Sandy Forsyth considers the impact of the mission and ministry of the Rev Tom Allan – the subject of a new book focussing on the minister and his peers.

WHAT are we to do and say? In these times of great challenges caused by the diminishing role of religion in Scottish society, and the continuing fall in membership and attendances of a Church with an increasing age profile, thoughts turn to ‘mission’ in the hope of regeneration. But how do we express the Gospel now in our changing society? Sometimes the task seems so complex and daunting that a stasis results.

Are there important inspirations to be drawn from the recent past which might help us? A new book seeks to re-discover and retrieve for the present day the dynamic models of mission that were exercised in Scotland in a recent time of revival and growth for the Church, during the two decades after World War II. It argues that what was achieved then to powerful effect, as well as the failures of those times, provide valuable lessons for us now. Whilst we cannot simply repeat what was done before the huge social changes of the Sixties began the ‘secularisation’ of our society, we might be more fully aware of our recent history, in order to shape what Christian mission could mean in today’s Scotland.

The book focuses principally on the work of Tom Allan, alongside his contemporaries: the parish mission of George MacLeod and the Iona Community; the incarnational action living amongst the urban poor of the Gorbals Group Ministry led by Geoff Shaw; and the ecumenical drive of Ian Fraser and Scottish Churches House. From their work, common themes can be identified which might inspire us: of mission beginning in the world as the work of ordinary people, grounded in their language and focused on Christianity being ‘contextual’; in other words, ‘made real’ for their lives and the rhythms of their communities.

Tom Allan was born in 1916, into humble circumstances as the youngest of eight children of the local butcher in Newmilns, Ayrshire, and died in Glasgow in 1965, at the young age of 49. Inspired by his early mentor, D P Thomson, his gift was to apply broad theological influences to the local context as a parish minister, initially in 1946 to 1953 at North Kelvinside in Glasgow, and to articulate his ideas and experiences in a bestseller on lay mission, The Face of My Parish.

Allan’s mission and ministry was part of a surge of enthusiasm across Europe in the aftermath of World War II, Scotland included, to rebuild from the physical and moral rubble of the war by bringing society and the Gospel together once more: to bridge the gap between church and world. This was centred on leaving church buildings and traditions behind: a ‘Church without Walls’ of its time. Allan thus wrote of his surroundings in Glasgow: ‘Jesus orders us out into the highways and byways, into the streets and lanes of the city, to meet with people wherever they are, and whether they recognise their need for God or not.’ In doing so, he believed that the Gospel would effect radical transformation, confidently saying: ‘as if Christ who raised Lazarus from the dead, can’t raise an alcoholic from the gutters of Buchanan Street.’

Allan’s goal was the upheaval of the institutional Church into ‘missionary parishes’ of constant witness and service. The key was local, organic growth. His solution to the problems that he identified of ‘contact, communication and consolidation’ was to form a ‘congregational group’ of the missionally motivated in the church. The group would express their faith through any method possible in the home, workplace and street, seeking to serve the people in Christ’s name in what they said and did. Dramatic results ensued in North Kelvinside, with the church membership tripling within seven years, although the stubborn resistance to change of some within the existing church often nullified the growing faith of the incomers.

Nevertheless buoyed by the positive signs, from 1953 to 1955 Allan was the Field Director of the ecumenical ‘Tell Scotland’ Movement, which sought to implement his ideas on a national scale under a grand vision to evangelise the nation. The decision, however, at Allan’s instigation, to invite Billy Graham to conduct the ‘All-Scotland Crusade’ of 1955 diverted attention from Allan’s focus on mission at ground level in the parish, split the Movement by alienating those who disagreed with Graham’s methods, and has since marked the public perception of what Christian ‘mission’ is, for both the church and the nation.

The ‘Tell Scotland’ Movement slowly burned out in acrimony following the Crusade, and soon afterwards the present decline began, from a century-high membership of the Church of Scotland of over 1.3 million people in 1956. Did Allan’s original model ever fully work? The clearest indication of the ‘missionary parish’ is from Allan’s ministry from 1955 to 1963 at St George’s Tron in the centre of Glasgow. A redundant church was re-vitalised by his urgent preaching, particularly expressed in overflowing monthly youth rallies, combined with an absolute dedication to those on the city streets. He told his church members and the city: ‘So long as there is a man without a chance in Glasgow or a girl looking for a home, none of us who call ourselves Christians can be at peace.’ His vision and energy led to the opening of the ‘Rehabilitation Centre’ in Elmbank Street, Glasgow, which continues to this day as the Tom Allan Counselling Centre.

The Rev Tom Allan (left) with Billy Graham at the ‘All-Scotland Crusade’ in 1955

The Rev Tom Allan

So how do these ideas relate to the present? Allan realised that the existing church was a pale shadow of a New Testament model of fellowship, without active compassion and markedly out of touch with local life. He made two key assertions: that the local church must exhibit the life of a genuine Christian community for it to bear any relevance in its midst; and that in mission and the life of the church, lay people were the key.

A principal element of the success of Allan’s model in both of his parishes, but in particular at St George’s Tron, was the authenticity that came from a unity of the Word preached and demonstrated. The parish church and its message existed for all people at all times, in an absolute selfgiving for the needs of others. Salvation and social justice were brought together, where the transformational power of the Gospel was combined with friendship, acceptance and social action. Thieves, prostitutes, alcoholics and the homeless were as much the ‘congregation’, and loved equally by God, as those at the Sunday service.

Tom Allan described his ministry as ‘walking the tightrope’ between extremes and cliques, distancing himself from both the liberal and the evangelical wings of the Church. He wrote of a ‘false dilemma between the so-called ‘individual salvation’ and the so-called ‘social gospelism’. It is not either/or. It is both/and…’

The future of mission in Scotland lies in the same mixture of the personal and corporate transformative experience of the Gospel on the one hand, with a radical social responsibility on the other. Neither emphasis could topple Allan from the ‘tightrope’, or wholly determine the range of his thought or action, for as Ian Henderson later wrote: ‘Tom Allan was different. He had got the message. Christianity has to do with love.’

Mission by the People: Re-discovering the Dynamic Missiology of Tom Allan and his Scottish Contemporaries, by Dr Alexander (Sandy) Forsyth, Lecturer in Practical Theology at the University of Glasgow, is now published by Wipf & Stock/Pickwick Publications.