Welsh formula

In the February issue of Life and Work, a quotation is highlighted from Douglas Gay’s article: ‘We are facing huge challenges. My growing conviction is that we need to reset the balance between local control and national solidarity…’

I was reminded of the Moderator’s speech in the General Assembly of 1968. Dr Longmuir had been part time Clerk to the Assembly. In those days when there were about 2,300 charges in the Kirk; he also pastored a rural charge in the Borders.

As a young and inexperienced minister, I listened spellbound to a solemn warning he issued to the Kirk: there were forces within the Kirk that were resolved gradually to reduce the authority of Presbyteries and introduce central control through a powerful secretariat! He didn’t use that emotive term ‘a powerful secretariat’, but that was exactly what he meant.

Over the fifty-five years since then, I have often recalled his prophetic warning as I have watched the Kirk sleepwalking into an ever more powerful process of centralisation. Yes, there have been benefits, but there also have been the most radical changes, as the business methods of secular society have stifled and unintentionally replaced that deceptively simple formula for church growth of the apostolic church: ‘the preaching of the word and prayer’.

Five Assemblies ago, I spoke of the Welsh Presbyterian Church which I had visited many times to conduct preaching seminars for Readers: at my last visit, Wales had 1000 church buildings cared for by 70 ordained ministers, assisted by an army of readers, whose ongoing annual training was an accepted aspect of church life.

The Welsh formula was simple: don’t close a church building if the membership can maintain it in good order. And the many chapels throughout Wales I visited were all a credit to their small, vibrant congregations; these buildings were also highly valued in their communities.

The only planning for decline I have come across in Scripture is the Almighty chastising a disobedient and adulterous church that has forsaken the Stone from whence it has been hewn.

David C Searle, Errol