The social tide is not flowing in our direction at this time so we need to be robust and innovative – working in different ways to spread the Good News of Christ Jesus.

“Procrastination is the thief of time” is a saying that I remember my mum using with me as a young man and it has always stuck with me. She is 96 now and still a devout churchgoer every week. She, like all of us, has seen huge changes in her Church over her lifetime. The quote is from a poem by Edward Young and points out that procrastinating – postponing things unnecessarily – causes people to waste a lot of their time. This saying encourages action in a timely manner, instead of delaying. As a Church, there is little doubt that we have procrastinated for several decades. So many people say to me that they wish we had started on a lot of what we are having to do now 20 or 30 years ago when the need for action was clear.

The Assembly Trustees organised a webinar prior to General Assembly 2023 at which the Rev David Cameron and I spoke. The aim was to hear and respond to queries and concerns. Many of these issues were also subsequently aired at the GA. My input to the webinar had the headline “Now is the time”. After many years of procrastination and stalling – now is the time for us to act whilst we still have the people, infrastructure, finances and wherewithal to do so. Talking to many around the Church I really feel that there is a growing realisation that there is a pressing need – and at the GA the next stage of the very necessary radical reform agenda was confirmed giving us the platform to move forward. David Cameron’s contribution to the webinar and his GA speech were very much focused on our hopes for the future. The Church of Scotland needs to continue to give the nation and the people of God something to believe in. I feel inspired on a personal level listening to David talking about this and the new Church that lies ahead whilst we continue to tend with care to our legacy.

As we heard at the GA we need to be steadfast as we progress our forward plans working closely with our ecumenical partners to address our shared challenges. The social tide is not flowing in our direction at this time so we need to be robust and innovative – working in different ways to spread the Good News of Christ Jesus. There will still be those that don’t want to hear us or God’s word which is where resilience, tenacity, flexibility and demonstration of new ways of working also come into the equation.

Finally, I have observed that we are real worriers in the Church. For example, there are those that worry about the sustainability and finances of the Church. There are those that worry about what God wants from us and how we will know. There are those that worry about what we might lose as we move on and what the future direction of the Church holds for each of us personally. I have every sympathy for all of this. Such worries lead to anxiety so we need to turn our attention to taking positive, timely mitigating actions to resolve them. General Assembly 2023 was another major milestone that enables us all, working collaboratively with each other, to do exactly this. It has continued to be a time for important decisions, which we make together at the General Assembly, whilst striving to maintain our continuity of direction and purpose as part of what will surely be a challenging but ultimately very rewarding journey.

Dave Kendall Chief Officer