A radical week

RADICAL ACTION AGREED

The General Assembly of 2019 opened with a reminder from the Convener of the Council of Assembly that its decisions could ‘shape the future of the Church for years to come’; and closed with the Lord High Commissioner, the Duke of Buccleuch, saying someone had described it as the most significant Assembly since 1929.

Only time will tell whether either of those statements are true, but what can be said is that the General Assembly accepted three reports that between them have the potential to radically reshape the Church of Scotland.

First to be agreed were the recommendations of the Special Commission on Structural Reform. These included the setting up of a new body of trustees to replace the Council of Assembly, which will be responsible for overseeing the work of the central charity and its finances, and ensuring all parts of the organisation are working in accordance with the strategic priorities of the Church.

That group is tasked with delivering a reduction in the cost of the central organisation of about 20-30%, the merging of four Councils into two and discussions with CrossReach (the Church’s Social Care operation) aimed at making it a more financially sustainable organisation.

The convener of the Special Commission proposing the reform, the Rev Professor David Fergusson, told the Assembly that the changes were necessary to create ‘organisational structures capable of responding with sufficient speed and flexibility to the enormous challenges we face’ – declining membership and income, a shortage of ministers, and an operating deficit of £4.5m this year.

Prof Fergusson emphasised that not all the savings would come from staff costs, but he did note that staffing levels have ‘risen steadily in recent years’, even while Church membership has fallen.

The reorganisation of the Councils will see the Ministries and Mission and Discipleship Councils combined into one ‘inward-facing’ body, while the World Mission and Church and Society Councils will merge into an ‘outward-facing’ group. This is expected to take effect on January 1 2020.

Other changes include the appointment of a Chief Officer to oversee staff and budgets at the central church; the Assembly Arrangements Committee to be replaced by a new Assembly Business Committee; the discharging of the Panel on Review and Reform; and the establishment of a new research facility to inform the development of policy across the Church.

While detailed discussion took place on the make-up and constitution of the new trustees body, and its relationship with existing structures, the reforms as a whole were overwhelmingly approved. Former Moderator, the Very Rev Dr James Simpson, said it was “the kind of report I have waited for a very long time. If as a church we are going to cling to the old ways and keep resisting major change, I fear the church we love will continue to decay… I believe we need to build on the past but not live in the past.”

Later in the week there was some dismay about there being only three women among the 12 new Trustees. A motion from Dr Alison Elliot, urging that the Trustee body should have an equal gender split from next year, was narrowly defeated.

The Trustees will be chaired for three years by the Very Rev Dr John Chalmers, who has stepped down from his membership of the World Mission Council.

The day after the Special Commission report, the Assembly endorsed the Radical Action Plan brought by the Council of Assembly. This included:

• an investment of £20-25m over six years in projects which will ‘encourage greater faith-sharing, innovation and creativity at local and regional levels’

• initiatives to help the Church engage with young people

• a reduction in the number of presbyteries in Scotland to around 12 (from the current 45, not including the English and overseas presbyteries)

• work to encourage networks, hub ministries and other responses to the shortage of parish ministers

• a review of the role of Kirk Sessions

• increased co-operation with other denominations

• a training and support programme for all leadership roles in the Church

• a new platform of faith and nurture resources

• Encouragement of a season of ‘prayer and preparation’ across the Church from September to December 2019

The Council convener, Dr Sally Bonnar, told the Assembly that ‘we need to think about how we can bring the message of the Gospels effectively to the generation in which we live, and what shape the church should take in order to do this’.

Dr Bonnar said that the plan was presented ‘in a spirit of humility’ and emphasised devolving resources and responsibility to local or regional level, where possible.

She said: “To achieve what we hope to achieve, we will need to work together so collaboration is a key value, but collaboration in a spirit of humility. Listening carefully to one another and learning from one another – the respectful dialogue in which we have been encouraged to engage around other issues – will be helpful here in planning for the future.”

The only section of the Action Plan replaced was one on the Ministries and Mission contributions (the money paid by local churches to the central administration). Instead, a counter-motion from the Rev Dr Karen Fenwick instructing that no congregation should have its Ministries and Mission allocation increased after next year ‘until such time as alternative arrangements have been approved by the General Assembly’ was passed.

In the most impassioned speech of the week, Dr Fenwick said her congregation’s contributions had gone up by 23 per cent since 2015, which had impacted on their mission work, and that they could not afford any more. She said: “We have changed from being fishers of men to being tax collectors.”

The final part of the reform jigsaw was the General Trustees’ report on the Church’s land and buildings. Introducing a consultation on the Trustees’ ‘Well Equipped Spaces in the Right Places’ strategy, which will be finalised next year, chairman Raymond Young told the Assembly it was time for the Church to ‘get real’: “There are some very good spaces in the Church, but we have too many, and many are not fit for purpose. Neither is the Church a building preservation organisation.

“Church buildings should be managed, changed and developed in such a way that they are not a distraction from the call ‘follow me’.

“For years the Assembly has nodded in sympathy when my predecessors have said that we must reduce the size of this estate, yet at the start of this year Presbyteries have said 86 per cent of these church buildings are expected to remain in use beyond the life of the Presbytery Plan. Only six per cent are expected to go. Really?”

He said that progress in the Presbyteries of Shetland and St Andrews, and new churches including St Rollox in Glasgow, showed what could be achieved. There was also a need to develop partnerships to support buildings which are not just church but community assets.

Mr Young concluded: “We need to be fleeter of foot, not encumbered with buildings that take up energy that should be used for worship and mission.”

The spirit of reform also pervaded other debates during the week:

• the Ministries Council was asked by the Assembly to consider building into new vacancy rules a principle that no minister should be called on unrestricted tenure

• the Legal Questions Committee agreed to amend legislation allowing elders to be appointed to membership of Kirk Sessions for a fixed period, instead of for life

• the Assembly Arrangements Committee said its successor body would look at reducing the number of commissioners to future Assemblies

• a special commission is to be formed to explore the effectiveness of the Church’s Presbyterian form of government

• a working group is to be formed to ‘develop proposals… for ordination to a form of Word and Sacrament shaped by the context of the emerging Church’.

At the end of the week the Moderator, the Rt Rev Colin Sinclair, urged Commissioners to ‘work tirelessly’ to make the reforms agreed during the week a reality. He cautioned that ‘deciding the change is not the same as making the change’, and warned that the changes will be painful.

“We need Commissioners of the General Assembly, as we go back to the parishes to be advocates and change makers. We need to be willing to make the sacrifices ourselves, to set an example.”

And he warned that all the changes agreed will not bring about the revival of the church without people responding to Jesus’ call ‘follow me’, which had been the Assembly’s theme.

DIVESTMENT DISAGREEMENT

If the first half of the Assembly was dominated by changes that were agreed, the second was overshadowed by a divisive debate.

For the second year in a row, a call for the Church’s Investors Trust to withdraw its holdings in oil and gas companies was narrowly rejected. This was despite the Assembly also passing a motion recognising ‘that we are experiencing a climate and ecological emergency’.

Proposing the motion during the debate of the Church and Society Council, the Rev Gordon Strang said that ‘an awful lot has changed since last year’, including the declaration of climate emergency. “The world looks to us for a moral lead… let us mean what we say we believe,” he added.

However Catherine Alexander, chair of the Church of Scotland Investors’ Trust, said: “We believe it’s the wrong way to influence change…Disinvestment only removes the Christian voice from the ear of those of whom we are part owners. It may look as if we are doing something, but we are actually doing nothing.”

Following the decision, the convener of Church and Society, the Rev Dr Richard Frazer, resisted another motion congratulating and encouraging schoolgirl campaigner Greta Thunberg and the school strikers. He said: “I don’t see the point of doing this when we have just agreed what we have just agreed.”

Anger over the decision rumbled on into the next day, when a group of youth representatives and their supporters held a silent protest on the Assembly Hall steps, and there was another brief protest at the beginning of the report of the Investors Trust. By the end of the week, 78 Commissioners had registered their dissent against the decision.

SOLIDARITY WITH PERSECUTED CHRISTIANS

During the World Mission Council’s report, Commissioners stood for a minute’s silence in remembrance and solidarity with persecuted Christians around the world.

Pakistani delegate the Rt Rev Alwin Samuel told the Commissioners: “Most Christians in Pakistan live below the poverty line. But poverty doesn’t kill us. It’s the scourge of Sharia law and the blasphemy law that hangs over us 24/7 that kills us.” He told the stories of Christians in his Diocese of Sialkot, including a Christian youth who had been shot dead after drinking from a tap belonging to a Muslim, a man with mental health problems who had been accused of blasphemy who has been beaten in prison, and a girl who was killed for refusing to marry a Muslim man.

On the first day of the Assembly the retiring Moderator, the Very Rev Susan Brown, criticised the UK Government for its refusal to grant asylum to the Bakhsh family, Pakistani Christians living in Glasgow who say they would be in danger if they were sent back to Pakistan.

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

The Church of Scotland’s presence in Israel and Palestine was reaffirmed by the Assembly, which approved the conclusions of a strategic review by the World Mission Council. This included investment in the St Andrew’s Guest House in Jerusalem and support for the continued operation of the Scots Hotel in Tiberias.

World Mission convener the Very Rev Dr John Chalmers said that ‘this is no time for the Church of Scotland to walk away from its history and involvement in the Holy Land’.

There was a debate over whether the operating profits from the hotel could be described as supporting the work of the Church, bearing in mind the levels of investment that have been required. Dr Chalmers argued that the Assembly could get itself in ‘an awful fankle’ if it tried to work out whether the money would have accumulated more if it had been left in the Church funds, but that in any case the ‘social value’ of the hotel was hard to quantify.

FIRST MINISTER PRAISE

The high-profile speech of the week came from the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, who praised the Church’s engagement in ‘the great national and international issues of the day’.

Speaking twenty years after the Scottish Parliament first met in the same hall, Mrs Sturgeon said that the Kirk could remind politicians of their responsibility to air differences ‘in a civil and respectful way, while seeking common ground and consensus’.

Recalling the Church’s respectful dialogue programme during the debate on Scottish Independence in 2014, she said: “You provided a space where people could debate and discuss the issues of Scotland’s future in a respectful and constructive way.

“And of course the manner in which this Assembly conducts itself is a model of how big issues can be debated in a way that builds consensus rather than deepening division…

“All of us – and political leaders especially – have a responsibility to resist the momentum for division and polarisation… And when politicians forget or fall short of that responsibility – as all of us sometimes do – the Church is, I think, well placed to remind us of it.”

OTHER KEY MOMENTS

An attempt to remove a statement that the number of academic partners for initial ministerial training is likely to be reduced to ‘one or two’ in future was defeated. Convener of the Ministries Council, the Rev Neil Glover, said that inclusiveness and provision of distance learning would be key elements in the selection process for the training providers; and that the Council would accept collaborative applications from two or more of the providers working together.

An Overture from the Presbytery of International Charges, asking for consideration of a scheme allowing the Church’s overseas churches to call ministers from other denominations, was agreed.

Elaine Duncan, Chief Executive of the Scottish Bible Society, invited the Church to take part in Bible 2020, a new initiative in which the Bible will be read aloud at the same time each day in every time zone worldwide, creating what she called a ‘Mexican wave of Bible reading’ around the world. Resources have been produced with the readings on smartphone apps and a website.

The Church and Society Council agreed to engage with Scottish Government to encourage reduction in single-use plastics, and also to encourage churches to reduce the amount of single-use plastic in their buildings. There was an awkward moment when a youth delegate pointed out that there were a lot of single-use plastic bottles on the reporting committee’s table (which was later replaced by a jug of water). The Assembly agreed to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism and its guidelines. A countermotion arguing that the Church should develop its own definition was defeated.

The Assembly instructed the Church and Society and Mission and Discipleship councils to hold conversations with Scripture Union Scotland about its new Ethos Statement, which some Commissioners said had meant youth workers and volunteers not being able to work with SU Scotland.

The Social Care Council marked 150 years of Social Care in the Church of Scotland. Convener Bill Steele said: “The world around us may have changed in the past 150 years, but there is no doubt that there remains an urgent need to address the social challenges most prevalent today. Some of these challenges are familiar – child poverty, addiction and disability. Some, however, are very much of our time including cyber bullying or the increasing numbers of people living with dementia.”

Patricia Robertson, National Convener of the Church of Scotland Guild, announced that £195,000 had been raised for the six partner projects in the first year of the ‘one journey, many roads’ strategy. The Big Sing on the Tuesday evening of the Assembly raised £3437.05, which will be used to help replace a church roof in Malawi.

As usual during the debate on the Armed Forces Chaplains, the Assembly heard from a senior member of the British forces. Rear Admiral Jim Higham, Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (ships) said that the chaplain had a special place in the Navy, encapsulated in the term ‘God botherer’ He said: “What’s interesting to me is that it suggests that the existence of a God, is something of a given. Perhaps this is not as surprising as it seems, given that sailors spend so much of their lives at the mercy of the elements, experiencing both the beauty and majesty of the night sky and the terror and power of an ocean storm. From that angle it’s no wonder that the idea of God has always been such a tangible notion to sailors. It just isn’t something that we bother about very much – the chaplain, our ‘God botherer’ is there to do that for us.”

The Convener of the Ecumenical Relations Committee, the Rev Sandy Horsburgh, told the Assembly that he hoped the replacement with Action of Churches Together in Scotland (ACTS) with a Scottish Christian Forum would allow more churches to participate.

During the report of the Mission and Discipleship Council, the Assembly passed changes to the Church’s engagement with young people, including the end of the National Youth Assembly in its current form after this year. Instead a series of smaller regional events will be held. There was considerable disquiet in the hall about the loss of the NYA, but Mission and Discipleship Convener the Rev Norman Smith said there was ‘a huge body of evidence’ behind the proposals. He admitted that there was no funding identified for the NYA, but said: “It’s not just the Church trying to do things for less. We are trying to do things better.”

A free four-page supplement summarising the decisions of the General Assembly is available to download from www.lifeandwork.org/resources/general-assembly-supplement