A change of mindset

COMMENT

WE’VE just had another General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. So many words spoken, plans and programmes reported upon, questions asked, motions debated and instructions given and received. If you didn’t know better you’d think, judging by our organisational ability, that we were a thriving church.

For many who are immersed in the church committee structures, life is busy and the work they are involved with is making progress. New conveners and committees have been appointed and for a short period of time the Church has been mentioned daily in the national press. Yet it is not from Acts of the General Assembly or the important work of 121 committees that change and renewal of the church will come. Something more profound has to happen. George Bernard Shaw once wrote:

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place…” The truth is that much of our deliberations at the Assembly falls on deaf ears.

We require a change of mindset in a great many Kirk Sessions and congregations.

This may sound a tall order but unless local leadership calls out the mavericks, as I suggested in my last article, to change the way we do church, the days of the Church of Scotland as we know it and want it, to be effective nationally, are numbered.

Many ministers and church leaders are struggling under the strain to do the things that traditionally have been expected of them. The fall in ministerial staffmeans that the burden of pastoral care across the parish system is increasing. In addition with the renewed interest in charitable governance, the pressure on local congregations to conform to regulations means that time and energy is being taken up trying to adhere to legislation.

Since taking up the post of a Pioneer Minister of Sanctuary First, working out of Falkirk Presbytery, I’ve been able to visit a good many congregations. The reality is we have a church membership that is made up of mainly elderly people, many of whom have a great heart but have a reluctance to give permission to the minister to change the style and pattern of ministry, because in reality they have become weary of change, often experienced during working life. At this point they are not sure if they can face the discomfort that further change may bring to their church life.

Now although we are not a congregational church, changes that are enduring require to be embraced by the membership.

This means that the energy and encouragement that often comes from leading a congregation into a new place is denied to the minister and the new people who would undoubtedly appear to bring about the transformation.

Before long, the drag of the day-to-day pressure of pursuing a form of ministry that stifles creativity and missional initiatives means that the local church never grows numerically and spiritually and the seed that has been planted by the Spirit of God is stolen away.

I’m persuaded we will require to express nationally a holy unease about the way we are living out church. Perhaps we, who long for change, need a protest. We need to waken up and hear the voice of the risen Christ speaking in the book of Revelation warning the church to “strengthen what still remains before it too is lost.”

The current generation that is attending formal worship on a Sunday has a great deal more permission giving to do if we are to experience a renewal of our denomination throughout Scotland.

Could it be that it is time to think again, to become one of those mavericks, to begin to agitate for change and encourage others to join that group of people in the congregation to become the permission givers?

The greatest gift any congregation can give their minister is the gift of encouragement.

It’s time to think about radical change.

We actually know what to do, it’s been laid out and passed by the Assembly in the 2001 Church Without Walls Report. Let’s dust it down and start the local revolutions.¤

The Very Rev Albert Bogle is a Pioneer Minister of Sanctuary First Church Online at www.sanctuary/first.org.uk

This article appears in the June 2018 Issue of Life and Work

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