The Very Rev Albert Bogle highlights the importance of ‘touching places for the inquiring’.

I BELIEVE that the Church of Scotland has an important part to play in the reevangelisation of Scotland and the next ten years will be crucial.

To be effective we need to be less concerned about structures, buildings and hierarchy and more passionate about the gifts of the Holy Spirit being released to create new worshipping communities within the Church and within the Church in Scotland.

The vast outpouring of emotion shown during the twelve days of mourning and the long lines of people wishing to pay their respects to Her Majesty the Queen in death, go beyond a desire to be part of history. They echo a longing within the human heart to connect with and associate with that which is good, true and noble; these were Christian attributes that Queen Elizabeth sought to live out in her daily life. But these are also attributes that many who filed past her coffin have attributed to the faith and influence of parents and grandparents upon their lives.

The Queen’s death stirred in many a longing, a heartache, for a spiritual homecoming for which they had no name. For many the heartache has not gone away. It has simply been conveniently put to one side, until the next crisis in their lives. The spiritual homes we currently offer are not connecting with this large group of people.

If the new grouping of presbyteries were to become initiators of apostolic and evangelistic ministries, working in partnership, alongside others with the same vision and culture, we would reach many of these spiritual seekers. There is much that we can learn from the early Celtic Church in its approach to evangelism and discipleship. The new presbytery clerks that are being appointed to the larger presbyteries need to surround themselves with visionary leaders and indeed they themselves must be passionate about the need to communicate the message of the gospel to all sectors of our society, especially to those on the fringes of faith. Presbyteries could become the new creative monasteries of the 21st century.

The role of the £25m renewal fund agreed upon at the last General Assembly must be all about building spiritual homes for those who are spiritually homeless. This means that we need to enlist teams of people, not only individuals, to step out of congregations and begin to set up alternative opportunities and communities for the seeker to find their spiritual home. We need to create intentional mission teams with imaginative ideas. Every congregation should play a part in establishing their team.

We need to inspire our present congregations to believe in the new creative role of presbyteries and become members of smaller groupings within congregations and presbyteries.

It’s interesting to note that the success of John Wesley’s Methodism was his understanding of culture and a community that welcomes the outsider into the mission of God even before they would count themselves believers. Hospitality and friendship was at the heart of early Methodism. Indeed it was at the heart of the early Celtic missionary zeal and at the heart of Jesus’s ministry.

Remember Jesus was criticised for the company he kept.

Instead of uniting congregations in order to be missional, we need to start dividing our congregations into small cell groups, in order to be missional. Groups meeting in cafes, hotels and homes, devoted to simple acts of worship seeking to welcome new friends to be part of the group.

Here is a radical suggestion: congregations whose buildings are in the wrong place, or no longer fit for purpose, should be offered the opportunity to sustain their worshipping identity in a new format. Why not let them continue as a digital community made up of a series of small cell communities, worshipping online or in small groups within homes or alternative venues? Let them continue with the sole purpose of growing a series of new church identities.

It is time for our Christian communities to embrace the apostolic ministry of hospitality and imagination. We can either continue as we are and witness the decline of the Church of Scotland or we can be bold and envisage a new era of Christian faith in Scotland.

For too long we have followed a model of church that is pastoral, looking after our members and those who attend Sunday services and we have neglected the model of church that makes the evangelist and the apostolic ministry of breaking into new cultures and sub cultures a priority. ¤

Sanctuary First is looking to recruit new partners to help us establish digital online faith conversation groups. If this article has sparked your interest email us at contact@sanctuaryfirst.org.uk