In his first column, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland urges congregations to leave behind the familiar to move forward.

I AM sitting at my desk, looking out over Mill Sand in Tankerness, on what is my penultimate weekend living in the house which has been our family home for over 37 years.

I am surrounded by family. My older daughter, Helen, son-in-law, Andrew and granddaughters, Catriona and Ella, have come up so that Helen can take leave of the home where she grew up. These coming days are going to be a bit of an emotional roller-coaster!

Much of the packing was done before going to Edinburgh for the General Assembly; and I cannot pretend that deciding what to keep and what to throw out was a stress-free exercise. Thirty-seven years’ worth of papers and documents which ‘might just come in handy one day’ makes for a grand accumulation of ‘stuff’.

Nor can I claim that the decision to move house was an easy one. This house is a home filled with happy memories. It is familiar. It has been my comfort zone for decades. And yet faced with the logic of moving and downsizing from a nineteenthcentury former church manse with more rooms than we now need to a smaller, stairless, more eco-friendly new build, I was convinced.

Perhaps it is not surprising that both during and since the General Assembly, I have recognised parallels. The word ‘change’ is one which I have often heard and have spoken.

Change is seldom easy. It carries uncertainty and requires a sensitivity for the feelings of those affected. But when reality is presented in a clear light, the case can be compelling. My sense of our debates and deliberations at the General Assembly was that however difficult change might be, ‘no change’ was not an option.

The Church can and surely must be adaptable and amenable to change.

The apostle Paul, whose encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus had been fundamentally life-changing, knew in his heart that he was a changeable character. That is why he admitted learning to adapt himself to any kind of circumstance, even prison.

And whilst the prospect of change can be unnerving, surely it can also be exciting and liberating, especially when it is not change for change’s sake. Changing structures and how we do things cannot be ends in themselves.

As the Very Rev Dr Martin Fair so powerfully expressed it in his inspirational address to the General Assembly: “the sooner we sort the structures, the sooner we can get to what really matters… proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom!”

This autumn, presbyteries will be facing the challenge of drawing up new mission plans. Inevitably there will be some issues where – as with my dilemma over accumulated papers – anxious thought will need to be given to what to keep and what to leave behind. It will be worth recalling the thematic text of GA2021: “And immediately they left their nets and followed Jesus.”

What are the equivalents of ‘our nets’ – the things that are so familiar, the things that have ‘aye been’ – that we now should be prepared to leave behind in order to focus on following Jesus?

“ And whilst the prospect of change can be unnerving, surely it can also be exciting and liberating...”

For at the heart of these Presbytery plans is the commitment to mission, ways to apply the Five Marks of Mission as we move forward and proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom to a country which has endured all the trauma of pandemic, and to many people for whom the experience of the last eighteen months has awakened a spiritual longing which the institutional ‘church of the it’s aye been’ omitted to nourish.

So let us embrace change in the knowledge that whatever the challenge and upheaval, and whatever it is we have to leave behind, we have the assurance that Jesus, whom we follow, is the same – yesterday, today and for ever.

Lord Jim Wallace of Tankerness is Moderator of the General Assembly in 2021/22.