‘A gift to the church’

The Very Rev Dr Martin Fair offers a focus on the role of Assistant Ministers.

EVEN the most easy-going among us will have moments when our frustration threatens to boil over, or does!

You’ve been out to a swanky restaurant for a special family occasion and much to your annoyance, the food and service have been disappointing. You feel that the evening has been a disaster, not what you had hoped for.

The waiter comes to present you with the bill and asks how things were. You’ve been building up to this moment and are not about to miss it! In no uncertain terms, you tell the poor waiter exactly what you thought. Very apologetically, the waiter says: ‘Let me go and get the assistant manager…’

And there it is. The straw that broke the camel’s back. Your face, now a brighter shade of puce, you yell, ‘I DON’T WANT THE ASSISTANT MANAGER; I WANT THE ACTUAL MANAGER!!’

It’s something about the word ‘assistant’. But we need to be very clear that words can mean different things in different contexts and a prime example of that would be when it comes to those within the Church of Scotland who are presently exercising their respective roles as ‘Assistant Ministers’. In this case, the word ‘assistant’ implies nothing of what might at first be thought.

Our Assistant Ministers are fullyqualified, having completed all their training requirements and are in no way ‘less’ or only partly-formed. Many of them come with huge experience from previous roles that they’re now applying to ministry. To use that old phrase, our Assistant Ministers are ‘the real McCoy!’

So why are they presently known as ‘Assistant’ Ministers?

When the Presbytery Mission Planning process was initiated, the General Assembly of 2021 agreed that all vacancies should be sisted at that point. One of the consequences of that decision was that cohorts of students who were completing their training and then their probationary periods had no charges to apply for. One might say that they found themselves in limbo; all dressed up with nowhere to go.

It’s not difficult to imagine that for them, that was highly frustrating not to say hurtful.

To address this situation, the Church created a set of posts to which each of these men and women could be appointed. This was done as a shared exercise between the then Faith Nurture Forum and the respective presbyteries.

As part of that exercise, the term ‘Assistant Minister’ was adopted to signify that these ministers were not being inducted into these contexts but were being deployed under contracts of employment and to bring administrative clarity. (In fact the term is not in itself a new one and readers of a certain vintage will recall when Assistant Ministers were common in the life of the Church.) The good news is that in the main our Assistant Ministers have found their roles to be rewarding and that they have afforded them further space to grow and learn their craft; the reality of day-to-day ministry. And of course, it has meant for all of them a pay cheque at the end of the month – no small matter.

But the Assistant Minister scheme was only ever going to be for a certain period – to bridge this present gap – and with that in mind it has for many only ever felt ‘temporary’. And on top of that, being in that in-between space meant that the ministers involved didn’t have manse provision and some of the other add-ons afforded to inducted ministers.

Happily, many who started out on Assistant Minister contracts have now been called and inducted into their first charges and in that we rejoice as always we do when a new ministry begins.

Fiona, who served as an assistant minister in Cleir Eilean I Presbytery (Highlands & Islands), is now an inducted minister in the east end of Glasgow.

Steven will be remaining within the Presbytery of Forth Valley and Clydesdale having now been inducted as both minister at Bellshill West and pioneer minister of the developing St Thorlak’s community, a new initiative designed to support people living with autism.

Eckhardt Bosch, one of several assistant ministers who have been operating in the Forth Valley and Clydesdale Presbytery is now the inducted minister at Prestongrange in East Lothian.

And Jade, who has been serving on the beautiful Ardgour peninsula within Cleir Eilean I Presbytery, has now been called to be minister within the equally-beautiful environs of Speyside.

The list goes on.

For these and others like them, their appointments represent the fulfilment of long-held dreams and visions; an answer to that deep-down sense that God was calling them to lay down the nets of what they had been doing in order to move into the particular ministries that the Church assess and trains for. For our Assistant Ministers, this process has been longer than otherwise would have been the case and has involved dealing with challenges not hitherto encountered by those who had gone before. How good, therefore, to see things falling into place.

But the Church more widely should continue to recognise that there are a goodly number of our ministers who are still operating under the terms of the Assistant Minister scheme; who still await the right door to swing open and for a call to be extended to them. And as stated earlier in this article, the Church should affirm that the term ‘assistant’ in no means suggests that these of our ‘ready to get going’ ministers is anything other than the finished article (in as much as any ever are!)

In fact, the existence of this cohort of ministers is something of a gift to the Church and particularly to those congregations who, having come through the planning process, are now looking to call a minister. As these ministers take their places alongside other ministers who, for whatever reason, are sensing that the time has come for them to seek a new position, some nominating committees are finding themselves in the fortunate position of having many candidates to consider, a situation that has been uncommon for many years. Indeed it was only a few short years ago that congregations were struggling to find any interested candidates or one or two at best.

“ Our Assistant Ministers are fullyqualified, having completed all their training requirements and are in no way ‘less’ or only partly-formed.”

Of course the situation varies markedly across the country but overall it is more likely than not that congregations will find themselves able to call. That is a good thing. But just as, for example, the housing market is subject to fluctuation – at one moment suiting sellers and at another, buyers – so it is likely that the ‘supply and demand’ of ministers will not remain static. With considerable numbers of ministers approaching retirement, the Church may well once more find itself facing the challenges of having less ministers than ideally would be the case.

As the song says ‘the future’s not ours to see’ but, here and now, let the Church rejoice that God is still in the business of calling men and woman to step into ministry roles and that our Assistant Ministers are wonderful living examples of that.

The Very Rev Dr Martin Fair is Pathways to Ministry Manager within the Faith Action Programme of the Church of Scotland.