A church God can work with

I ATTENDED my first General Assembly in 1980 so, one way or another, I have been involved in four decades of Church of Scotland debate and decision making.

During that time there have been particularly memorable moments.

I remember sitting on the edge of a hard, green bench as we argued passionately the rights and wrongs of nuclear deterrence.

There wasn’t a seat in the house when we debated whether a convicted murderer (freed on licence) should be accepted into the Ministry of Word and Sacrament. And a few years ago tensions ran high when we discussed whether or not there should be space in the Church of Scotland for ministers in same-sex relationships.

Looking back on these debates, and on many more occasions, it felt like we were manoeuvring through landmark moments; making decisions upon which our very future seemed to depend. But, now I’m not so sure that any of these “one-off” moments carried quite so much weight as we may have thought at the time.

This year the General Assembly had a very different complexion from anything I have known over the last four decades. There were not much more than a handful of people in the Assembly Hall.

Conveners’ speeches were recorded in advance, proceedings were followed on Zoom and voting took place through the wonders of a digital platform known as the Assembly Hub. Across the spectrum of reports being considered it is hard to imagine a more cutting edge agenda. Should we proceed to consider legislation which would allow some ministers to preside over same-sex marriages? Was it time to look for something other than the Westminster Confession of Faith as a subordinate standard? And the call for a green and just future in a Net Zero carbon Church would, by any measure, have been enough for one General Assembly.

Our future depends on the right response to climate change and without any doubt we need to know what we believe, but the big internal issue, that will affect every one of us and every one of our congregations, was the clarion call for the radical reorganisation of the local Church for mission.

There was honesty in the air when the Convener of the Faith Nurture Forum, the Rev Rosie Frew said: “We are draining the resources of the church – people, morale, finance – just to keep [a] broken system going”. There was honesty in the air when we conceded that we had been denying the truth of our situation for too long, but it was hugely encouraging to know that the first step on the road to recovery is honesty about the situation we face.

It was agreed that by the end of 2022 every Presbytery would have to craft a Mission Plan built around fewer ministers, fewer buildings and fewer charges; with old patterns of church and ministry making way for new ways of sharing the Good News in word and action. Some familiar forms of church life, with which many of us (including me) have been comfortable, will be replaced by fresh expressions of Church and what we have to believe is that bringing us to this point has been a work of God and what is to follow must also be a work of God.

“ Our future depends on the right response to climate change.”

Alan Roxburgh, author of Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our Time says: “A church that has been humbled by disruption and decline may be a less arrogant and presumptuous church. It may have fewer illusions about its own power and centrality. It may become curious. It may be less willing to ally with the empires and powers that have long defined it. It may finally admit how much it needs the true power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit.

That’s a church God can work with.”

I wonder if that describes where we are in the Church of Scotland.