‘God has not grown tired of us’

IN his poem Church Going, the atheist Philip Larkin recounts a visit to a deserted country church.

Opening the heavy door, he runs his hand along the wooden pews, and spies the flowers from the Sunday service, already turning brown. Places like this used to mean something, but now they don’t, and Larkin wonders how long churches will last before they fall into ruin, or are converted into something that people actually care about.

Larkin’s question is becoming a lot more pressing. In the space of three decades from 1986 to 2016, churchgoing in Scotland fell by an astonishing 50%. The Church of Scotland’s decline was even worse, with churchgoing declining by 40% in only fourteen years*. Because of this decline, the Church no longer has the finance or personnel to maintain itself, and the General Assembly of 2021 passed deliverances requiring a 30-40 percent reduction in ministry numbers by 2025.

These cuts will cause many readers of Life and Work to worry for the future of their congregations, and for the life of the Church of Scotland as they’ve known it.

The contrast with the recent past could not be starker. When I was a child in the late 1980s and early 1990s, my Sunday School was packed with hundreds of pupils. The problem then was not having too few children but too many! Too many for holiday clubs, too many for bus tours, and too many for the Sunday School teachers to keep up with. Back then, there was a sense that

Church was the ‘done thing’, and simply part of what it meant to be a respectable Scot.

The decline in our fortunes is unprecedented, precipitous and real, a reality that gives rise to a host of questions:

• Why do fewer Scots go to Church?

• Why do people prefer Humanist funerals and weddings to life events in Church?

• Why is Presbyterianism no longer connected with Scottishness?

• Are we in the Church responsible for our decline, or is it outwith our control?

• Will new forms of Church reverse our fortunes, or simply speed up our demise?

• Do we need more service to our communities, more evangelism, or both? These are some of the questions I found myself asking as I reflected on the fortunes of the congregations I had been part of, and as I started out in my own ministries at the University of Edinburgh and in Linlithgow. Remarkably, however, when I tried to find answers to these questions, I didn’t get very far. Despite hundreds of works examining mission in England, the United States, and Europe, I found that there was very few examining Scotland.

There were detailed case studies of mission in Sheffield, New York, and Rotterdam, but almost nothing about Edinburgh or Aberdeen or Inverness. There had never been a more important time to understand what was going on in Scotland and what we in the Church should be doing, but – in the absence of research and clear evidence – it seemed as if we were doing ministry and mission in the dark.

That is why I decided to write Mission in Contemporary Scotland. Mission in Contemporary Scotland is the first comprehensive introduction to mission in a Scottish context. It explores the theology, background, context and practice of Christian mission in 21st century Scotland, providing Church leaders and members with a single point of reference for the strange new world we find ourselves in.

At the heart of the book is the issue of plausibility. Due to a number of factors explored in the book, Scots do not believe the Church’s claims regarding God, Christ, and his plans to transform the world. For that reason, they do not join us for worship or key life events, preferring instead to make sense of the world in their own way.

Yet while the Church faces a crisis of credibility, through the steps outlined in the book, I believe we can increase the plausibility of Christ in Scottish society.

Through communities of service and evangelism, discipleship and authentic worship, we can allow Scots to once again experience the transforming power of God’s love, and make the Church something that 21st century Scots would want to be part of.

In addition to the core issue of increasing the plausibility of faith, a range of other discoveries are presented in the book:

• Pinpointing the exact social changes that led to the secularisation of Scotland and the decline of the Church

• Showing how authority in society has shifted from God to the individual and their perceived identity

• Analysing how Scottish national identity was once shaped by Presbyterianism and Unionism, but is now shaped by an aspirational ‘soft’ nationalism

• Which types of Church are more likely to survive and grow in contemporary Scotland and which are not

• Why neither service, nor evangelism nor public witness alone will win back Scotland for Christ

• Why the Church should oppose all attempts to silence free speech, while also championing justice and equality for all

• How we can set aside historically redundant denominational differences, and serve and witness to the people of Scotland as a single Scottish Church

• How – rather than affirming or condemning Scottish society – the Church can tell a better story about the deepest hopes and aspirations of the Scottish people

Not everyone will agree with my analysis and conclusions… but that is just the point! We not only need research into mission in contemporary Scotland but conversation, dialogue, and action. That is why the book’s companion website Mission in Contemporary Scotland (missioninscotland.wordpress. com) has been set up. The site will host blog posts, discussion, and resources to help the Scottish Church think through its context, reform itself, and be worthy of the calling to which it is called. This is not a task for ministers, academics, or writers alone, but for the whole people of God, and we need people like you to join the conversation and be part of the solution.

Through communities of service and evangelism, discipleship and authentic worship, we can allow Scots to once again experience the transforming power of God’s love, and make the Church something that 21st century Scots would want to be part of.

For while Scotland may have grown tired of the Church, God has not grown tired of us or our neighbours. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and through repentance, and prayer, and personal and corporate renewal, God’s Spirit will lead us from this time of exile into the new Scotland that he is preparing for his Church and for all people. Then, our Lord will not only be worshipped by a declining group of Christians, but will be revealed for what he is: the Son of God, and the King of Scotland.

Mission in Contemporary Scotland will be published by Saint Andrew Press on September 30 2021.

The Rev Dr Liam Fraser is minister at Linlithgow: St Michael’s.