From reform to renewal

I WAS four years old when my father became a minister on his ordination and induction to the charge of Lochee: St Ninian’s, in the Presbytery of Dundee. Like many of his generation he had experienced a sense of calling while on military service during the Second World War. He responded to this and, on demobilisation in 1946, began his divinity studies at Christ’s College, Aberdeen. His father was a lay missionary in his native Lewis, having previously served parishes in Sutherland and Skye. I recall that, on my appointment as Principal Clerk in 1996, Life and Work’s Gaelic Supplement carried the story with a small picture of me, a medium-sized photograph of my father and a large image of my grandfather – a nice illustration (literally) of the old Scots saying, ‘I kent his faither’!

The Very Rev Dr Finlay Macdonald

“ We worry sometimes as to whether the Kirk has a future. Well, it certainly has a past and one element in securing the future is learning from the mistakes of the past and avoiding their repetition.

With this Gaelic/Presbyterian pedigree was mingled a generous measure of Anglican genes from my London-born mother. My parents married in 1943 and, since my father’s RAF duties meant long periods of separation, my mother continued to reside close to her family in Hertfordshire. There I was born in 1945 and, on my father’s next leave, baptised into the Church of England. I recall a nice moment from many years later when, as Moderator, I shared a public conversation with Bruce Cameron, then Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church. In the course of the event in Orkney’s St Magnus Cathedral it emerged that the Moderator had been baptised in the Church of England and the Primus had been baptised in the Church of Scotland – a nice ecumenical symmetry.

As a son of the manse I was duly brought up ‘in the nurture and admonition of the Lord’ and, as other ministers’ children would surely testify, both elements were evident in a manse childhood. I attended Sunday School, graduating from Morning Rays to Great Heart and Young Scotland.

If memory serves me correctly these were the titles of the children’s magazines of the time. There was also the discipline of learning a verse or two of Scripture each week. I recall one Sunday being asked by the superintendent to recite the ‘motto text’. Unfortunately, I had had rather a busy week and failed miserably. I was braced for the rebuke but what really stung was the rider that more might have been expected from the minister’s son! The Boys’ Brigade also added value to my upbringing as it encouraged me to remember my Creator in the days of my youth and to develop ‘habits of obedience, reverence, discipline, self-respect and all that tends towards a true Christian manliness.’

At the age of eight I began piano lessons and ever since music has been an important part of my life. From time to time my Hebridean grandmother would come for extended visits. She was a fine seamstress and as the sewing machine shared a room with the piano she often found herself treadling to the accompaniment of my scales and arpeggios. As I progressed she began to view me as a kind of juke box. She would call out her favourite psalm tunes and I would dutifully play her requests from the old split-page Scottish psalter. Sixty years on I still think of these tunes with their numbers attached – Harington 66, Huddersfield 71, Stroudwater 134. Granny was one feisty lady and in return for the psalm tunes I was given the benefit of her opinions. One matter on which she felt particularly strongly was the Church’s continuing failure to admit women to ministry and eldership. I can still hear her insisting, “Women were the first apostles of the resurrection”. I’m glad she lived to see the change she so longed for.

One Sunday, when I was in my early teens, our church organist asked if I would like to try playing the organ. This led to organ lessons from the organist of Dundee Parish Church (St Mary’s). Then, at the age of sixteen (going on seventeen) I was appointed organist and choirmaster at Camperdown Parish Church, recently built to serve a new housing scheme on the outskirts of Dundee. Under the ministries of Peter Gordon and John Sherrard, this was to prove a highly formative element in my journey towards ministry. Excitement, energy and vitality were much in the air as people moved from the old Lochee tenements to new council houses with bathrooms and gardens. The congregation grew, services were well attended, many children attended Sunday School and the halls were in constant use for church and community activities. Along with the minister’s son (now Clerk to the Presbytery of Duns) I ran a Saturday evening youth club in the church halls. Things got rather out of hand one night as we tried to negotiate a truce between two rival gangs. Eventually they agreed to bury the hatchet – in us! Dane and I ended up attending casualty at Dundee Royal Infirmary and it was touch and go whether the elders would allow the youth club to continue. Eventually, they did.

I share this personal history because this book is as much informed by personal and practical experience of Church life as it is by the perusal of ecclesiastical history offered in its pages. The idea for it came from conversations over the years which suggested that an accessible overview of the Kirk’s story would be helpful for elders, church members and the general reader – perhaps even for ministers interested in a crash refresher course! There are many detailed studies of momentous events and famous individuals, but what I attempt to offer here is a more general survey, highlighting and illustrating the main themes of each century since the

Reformation. The style aims to be accessible, the tone affectionate but not uncritical. I also seek to make connections as the story unfolds and, for those wishing to explore further, there is a bibliography with suggestions for further reading.

We worry sometimes as to whether the Kirk has a future. Well, it certainly has a past and one element in securing the future is learning from the mistakes of the past and avoiding their repetition. The title, From Reform to Renewal, reflects the principle expressed in the old Latin maxim, ecclesia reformata semper reformanda which, being translated, means ‘a Church reformed yet always in need of reform’. Today I sense a real spirit of renewal in the life of the Church. This is not to deny the realities of declining numbers and diminishing influence, but it is also important to affirm emerging initiatives and many good and imaginative things which are going on in parishes around the land.

The book concludes in this spirit with the following paragraph: ‘This book began with the Reformation and has sought to outline the Kirk’s story over the five centuries since Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses in Wittenberg in 1517. We cannot tell how the story will continue into the future but continue it surely will, so long as the Kirk remains committed to a continuing and positive process of reform and renewal’.

From Reform to Renewal, published by Saint Andrew Press, will be launched on Wednesday May 10 at St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh.

This article appears in the April 2017 Issue of Life and Work

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