Future plans could be ‘too severe’ says theologian

A CHURCH of Scotland theologian and author has suggested that proposed plans for future mission and ministry in the Church could be ‘too severe’.

Writing in a blog on the website of Trinity College, Glasgow, the Rev Dr Doug Gay said: “My concern is that we have locked ourselves into a closed economy of scarcity, which is in danger of locking us into an accelerating pattern of institutional decline. In our honest and commendable attempt to face the music, we are now in danger of imposing on ourselves a cycle of cuts and restructuring which is too severe and too far-reaching and which will have irreversible consequences.”

He adds: “The current round of mission planning is being experienced by many local churches, members, elders and ministers as deeply shocking and disheartening. Having deferred this day of reckoning for too long, we are now aghast at its consequences and implications.”

Dr Gay, the author of a 2017 book, Reforming the Kirk, which laid the foundations for the Radical Action Plan approved by the Church’s General Assembly in 2019 offers alternative suggestions, but argues that mission planning targets, ‘(although realistic) are too aggressive and disruptive’ and emphasises the Church is facing a ‘vocations crisis which calls for new urgent, creative and flexible responses’.

In the article (The Kirk in Crisis: Beyond Samson, Solomon & Gideon (ca’ canny Kirk but ca’ awa’)), he calls for investment in church planting and youth and younger adult ministry in particular, along with tenure and financial reform, but also points out that if ministry target numbers were relaxed, the Church would have to live with more vacancies, swapping one challenge for another (and both present difficult ways ahead).

Concluding, he adds: “This has taken a long time to write and reflects a lot of thought and concern over many years.

None of us knows how to do what we are trying to do. We need each other and the guidance of the Spirit in taking this conversation forward.

“My primary concern is that our current round of cuts and redeployment via mission planning may be too drastic a pruning and one which does not create or leave enough spaces and mechanisms for rebuilding and replanting.

“In particular, I worry that in its concerns with sharing pain equitably, it does not do enough to help create new ground up flows of money, people and ministry. Enough said. For Now.”

Read the full blog at https://www. trinitycollegeglasgow.co.uk/post/the-kirkin-crisis-beyond-samson-solomon-gideonca-canny-kirk-but-ca-awa