Our presbyteries

Thomas Baldwin casts an eye over the first of the newly created presbyteries in Fife.

“PROVING once again that, in any reorganisation, Fife will always emerge as Fife,” was the quip of Lord Wallace, Moderator of the General Assembly in 2021, after the presbyteries of Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and St Andrews had united into one for the whole of the Kingdom.

Jokes aside, the Rev Dr David Coulter, outgoing clerk of the Presbytery of Fife, agrees that representing an area with a shared identity has been an advantage for the new body. “The fact that Fife Presbytery is contiguous with the boundaries of Fife, means it isn’t completely alien to a lot of folk,” he says.

Not that the area isn’t very diverse, with what David describes as ‘a nice mix’: the historic centres of Dunfermline and St Andrews at opposite corners, two more major towns in Glenrothes and Kirkcaldy in between, the former mining communities scattered along the south and west of the county, the picturesque fishing villages of the East Neuk and a significant rural hinterland. While much of Fife suffered as badly as anywhere in Scotland from the collapse of industry in the late 20th century, the south west has benefited from its proximity (and improved transport links) to Edinburgh, while tourism has boomed and the presbytery sees opportunity in the increasing popularity of pilgrimage.

So, how to approach mission in such a varied context? Fife’s approach has been to break the presbytery down into smaller clusters of churches, which have been instructed to work together to develop their own strategies in their own areas.

Being one of the first new presbyteries out of the traps helped as well. “We had done presbytery reform before we had to take on mission planning, mercifully,” says David. “So we were able, with the first mission director, Neil Campbell, to come with a blank piece of paper. We were absolutely clear that we really wanted local self-determination to prevail. We formed 14 cluster groups, not to divide and conquer but to make sure the local voice was heard.

“When I arrived somebody said to me ‘what works in St Andrews will not work in Cowdenbeath’. We don’t want to be enforcing the plan upon others, we want it to develop organically.”

David says the cluster groups have, in general, worked ‘really well’, with the help of a small group of ministers and elders who have helped to facilitate their discussions. There has been progress in a number of places, including the completion of a union between three churches to form Dunfermline: St Columba’s, the creation of Forthview Parish Church from five communities along the Forth, and further unions in Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes.

In other places, he admits, there are ‘a lot of tensions’ and ‘a feeling that if we keep our heads down we can go back to where we were before this was ever dreamt up’, although he doesn’t regard this as a specifically Fife or Church of Scotland phenomenon: “I’m the Church of Scotland observer of the General Synod of the Church of England, and they have the same problems: not enough money, not enough clergy, not enough people, too many buildings.”

David (who was due to leave the post shortly after this interview, at the end of May) also identifies partnerships with other denominations as something that he hasn’t been able to develop as much as he would like, with a few exceptions. “In Kinghorn and Burntisland there has been a really successful ecumenical partnership, but in other places we haven’t been able to discuss ecumenical possibilities enough. We should be able to say ‘we have a building in this area, would you like to share it?’ Why should the Scottish Episcopal Church in Fife have to roll out its own safeguarding programme when the presbytery has really excellent safeguarding training? I think we are now at the point that we can’t afford to not develop ecumenical links better.”

One of the presbytery’s other characteristics is a preponderance of historic buildings, including Dunfermline Abbey, with its connections to St Margaret and generations of Scottish royalty, Holy Trinity in St Andrews, ‘cradle of the Reformation in Scotland’, the former Cistercian abbey at Culross, the medieval St Monans Church and 900-year-old St Fillan’s Aberdour.

To try to form a strategy for dealing with such buildings, the presbytery formed a historic churches working group, convened by the Rev Dr Donald MacEwan, chaplain of the University of St Andrews.

“These historic buildings are part of the Church of Scotland identity, part of the sacred language of Scotland,” says David, adding that they must be handled sensitively when it comes to presbytery planning. “I am not suggesting we should keep a building for a building’s sake, but we need to be careful. These are churches which have been part of the landscape for generations.” In some places, where a historic church can no longer be maintained, local community trusts have been keen to take them on.

Another aspect of Fife’s Christian history is reflected in the Fife Pilgrim Way, a 64mile route from Culross to St Andrews. Fife Pilgrim Pastor, Duncan Weaver, is employed jointly by the Church of Scotland and Scottish Episcopal Church, and David says he ‘has done an outstanding job promoting pilgrimage, which is something more and more people are picking up on’. There are hopes that some churches along the route may be able to offer themselves as places for pilgrims to stay overnight.

But Fife is not just about ancient history. Dunfermline is one of the fastest growing cities in the UK, and Dunfermline East church has capitalised on that to become one of the success stories of the new charge development scheme from the early 21st century. A new multi-purpose building was erected in the city’s eastern expansion in 2012 and extended in 2020.

More recently, in 2022 Wellesley Parish Church in Methil completed a £1.2m rebuild to create the Wellesley Centre, a community facility serving one of the most deprived parishes in Scotland.