Our presbyteries

PRESBYTERY OF INTERNATIONAL CHARGES FACTS

FORMED: 1974 (in current form, 2016)

FORMER PRESBYTERIES: North Europe, South Europe, Spain & Portugal

CONGREGATIONS: 12

CHARGES: 6 (reducing to 5 under mission plan)

VACANCIES: 1

(Correct at time of going to press)

FOR almost as long as the Church of Scotland has existed, there has been an international element to its work: taking Christianity to the parts of the world it hadn’t reached, providing medicine and education, and establishing Kirk congregations, serving the worldwide Scottish diaspora wherever they ended up.

The remaining overseas congregations, with the exception of those in the Holy Land, now fall within the Presbytery of International Charges. Formed in 1974 from the union of three European presbyteries, it was called the Presbytery of Europe until 2016, when it adopted the current, more accurate, name.

Having recently closed the Costa del Sol and Gibraltar churches, the presbytery now numbers 12 congregations: 10 in Europe (two each in the Netherlands and Switzerland, Paris, Brussels, Malta, Lisbon, Rome and Budapest), Christ Church Bermuda and St Andrew’s Scots Kirk in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Trinidad: Greyfriars St Ann’s also remains formally part of the Presbytery, although it is in the process of leaving. The English-Speaking Christian Congregation in Bochum, Germany is an associated congregation.

It may be small numerically, but the International Presbytery includes some of the Church of Scotland’s most venerable churches – the Dutch congregations go back to the 17th century – and also some of its most storied, with connections to legendary figures such as Jane Haining (Budapest) and the Rev Donald Caskie, the ‘Tartan Pimpernel’ (Paris).

Many of them are also very active in work with people who are hungry, homeless or refugees. St Columba’s in Budapest was at the forefront of welcoming refugees from Ukraine after the Russian invasion, and Lausanne in Switzerland has also had a project working with the Ukrainians who moved there. In Malta, St Andrew’s Scots Kirk has helped to support people attempting to get from North Africa to Europe, many of whom end up on the island.

In Bermuda, which is the most expensive place in the world to live, Christ Church has for many years served breakfasts for people who are struggling, along with a chance for a shower and to get their clothes washed. During the Covid-19 pandemic, they stepped up the work to provide thousands of meals. “What they did over two years was extraordinary,” says the Rev Derek Lawson, presbytery clerk.

While there may be a temptation to regard the overseas churches as historical oddities, or even a luxury the Church of Scotland can ill-afford, Derek says that these are misconceptions.

“I think people have strange ideas about the International Presbytery,” he says. “One is that we are mostly for expat Scots and Scots on holiday, which may have been true in some places 30 years ago but isn’t a sustainable way to run a congregation, not least congregations that are truly international.

“Another is that we are some kind of burden on the church. The central funds of the church don’t ordinarily pay us anything, although we have had an allowance from central funds for presbytery costs, along with all the Scottish presbyteries, in the last couple of years.

“But we are not draining any funds at all from the Church of Scotland for ministry costs. Our ministers are all paid locally.”

The presbytery hasn’t been left untouched by Church reforms, though, having had its ministry allocation cut to five. In a situation where, for obvious reasons, unions are impossible and linkages very difficult, ensuring all 12 congregations retain ministry cover has required some creative thinking.

“We have had to be a little bit ingenious,” says Derek. “We have got two congregations under Guardianship of Presbytery – Lisbon and Colombo. Lisbon functions well on the basis of having an Interim Moderator and a series of locums, most of whom serve for two to three months (post-brexit, UK-based locums can stay for no longer than 90 days).

“Colombo hasn’t been able to get a Church of Scotland minister for a number of years, but they are a very viable and vibrant congregation. Presbytery has appointed an Interim Moderator and there is a fulltime locum in place who is from Sri Lanka.

We are looking at the possibility of that minister obtaining a restricted practising certificate from the Church, so he could be appointed minister from outwith the Church of Scotland, which doesn’t count towards our allocation.

“We have got two charges where we don’t have full-time ministers because they are mission partner appointments. One is in Rome, where the Rev Tara Curlewis is jointly minister of St Andrew’s Church and ecumenical officer in conjunction with the World Communion of Reformed Churches. The same is true in Budapest where the Rev Aaron Stevens has now become mission partner with overall responsibility for eastern Europe.”

In Malta, the Scots Church is a local ecumenical partnership with the Methodist Church, with a full-time ministry alternating between the two denominations every five years. For presbytery planning purposes, the Presbytery Mission Planning Implementation Group agreed to allocate this as a permanent 0.5 of a minister.

The two congregations in Switzerland, Geneva and Lausanne, are in a deferred linkage, which has just been given permission to call a minister. There was a plan for linkage between Paris and Brussels but this was prevented by Église Protestante Unie de Belgique, of which St Andrew’s Brussels is also a member congregation. The Presbytery is now pursuing other arrangements to secure ministry in the Scots Kirk in Paris.

In the Netherlands, Scots International Church in Rotterdam has a minister and Amsterdam’s English Reformed Church has been vacant for about three years, but is due to install a non-Church of Scotland minister by the autumn.

The people who worship in the international churches vary from setting to setting, from people of Scottish heritage to locals, students and refugees, but they have all found a home in a church offering Presbyterian, English-language worship, often in settings where that is otherwise impossible to find, or is provided by denominations very different to the Church of Scotland.

“It’s a bit of a challenge sometimes in the International Presbytery,” says Derek, “But our congregations in Europe and beyond do have a valuable role. They provide a Christian base for a very diverse group of people at different stages on their journey of faith and, if they were not there, I don’t know where the folks in those congregations would go.”