faithful to the priorities of the Gospel; it will seek to meet local people and their needs. He will promote listening to neighbouring communities and seeking to care for them.
He sees this as the way to heal and solve problems like sectarian violence, "by establishing links in Christ's name".
Mr Gibson is much experienced in this kind of ministry. He is chairman of the Greater Shankill Community Forum, and his wife, a deaconess in the Presbyterian Church, has been active in the centre which provides practical Christian care in the Crumlin Road area of Belfast, which adjoins Ardoyne, recently the scene of some of the most serious sectarian violence for a long time in that vicinity.
Mr Gibson has been an assistant in Bloomfield, a neighbouring congregation to Westbourne. Students for the ministry of the Presbyterian Church attend excellent lectures on the Old Testament in the church's Union Theological College, Belfast. This confidence is evoked by even a cursory reading of Knowing God's Way - A User's Guide to the Old Testament, by the Rev James Patton Taylor, professor of Old Testament language and literature in the college (where much of the material of this book has been tried out in classes and seminars). The book is scholarly, and the presentation enables an easy overview and a general knowledge of the Old Testament. The author rightly sub-titles the book "a user's guide". It prompts its use alongside the reading of the Books of the Bible. He begins with a most useful general instruction. Ministers will find it a helpful revision of perhaps long-forgotten studies. The lay person will have no difficulty in reading it with great profit.
Mr Patton reveals his plan for the book, which is "to look at different groups of Old Testament books in turn". He admits space has precluded consideration of all the books in the same depth; he has chosen to deal at greater length with some lesser-known ones.
With each group he offers a general explanation - genre, background and introductory matters, inviting his readers at the same time to read the Bible book under consideration or major sections of it.
He highlights relationships of the Old Testament to the New and stresses the relevance of each book's message for today.
In six parts Patton deals with the first five books of the Old Testament (the Pentateuch). While obviously a conservative scholar believing the Bible "as God-given and God-inspired" he acknowledges the value of current Old Testament scholarship and that "insights from recent Bible scholarship can be positive and useful", and he tries to make full use of these.
Cartography of the Old Testament is taken account of in an appendix of maps of the ancient Near East: the possible route of the Exodus of the Hebrew people out of captivity in Egypt; the location of the 12 tribes in the land of Canaan; Israel united, and Israel divided.
Patton sees the Old Testament as "a dynamic collection of living books through which God speaks into the situations and issues Christians as individuals and communities face".
The church is called to speak with prophetic voice to governments and nations, and there is much in the Old Testament to help her in her task.