Priorities and purpose

IN January’s Life and Work, I highlighted a few of the major targets we were progressing in support of the local, national and international Church.

This month I am sharing a picture that summarises our key priorities as established by the Assembly Trustees with input from a range of contributors including the staff team. The idea is to bring real clarity to our intent to support the local church at presbytery and congregational level. It is no coincidence that it is depicted as a tree – because it is all about Church growth, discipleship and the enablers to achieve this key goal.

Looking at the tree it is good to initially focus on the trunk and our purpose – we have been stressing that this is all about discipleship and the growth and renewal of the Church – this will be a consistent message.

The tree branches highlight our priorities in the following three key areas:

National there for the local – apart from the services provided we have identified that recruitment and training for ministries are vital provided through an integrated training programme for all across the Church.

Development in and through the new Presbyteries – this level of the Church structure is an area of high importance and real investment which is tasked with addressing major challenges such as mission planning, supporting new innovative forms of Church and provision for enabling support to our congregations who are at the sharp end. Devolving responsibility to well-equipped Presbyteries will be so important in the future.

Modernise and simplify governance, structures and processes – since starting within the Church it has been clear to me that we could do a lot to help ourselves and make our lives both easier and more productive. A lot of perceived barriers have already fallen over the last three years coupled with a realisation that other barriers to change are not real.

Then we have the roots – these are the services that we provide nationally to support you in any way that we can. Let me remind you of what these services are noting that you can find out more about them on the Church of Scotland web page:

• Human Resources

• Finance

• Law

• Estates

• Information Technology

• Analysis, programme development and grants unit

• Communications

• Office of Assembly Trustees

In addition to the local support provided by our central service departments we also have the crucial work of the Principal Clerk’s office, the General Trustees and CrossReach – who together cover so much ground on the governance and work of our Church, our buildings and the social care that we provide across Scotland. It is all too easy to forget this as we focus on today’s challenges.

Finally, the tree depicts how the various seeds created can be nurtured through the likes of the Seeds for Growth fund. We talk a lot about the decline of our Church – now we need to get beyond that to think about how we can grow and thrive in the future and be the church Christ has called us to be.

Dave Kendall, Chief Officer, Church of Scotland