The Very Rev Albert Bogle concludes his review of how the Church might look and operate in future.

COULD it be we have allowed modernity to shape our church, placing reason at the centre of our thinking at the expense of love, while omitting to keep before us the core dual function of Christ’s body as worship and mission? Yet both of these activities are based more on trust and faith than reason.

While rationale is an essential part of our beings as humans, we must also recognise that we will never encounter the living God through reason alone.

Perhaps we need to deine our core ministries as worship and mission. All our central administration should be focused toward the service of these two functions. If this was the benchmark for all our activities, the shape and success of the church might be quite diferent, as would Presbytery.

The model I am suggesting relects the way many of the mega churches organise themselves. Please do not be put of by this comparison. We should be open to learn from others, even those with whom we disagree. They operate from a resource model. All their training, and missionary enterprise, their social outreach programmes are co-ordinated out of the resource centre. The staff for all their satellites are also nurtured and grown out of the resource centre.

Budgeting for ministry and vision is co-ordinated and administered at an area level from the resource centre. If we translate this to our Church of Scotland situation, it would mean that we would devolve much of the work of the present central councils and committees to the Presbyteries, which we would transform into Centres of Worship and Mission.

Out of these living dynamic worship centres would come the resources to carry out the mission of the local congregations.

These centres might be viewed like cathedrals, places of inspiration. Each centre would have its own ethos and speciality. No two presbyteries or centres would be the same.

The leadership of the local church would be nurtured and enhanced through such places. Advisors and innovators would be found within this model and they would be the support to the vision shapers of the local parishes. Such advisors would be recognised practitioners in their own right.

This Presbytery Centre would have a leadership model deined in terms of worship and mission relecting the gifts of the Spirit spoken of in Ephesian 4.

Administration is a key gift in the church and it would be left to those who have the gift. It should not be underestimated or looked upon as unspiritual. The administrators would be the engine that would keep the mission of the church on target. Under this model, a Presbytery’s role would change to become a dynamic living community of communities.

We might begin to understand the theology of this shape through the word ‘interdependency’. Presbytery becomes the catalyst to promote and model interdependency. Since our core activities are worship and mission, presbytery becomes the storehouse of all the practical ingredients that will allow local congregations to become agents of authentic worship and mission in the local There is much here for us to explore with all the new thinking that is coming out of the “Emerging Church” movement.

To review and conclude, Presbytery Centres would become the model of good practice when it comes to worship, mission and administration. Each Presbytery would seek to model and develop and supply where needed the resources that are required to be a local church in an area. Thus Presbyteries might have a diferent ethos to reflect the local dynamic. However, Presbytery would be built around a central worshipping congregation that was owned and inanced and stafed by all the congregations in the Presbyterial area. Indeed the worshipping congregation of Presbytery would, in theory, be the collective of all the congregations in presbytery.

A variety of styles of worship would take place in the Presbytery Centre, perhaps even on a daily basis, to inspire others to try similar things in the local situation.

It might mean that for some worshippers the central cathedral style of worship would be more attractive, and they would gravitate to it for support and encouragement and inspiration. Others would continue to see their focus at a local level, perhaps simply because of the distances involved in travelling to the centre. However, as time would develop, and with an inspirational teaching programme, congregations would be renewed from the ministry received through interdependency.

If you’d like to do more re-imagining of church why not join us at Tulliallan from January 11-13 for the Reimagining Church Conference. Details can be downloaded from www.sanctuaryirst.org.uk/conference

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