In his first column, the Rt Rev Dr Derek Browning, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, encourages readers to consider how to make a difference.

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IS your life filled with problems, or opportunities? Do you think in terms of crisis, or challenge? A lot depends on context, resources, and how you are feeling at any given time.

After the General Assembly in May, it is clear that our Church faces all of the above. How we handle the present and the future will very much depend on our faith and our attitude.

The Church isn’t so much suffering from a crisis of faith but a crisis of confidence. What kind of Church are we? What kind of Church do we want to become? What is working? What is no longer fit for purpose? What visions and dreams do we have for the future? How, realistically and sustainably, are these visions and dreams going to be achieved? And where, in the midst of our wondering (or maybe worrying) do we hear our God Who is still speaking to us?

Whatever the answers may be (and there will be more than one), unless we are honest and realistic about where we find ourselves as a Church, locally, regionally and nationally, then the prospects of navigating the next years will be difficult.

There is a path to be steered between an unhealthy desire to ‘turn the clocks back’ to ‘better times’, and the equally debilitating response of doom, gloom and pessimism. That works not only for our churches but also for our communities and world. What kind of church, what kind of community, and what kind of world do we want to be?

Before I embarked on my moderatorial year, one of my elders in Morningside said to me: “For goodness sake, just make a difference!” I’ve never been so excited and terrified at one and the same time. But in that elder’s direct words lies the call to be authentic Christians in a world desperately needing to hear something of the good news of Jesus. Those words challenge me, and they challenge all of us.

It will not be for any one of us to change all of the world, or all of the Church, or all of the community in which we live, or even all of our individual life. But we can change parts of these things, singly, or in partnership with others.

Changing our attitudes, prejudices and fears will do some of what we might attempt in the name of Jesus.

If you could change one thing, just one, in your life, in your church, in your world, what might it be, and how might you go about changing it? For visions and dreams to have any purpose or validity they have to be realised.

All of us will have been upset and disturbed, maybe angered by the events in Manchester and London earlier in the summer. I was in London just after the Grenfell Tower fire and the terrorist event at Finsbury Park.

If we have a dream or vision of a world, our world, the communities and churches where we live, as places of welcome, tolerance and grace, how are we going to realise this? How are we, for goodness sake, going to make a difference?

What we saw after those events was a great deal of kindness and generosity, and a great deal of love. People got alongside those who were hurting, and that helped.

If, for goodness sake, we are going to make a difference, then with our faith, welcome, tolerance, kindness and grace will be a good place to start. In our churches; in our communities; and in our world.