300 Years of Ministry at Crown Court

The Church of Scotland has had a presence in London since at least 1603 when James VI, King of Scots, became King James I of England. It appears that courtiers who had followed the King from Scotland worshipped in a chapel in the precincts of the old Whitehall Palace, a site that later became known as ‘Scotland Yard’, and subsequently housed the offices of the Metropolitan Police. From at least 1711 a group of Scottish Protestants gathered in a meeting house in St Peter’s Court off St Martin’s Lane. The congregation grew steadily as the number of Scots in London increased, and on March 24 1719 the original Scottish Kirk on the site of the current Crown Court Church of Scotland in Covent Garden was opened for worship.

So in 2019 the congregation of Crown Court will be ‘celebrating and renewing 300 years of service in Covent Garden’. Plans for the Tercentenary Year are already well under way, and include a special service on March 24 2019, which by happy coincidence is a Sunday, at which we are delighted to welcome as preacher the Rt Reverend Susan Brown, Moderator of the General Assembly.

We are also launching a pilot project with the Connection at St Martin-in-the-Fields and other homeless charities to provide an outreach facility for some of their clients.

A major feature of the celebrations is our Tercentenary Anthem Composition Competition, which is open to composers aged 28 and under, to set a specified text for four-part mixed choir with organ accompaniment. We would be very grateful if readers of Life and Work would highlight this competition to any young composers they know who may be interested in entering. The winning composition will receive a prize of £600, with a runner-up prize of £150. The closing date for entries is January 11 2019, and further details can be obtained by emailing anthemcompetition@crowncourtchurch.org.uk.

We are always pleased to welcome visitors, so if you are in London during our Tercentenary Year (or indeed at any other time), we will be delighted to see you in our historic church.

Philip L Majcher (Rev), minister, Crown Court, London

Miracle Not Myth

I am sad that the Rev Scott McKenna, as a minister of the Gospel, has not more faith in God’s Word and in Jesus Christ (Life and Work August, Bible Study). He says that the story of Jesus commanding the wind and the sea to be calm “stands squarely within the genre of mythology”. In so far as Jesus was God, and also man in whom “All the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9) and through him the heavens and earth were created, we should expect miracles to have taken place during his earthly ministry.

My parents were missionaries in China. My five siblings and I were all born in China. Over the years the family witnessed many miracles while living there. On one occasion in Chengdu where we lived, a house went on fire. The flames quickly spread to other houses. The entire city and the mission compound where we lived were threatened. Father made the family lie flat on the grass outside where the air below the smoke was purer. He asked the family to pray for wind and wind in the right direction. It was not customary at that time for there to be any wind in the city. As the family prayed a wind arose. It blew in the right direction and blew the fire back in on itself. The rest of the city, the mission compound and surrounding houses were intact. God answered prayer miraculously.

Today the Church in China is one of the fastest growing churches in the world. It continues to see many astonishing miracles.

If we in Scotland and our congregations had the faith of our brothers and sisters in Christ in China, then we too would see miracles happening.

David Torrance (Rev), North Berwick, East Lothian

Science ‘Battle’

For Christians, when we consider the solar system and universe we live in, it seems self evident that all of this was created by our loving Heavenly Father. Psalm 19 tells us that ‘The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands’ and Psalm 24 ‘The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters’.

It is also self evident that the scientific establishment has in recent years become far more aggressive in its defence of mainstream Neo Darwinism which has for many years been the orthodox and text book theory of biological evolution. The reason for this increasingly aggressive defence is the fact that the mutation and natural selection mechanism which is central to Neo Darwinism has very little creative power. It can explain the survival but not the arrival of the fittest.

One Chinese scientist was recently heard to say that ‘in China we may not criticise the Government but we can criticise Darwinism but in the west you can criticise the Government but you dare not criticise Darwinism.’

Darwinism maintains that all life has morphed and changed from a single common ancestor by an undirected, unguided process acting on random mutations and variations. There is much evidence to support Intelligent Design at various stages in time, including the Cambrian explosion of fully formed species and the digital coding within DNA.

There is a battle to be fought, not least for the mindset of our young people, to challenge the ideologies that encourage the thought that human beings are the product of a random process and have no spiritual or moral purpose in life.

Cartoon: Bill McArthur

One of the highlights of my year so far has been to tune in to YouTube and take in the debates involving William Lane Craig, John Lennox and Stephen Meyer and I would recommend tuning into these debates in order that we Christians may have a better understanding of the issues involved and be more ready to give a “reason for the hope that is within us.”

Alex Glen, Elder, Sandyford Henderson Church, Glasgow.

‘Privilege’ to Serve in Retirement

My audience was mostly too young to remember the hapless waiter Manuel in the TV series, Fawlty Towers, but his oftrepeated response of ‘Que?’ to Basil Fawlty’s barked instructions wouldn’t have been out of place, I think, if I’d introduced myself to the assembled school community as the ‘Interim Moderator’.

So what could I say by way of introduction? I decided on “working part-time in St Andrew’s Church” and elaborated by saying that I looked forward to being part of school assemblies and services held there.

As a full-time parish minister, it wasn’t (and isn’t, I’m sure) easy to juggle one’s own commitments while being fair to the vacant congregation(s). It is a slightly different story being retired, fit and relatively young(!), and the truth is that I am relishing this opportunity because I had to retire early after a bout of glandular fever. No-one said I would have to “give back” those few years but I’m counting it as a privilege to do so, particularly as my retired state gifts me the time not only to lead worship on some Sundays but also to get to know the congregations and involve myself in their various activities. That said, if there is anyone reading this who would like the challenge of a fairly recently linked charge in the centre of Dundee, then I am the person waiting by the phone for those “informal enquiries”.

Caroline Taylor (Rev), Dundee

Hume Series Praise

No doubt many readers have, over the years, derived much pleasure from John Hume’s long-running series on Scottish church buildings.

John’s meticulous research into the history of each congregation and his understanding of the architecture of their buildings combine in a very readable way to offer a complete picture. These are complemented by the beautifully crafted illustrations.

Given that few readers probably collect their copies of the magazine, has consideration been given to publication of an anthology of these articles? They would, I am sure, provide an excellent supplement to other histories of the Church of Scotland.

Just as the climbing society love to ‘bag’ their Munros, I envisage church members boasting how many Humes they have managed to ‘bag’ after reading such an anthology. Perhaps a map of Scotland showing the location of each church would be a helpful addition. Long may John continue to inform and entertain us.

Bill Greenock, Glasgow

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