The Very Rev Albert Bogle explains why playing it safe will not be the answer for the Church in future.

  LATER this month the Church of Scotland will be engaged in yet another online General Assembly which in itself will be stressful. However our business will draw out a lot more stress and call for a great deal of wisdom, insight, energy and a huge amount of grace and understanding as we begin to discern the future shape of the Kirk.

We will have to leave much behind as we move forward. Each one of us will be called to put our hand to the plough. And not look back. Remembering our key calling after worship is to make disciples, and that must be at the heart of all our decision making. The purpose must inform the process.

Ten years ago Sanctuary First invested in our first app. I think we were one of the first worshipping communities in the UK to have an app. However today the old app is past its sell-by date and a new app has just been launched. The message in the app is the same as it has always been but its functionality is completely different. We have updated our app to ensure our message is understood, fixing bugs, improving connections between different sections of the app and ensuring it links seamlessly into our original operating system on our website. Not everything on the website is put on the app. It has taken a great deal of patience and hard work to stick with the upgrade but the result is spectacularly good. It’s not perfect – that is why we have started on mark two of the new version even before the new app is properly launched. The Church of Scotland will require the same level of creativity in remodelling.

So how will we fare as a church as we move out of lockdown into a new landscape? I think the key to our success will be if we can embrace the world around us with a new passion to share the message of the cross, which is essentially conversations about the meaning and purpose of forgiveness. This message, if it is to be heard, will require a variety of approaches and personality types to make the right connections and build trusting relationships. This will require a radical change in our thinking about our purpose in the areas of training and communications and delivery.

A revolution in such thinking is not brought about by a “play it safe policy”. We require passion and purpose. Our forebears knew this when they put these words in the ordination service of a minister: ‘are not zeal for the glory of God, love to the Lord Jesus Christ and a desire for the salvation of men, ( this includes women and children), so far as you know your own heart, your great motives and chief inducements to enter into the office of the holy Ministry?’ And our ministers answer: ‘they are’.

Every time I hear these words the hair stands up at the back of my neck and I well up inside, because I know it is passion like this that draws men and women and boys and girls into the Kingdom of God – to ‘know’ this zeal is based on participation, it is caught not taught. You have to be in the throes of doing it to know you love doing it. You don’t know something by being detached and distant from it. You only truly know something by having personal knowledge of it. Kierkegaard once wrote: “If passion is eliminated, faith no longer exists”

“You don’t know something by being detached and distant from it. You only truly know something by having personal knowledge of it. Kierkegaard once wrote: “If passion is eliminated, faith no longer exists”.

When we live out of our passion for Christ we no longer drag ourselves out of bed in the morning to go to work. We work to defray the expenses of our passion. We no longer live to work or work to live. We live because of our passion. This is what Paul meant when he said: “For me to live is Christ.”

One thing is for certain: when we, as a church, rekindle the passion in each other to follow Jesus, we’ll stop talking about a dying church. Instead, we’ll be speaking of our living Saviour. ¤