Sh’ar Yashuv Edinburgh was founded in 1999 when Lo Kaye Wilson, who led a Messianic Fellowship in West Calder, announced that he was leaving for Belize.
God gave us a vision and called us to start a Messianic Fellowship in Edinburgh, in order to continue the work which had commenced in West Calder. A similar group formed in Glasgow, initially meeting at Cathcart Baptist Church. Initially the two groups agreed to meet together to share the festivals, but as the fellowships grew, the festivals have been celebrated at both locations.
A Messianic Fellowship is not just an evangelical meeting with Judaica. The British Messianic Jewish Alliance, to which we are affiliated, point out that a Messianic Fellowship must have at least two Messianic Jewish believers, that is at least one apart from the leader.
We have a leadership team who Adonai has entrusted to lead the fellowship by maintaining its Jewish identity, being gatekeepers, and being apologetically Messianic.
We want Sh’ar Yashuv to be a place where sympathetic Gentile supporters of Messianic Jews can come to help their Jewish brothers and sisters in Messiah and support Messianic Jews to grow. We want to be a place where Jewish friends who don’t yet accept Yeshua can come and experience the gospel. We also desire that Gentiles who identify with Messianic Jewish culture will come to learn, to support and grow as they are taught the Jewish roots of their faith.
We aim to help Jewish people to believe in Yeshua without ceasing to be Jewish, by celebrating the feasts, Shabbat, keeping kosher, mikvah (baptism) etc. We want to provide a place where Messianic Jews can come and worship Yeshua as Jews not feeling the pressure to be ethnically cleansed, and where we can combat anti-Semitism and replacement theology. Sh’ar Yahsuv should be a place where Jews can feel at ease if they wear a tallit (prayer shawl) or kippa (head covering).
We have developed Messianic Jewish liturgy and worship, and aim to make sure that the Hebrew pronunciation is correct as we want our fellow Jewish brothers and sisters to feel at home. We also want any Jewish friends who do not yet accept Yeshua as Messiah to be introduced to the Good News in a Jewish context by revealing the Jewish insight of God’s Word and the Jewishness of their Messiah.
The aims, objectives and goals of the Fellowship were agreed some years ago and are available as a separate document.