Well Done World Mission

I've just finished the World Mission Council Report, well what do you read first in the morning?

I find it really encouraging to read such a strong call to the church to support and stand beside Christians in situations of persecution around the world, pages 7/2-7/16 in the volume of reports 2010.

Also good to see World Mission commending such agencies as:
Open Doors
Barnabas Fund
Release International
Interserve

All we need now is for Church and Society to join in and call the Church of Scotland to stand beside Christians being persecuted in the UK, for wearing a cross or preaching the gospel in public.

We need to finish Church Without Walls

In an earlier post I made some general comments on the Report of the Special Commission on Article 3 – here.

In this post I want to engage with the critical comments about the Church Without Walls reports made by the Special Commission in section 8.2 of their report. (Reports to GA 2010 page 25/15)

The CWW report was received by the General Assembly in 2001, read the report here.

Deriving their criticism of CWW from the 2005 report of the Panel on Doctrine this year’s Special Commission challenges the value of CWW’s emphasis on the local congregation, suggesting that CWW presents a vision of the church which is more congregational in polity than Presbyterian.

This criticism of CWW was flawed in 2005 and remains flawed in 2010 and needs to be robustly challenged.

The key to understanding CWW is the call of Jesus, ‘Follow me’. This call is not issued to churches, but to individuals to follow Jesus in the specific, local footsteps of his journeys in Galilee and Judea and today in the journey of faith in Stranraer or Lewis, Drumchapel or Drummnadrochit. CWW tells us
That calling is local rather than general. (Reports to GA 2001, page 36/9)
Faithful discipleship requires the call of Jesus to touch ground in locations.

On the shape of the church CWW offers us this vision:
Local church is the focus of action
Regional church is the focus of support
Central church is the focus of essential servicing and national role (Reports to GA 2001, page 36/16)

This is not congregationalism (I’m shouting this as I type).
The place within our church of mission, of questions, of initiative, of vision is, or should be the local church. When we try to take this away from local church we deskill the local church which learns to expect an expert to come along with all they need. When we try to take initiative, or build vision nationally or regionally no one in any location recognises it or shares it or is enthused by it.

The regional church is the context in which support, fellowship, encouragement, sharing happens. Except it doesn’t at present, hence the great tragedy of the failure of our church to renew and reshape Presbyteries. If there is a growing congregationalism within the Church of Scotland blame should not be laid at the door of CWW, but at the broken Presbyteries which leave local congregations with little option but to ‘go it alone’.

The central church, I would now prefer the term national church, should be restricted to a limited national role, carrying out essential services to ensure equity within the church and being a point of contact for national and international partners. The bigger the national church the harder it becomes for regional or local church to function properly – we need to make the centre smaller (shouting again!) By this I don’t mean a smaller number of committees doing the same amount of work, but less work!!

This is no kind of congregationalism, this is no kind of denial of fellowship between congregations, this in no kind of denial of the catholicity of the church. If the need for change were not so urgent such naïve criticisms would not merit a response, but the need is urgent, if change does not come in a planned way it will fall upon us as a catastrophe when the black-hole-like national church becomes too dense for the rest of the church to support and it collapses in upon itself.

The CWW process is at a crucial junction here. CWW can become a resource for a limited number of congregation who find it helpful, but if that is all then CWW will have failed in it’s big, comprehensive vision for a renewed church. CWW needs to be fully implemented at the national and regional levels of the church, but this is what is being resisted.

It’s been nine years but there is still time, just a little time, for the vision of CWW to be released into the national and regional church. But if it doesn’t happen soon it will be too late.

Article 3, What's that about then?

I’ve been reading the report of the Special Commission on the Third Article Declaratory of the Church of Scotland in this year’s Blue Book. Just in case someone reading my blog doesn’t have the Articles Declaratory off by heart, here’s the text of Article 3:


This Church is in historical continuity with the Church of Scotland which was reformed in 1560, whose liberties were ratified in 1592, and for whose security provision was made in the Treaty of Union of 1707. The continuity and identity of the Church of Scotland are not prejudiced by the adoption of these Articles. As a national Church representative of the Christian Faith of the Scottish people it acknowledges its distinctive call and duty to bring the ordinances of religion to the people in every parish of Scotland through a territorial ministry.

And a link to the text of the full Articles here.

I’ve been a minister in rural parishes for 17 years now, so I have some commitment to the idea of the Church of Scotland being in all the parishes of Scotland. I know things need to change but I’m generally not unhappy with Article 3 as a ‘mission statement’ for the Church of Scotland. There are some phrases which do need changed to better reflect the cultural context within which we find ourselves and more clearly commit the church to a missional engagement with that culture.

I am amazed, however, that this Special Commission finds no need to change the text of the Article, but that it is recommending to the General Assembly an Act of the Church declaring the sense in which the church understands this Article. If the wording of the Article is sufficiently unclear as to require an Act to explain it, then it needs changed. Elements of our constitution, such as the Articles, should be clear in themselves. An example may serve, in the proposed Act, section (4) reads:

The Church of Scotland understands the words “a national church representative of the Christian faith of the Scottish people” as a recognition of both the Church’s distinctive place in Scottish history and culture and its continuing responsibility to engage the people of Scotland wherever they might be with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. (Reports to GA 2010 page 25/24)

But these two phrases don’t say anything like the same thing! The text of the Act is making an assumption about the Scottish people, namely, that the Scottish people have a Christian faith which is represented by the Church of Scotland. Now, this assumption in 2010 sounds plain daft, Scotland never was a Christian nation and there never was a time, except perhaps between 1560 and the 1620’s when the Church of Scotland could claim to be in a meaningful sense representative of any Christian faith held by a majority of the people of Scotland.

Section (5) of the proposed Act:
The Church of Scotland understands the phrase “bring the ordinances of religion to the people in every parish of Scotland through a territorial ministry” to mean a commitment to maintain worshipping, witnessing and serving Christian congregations throughout Scotland. (Reports to GA 2010 page 25/24)

But this is a withdrawal from the terms of the Article, ‘throughout Scotland’ is nowhere near the same as ‘in every parish of Scotland’.

However, my main question about this is what is meant by ‘the ordinances of religion’? Traditional I was taught, and have taught others, that this phrase specifically refers to offering services of burial and marriage to the people of one’s parish, that is, every person in Scotland has a parish minister upon whom they may call to marry them or conduct a funeral for them, and that parish minister should respond to all such requests as a duty laid upon them by Article 3. In 31 pages of text of the report the Special Commission do not mention marriage or burial services once, except by way of the euphemism ‘matching, hatching and dispatching’ (page 25/23). Are we to understand from the proposed Declaratory Act that parish ministers are no longer under any duty or obligation in terms of Article 3 to conduct services of marriage or burial for those in their parish?

So, I find substantial differences between the text of the Article and the proposed Declaratory Act, of such a serious nature that if we adopt the sense given to the Article in the proposed Act we really do need to change the text of the Article to properly reflect what is a completely new understanding of this Article.

Tearfund Scotland

I had another encouraging meeting with Lynne Paterson at Tearfund Scotland yesterday.

We are hosting a lunch next Thursday, 20 May, 12.45, at the Augustine United Church, 41 George IV Bridge, Edinburgh. Onone and Jean-Marc will speak on Tearfund's response to the earthquake in Haiti and Lynne will briefly introduce some of the Tearfund resources for local congregations: Connected Church, Just People, Discovery.
If you are in Edinburgh next Thu please come along. If you are a commissioner at the General Assembly this will be the best free lunch of the fringe week, so please come along.

The Best Sentence

I've done it! I found the best sentence in the 546 pages (approx) of this year's volume of reports to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

Page 4/5, section 1.19, in a quote from Vincent Donovan, in Christianity Re-discovered, 'the time for endless meetings and seminars about missionary strategy is over ... "just go and talk to people about God and the Christian message"'.

What impact would it have for the gospel if the Moderator were to constitute the General Assembly and then charge all present to go home and spend the week talking to others about Jesus?

Christian Campaigning

I have been pleased to read the report on 'The purpose and nature of campaigning - a Christian perspective', Church and Society, section 11.2.2 (2/61)

For about ten years now at various General Assemblies I've challenged the practice of approving of unlawful protesting at Faslane against the retention and deployment of Trident. Last year I achieved agreement from the Council to prepare this report, and I think it is very good.

The historical review and the theological comment on the responsibility of Christians to campaign on behalf of the poor and victims of injustice is really good and timely.

One major point for the report which I'm not sure about is the claim that it is legitimate to use unlawful means of campaigning where 'the immediate purpose may be to promote public awareness or keep an issue before public attention.' (11.2.4.3 2/64)
For me, the only justifiable cause for unlawful campaigning is where the democratic process is denied to some in the community or is being abused by those elected to serve. To break the law, simply to keep a matter in the view of the public is not something, in the age of blogs, twitter and facebook, that can seriously be proposed as a legitimate use of unlawful campaigning.

So, Ian and Ewen, thanks for the report, but still some work to do here.

General Assembly 2010

I'm a late addition to our Presbytery's list of commissioners so I only received my blue book this week.

There's a pdf file of the text on the accompanying cd, and it says a lot about the church that the cover picture on the file is in black and white. Let's see who wants to start the comments on that one!

Over 500 pages, I think the key reports will be on Article III and the Council of Ministries, that not to say there won't be good stuff in other reports. So, I'll post some blog thoughts as I come to them in the book.