Our presbyteries

Thomas Baldwin learns about the presbytery of Lothian and Borders.

*at time of going to press

“THE geography is challenging,” admits the Rev Norman Smith, clerk of the Presbytery of Lothian and Borders.

Formed exactly a year ago, the presbytery covers East and Mid Lothian and a vast tract of the eastern and central borders – from North Berwick to Berwickupon-Tweed down the coast, and inland as far as West Linton, Teviothead and Morebattle. Within that are a fair number of small and medium-sized towns – among them Musselburgh, Dunbar, Eyemouth, Selkirk, Kelso and Jedburgh – but the majority of the presbytery is rural. For the Church and its ministers, of course, that means large parishes, many of them in multiple linkages.

For people within the Presbytery, Norman says, the challenge is “Trying to create a unified identity across a disparate geography.” But there are practical difficulties, too: “What does it mean for people who live an hour and a half apart to share in ministry and mission? So it’s finding new ways that work in larger geographical areas.”

Despite the difficulties, though, Norman says that the first year has been ‘very positive’. “There has been a great spirit amongst the people who want to give this new thing a chance.

“The first job was getting the presbytery set up: adopting patterns for meetings, for committees, standing orders, the finance side, the staffing side.

“But we also had to recognise that what we do at the start may not be what we want to keep doing, so there is a lot of experimentation around this.”

Staffing wise, the presbytery has two fulltime people – Norman, and Mission Officer the Rev Peter Wood – and a part-time administrator, and they have purposefully chosen not to have an office. “The moment we have an office, we have a centre,” says Norman. “And the moment we have a centre we have a periphery. And our aim is that no-one feels they are on the periphery, so we are all in this together.” For Norman and Peter, though, ‘there is an awful lot of time on the road!’

“We are prioritising our people, so we all spend a fair amount of time getting out, looking after our ministers in churches.”

He adds that he has been ‘very impressed’ so far with how the ministers in the presbytery have responded to the reforms. “I recognise for many of them it’s a different kind of ministry they are going to need to exercise than the one they came into. It’s Presbytery’s responsibility to resource, support and inspire them.”

The other major job over the past year has been finalising the Presbytery Mission Plan – the plan each presbytery has to draw up detailing how and where it is going to deploy resources for future mission -and getting it approved. When the new Presbytery started two of the four ‘legacy presbyteries’ had been approved and two were not, and all had to be amalgamated into a single presbytery-wide plan.

“We have to foster a unified and consistent vision that draws on the best of the four plans,” says Norman. “The rationale behind each plan and philosophy still need to be brought together, and unified into something new. We are thankful to have a superb Planning Convener and Team who are putting in many hours doing this.

“The harder part is maintaining impetus in mission while all this is going on. It’s been fairly energy intensive.”

However, the last two legacy presbytery plans were approved in June, without any requests for review, and signs of ‘life beyond mission planning’ are now beginning to emerge. At the time of writing the first induction of the new presbytery was shortly to happen, as the Rev Elisabeth Stenhouse is inducted into a 50 per cent ministry in Aberlady and Gullane.

But the presbytery is also looking beyond the traditional model of parish ministry in innovative ways. Norman says: “In the ‘legacy presbytery of Duns’ we are going to put together a team of five ministers to serve I think nine or ten parishes, and the pattern will be that they will be 20 per cent inducted into a specific charge and the other 80 per cent they will serve the wider ministry cluster.

“Each will have a specialism: there will be one who specialises in worship, one in Christian education, one in pastoral care, one in youth work and one in mission. This has not been done anywhere else.

“Another thing we have done which I don’t think others have done is we have started an internship scheme, funded by the (Church of Scotland’s) Seeds for Growth scheme, giving grants to congregations to allow people to take their first steps in Christian service. We have got two at the moment: one is going to run a Christian youth group, the other a social empowerment project.

“The idea is to respond to the vision of congregations and support them. It’s our philosophy to give local congregations as much say as we can in what happens to them. We are trying to work with them, not to impose anything but see where they are and support the next steps.

“The other thing is we are doing a sabbatical scheme. So presbytery will cover pulpit supply and pastoral care for four to six weeks to allow a minister to go off and spend time thinking about their ministry and what comes next. As part of that they are required to have a ministry development conversation.

“In everything we are trying to invest in and support our people, the ministers and elders and people in congregations. Our ministers are doing a superb job, but we also have elder moderators of sessions, lay pastors and worship leaders, and we are looking to put more training in place for them in the next couple of years.

“We want to get to a place where we are planting churches and opening churches, and we see more people coming to faith, and people growing in their faith.”