As General Assembly week continues in Edinburgh, we move on to the next Assembly, the 180th General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.

The meeting began this evening, Monday 22 May, at 6 pm at St. Columba’s Free Church in Edinburgh with worship, the installation of the new Moderator, Prof. Bob Akroyd, and a few pieces of initial business.

This is an appropriate place to note the participation of individuals and churches in North America in this Assembly. Prof. Akroyd grew up in New Jersey and came to Scotland for graduate work in history. He got connected to the Free Church, which led to his studying for the ministry and teaching at Edinburgh Theological Seminary. The other connection is a Presbytery of North America – with churches in the Maritime Provinces of Canada – whose two commissioners will be participating in the Assembly virtually. The virtual connection was approved for this year, but the church has established that their commissioners should be present in person in 2024 and every third year after that. And in case you have not noticed the historical point here, the new Moderators of the Free Church and the Church of Scotland are both originally from America.

The meeting will be live-streamed for our viewing pleasure, both on the Free Church website and on their YouTube channel. The 2023 General Assembly Reports volume is available as a PDF document. And there is a schedule available.

For the polity wonks, the Acts of the Assembly can be found at the bottom of the General Assembly page, and there is an online version of “Church Practice and Procedure – Free Church of Scotland.”

To follow along on social media, you should check the official Free Church Facebook page and their Twitter feed @freechurchscot. The host church can be followed at @stcsfreechurch, and the hashtag will be #fcga23, although sometimes tweets slip by with #fcga or #fcga2023. (At the time of writing, none have.) The seminary, Edinburgh Theological Seminary (@ETS_Edinburgh) can also be followed.

And important happenings at the Assembly may have an article appear in the Newsfeed.

And for others in the Free Church to follow on Twitter I would recommend David Meredith (@DCM_FreeChScot) and maybe we will see Gordon Matheson (@Jedirev) in the thread.

Much of the business before the Assembly is of a routine nature, as it is with most General Assemblies of different branches in the Presbyterian world. One of the items that jumped out at me was the final report of the Psalmody and Praise Committee, which concluded that they have fulfilled their original remit and that the ongoing publication and copyright work can easily be done by one authorized individual. In their deliverance, besides the request to discharge the committee with thanks, is a group of reminders to churches, including this one:

2. The General Assembly remind Congregations that the Book of Psalms is a unique manual of praise, which should be given a central place in our worship services. They again urge upon Precentors, Congregations and Ministers, a duty of intelligent and skilful psalm-singing, and the maintenance overall of a high standard of praise.

Another report that caught my attention was a final step regarding a business item I mentioned last year to revise the discipline process in the church. Having initial concurrence from the Assembly last year, the Program Management Group operating under the Trustees is bringing a final version of the policy regarding Conduct, Complaints, and Discipline of Office-bearers for Assembly approval and action to send it for Presbytery approval under the Barrier Act. It can be found in the Trustees’ Supplementary Report beginning on page 79 and going for the next 21 pages..

Last year I also mentioned the report from the Committee on the Establishment Principle in the Twenty-First Century. This year’s report is again an interim report, but they say they expect the final report to come to next year’s Assembly. It does take on significance this year with the ascension of a new monarch who has sworn to protect the church. It will also be interesting to see what comments the Lord High Commissioner makes concerning the monarch when Lord Hodge addresses the Assembly on Wednesday, 24 May, around noon.

The Assembly continues until Thursday, 25 May. So with that, we will keep this Assembly in our prayers and look forward to following along over the next few days. May your deliberations be guided by the Holy Spirit and the time productive for the advancement of The Kingdom. Best wishes to all.

As General Assembly week continues in Edinburgh, we move on to the next Assembly, the 179th General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.

The meeting began this evening, Monday 23 May, at 6 pm at St. Columba’s Free Church in Edinburgh with worship, the installation of the new Moderator, the Rev Iver Martin, and a few pieces of initial business.

To step back from the GA for a moment, I wanted to mention an article I saw over the weekend from the Anglican Network. It is an op-ed piece by John Hayward which looks at “Growth, Decline, and Extinction of U.K. Churches.” The prospects for many older denominations in the U.K. is not good, as he discusses, and early in the article he says this:

All [denominations] bar two of the pre-1900 churches in this set are declining. Only the Free Church of Scotland and Seventh Day Adventists are growing. By contrast, all the post-1900 churches are growing^[5]. Have the older churches gone stale? Do the newer ones still retain some of the fire of their founders?

An interesting piece of context to contemplate as we move through GA season and relevant to this specific Assembly.

The meeting will be live-streamed for our viewing pleasure, both on the Free Church website and on their YouTube channel. The 2022 General Assembly Reports volume is available as a PDF document. And there is a schedule available.

For the polity wonks, the Acts of the Assembly can be found at the bottom of the General Assembly page and there is an online version of “Church Practice and Procedure – Free Church of Scotland.”

To follow along on social media you should be checking the official Free Church Facebook page as well as their Twitter feed @freechurchscot. The host church can be followed at @stcsfreechurch and the hashtag will be #fcga22, although sometimes tweets slip by with #fcga or #fcga2022. (At the time of writing none have.) The seminary, Edinburgh Theological Seminary (@ETS_Edinburgh). And I can add the Mission Initiative “Generation” which tweets occasionally at @GenerationM18. (Although this GA is requested to restructure their work for church planting and drop the Generation branding.)

And important happenings at the Assembly may have an article appear in the Newsfeed.

Regarding the business before the Assembly, there are a couple of interesting items that the Board of Trustees are bringing in their Supplementary Report. (Beginning on page 62.) One of these is a modification of the ordination and probationers questions and formula of subscription to “modernize the language and shorten the questions.” The Assembly will have to confirm that with the new wording the “fundamental principles” are not changed and if agreed to the new questions and formula will be sent to the presbyteries for their concurrence under the Barrier Act. The commissioners will also be asked to approve a process overview for the revision of the Church discipline to continue the process of revision. I note this in particular since the revision of church discipline will come up again in this GA season. For your information, here is the Process Overview flowchart from page 71 of the reports.

The other report that caught my attention was from the Board of Ministry (beginning on Page 72) and their work to clarify and define the training process for students. The deliverance contains an extensive list of definitions and a detailed list of expectations for those training for the ministry and the presbyteries and churches supporting them.

I would also note the report from the Committee on the Establishment Principle in the Twenty-First Century is an interim report and we can look forward to their more developed thoughts on this topic at a future Assembly.

So with that, we will keep this Assembly in our prayers and look forward to following along over the next few days. May your deliberations be guided by the Holy Spirit and the time productive for the advancement of The Kingdom. Best wishes to all.

In this unique year of General Assembly and Synod meetings, there are a small handful of branches that will be meeting by video conference to consider a limited number of items of business that are considered essential, urgent, or time-critical.

One of those meetings is the 2020 General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland which will meet tomorrow evening, Monday 18 May, at 6 pm Edinburgh time. The Assembly will consider a limited docket of business and intends to suspend the meeting with hopes to resume the meeting in October for a more traditional in-person meeting.

In light of the unique circumstances and limited business at this meeting, the Moderator-Designate Rev Neil MacMillan will not be installed. As the news article says “it is expected that a delay on the new appointment will be put in place until a formal service appointment can be conducted.” It is recommended to the Assembly that the 2019 Moderator, Rev. Donnie G. Macdonald, will continue as the 2020 Moderator to run the meetings this year and that Mr MacMillan’s appointment be deferred to the 2021 General Assembly.

The meeting will be live-streamed. The 2020 General Assembly Reports volume is available as well.

There are five reports which contain business considered “urgent and time-critical.”

• Assembly Business Committee – approving the arrangements, the programme (agenda), and the handling of documents related to the meeting.
• The Assembly Clerk’s Office – proposing nominations, alternate arrangements for required annual general meetings of certain groups within the church, and approving “Arrangements for Exceptional Circumstances” to help the various bodies within the church as a whole operate during these exceptional times.
• Edinburgh Theological Seminary – In addition to the usual thanks to all those involved with the operation of the Seminary there are items to act upon to resolve inconsistencies within the ETS governing documents.
• Mission Board – two actions, one to change the pastoral staffing arrangement at a church and an action to change the status of a church plant to “a fully sanctioned charge.”
• Board of Ministry – Seven varied actions including thanks to the Board, noting with sadness the death of a former Clerk to the Board, an appointment to the Board, and asking the church to continue to pray for God to raise up more Gospel workers. There is also an item to note the ongoing review of the Board and action to make changes to the composition of the Board.
• There will be a private session related to the Board of Ministry as a minister wishing to transfer to the Free Church is introduced and examined. As there is confidential information involved those documents are not distributed in the reports and will be read by the chair of the Board in the private session.

It will be interesting to see how this meeting goes, both in terms of limited business and technology. If there is Twitter activity we can expect to see tweets from the official church account @freechurchscot. The customary hashtag would be #fcga20 although the hashtag #fcos is typically in use as well.

We keep this Assembly in our prayers and look forward to joining you tomorrow evening. May your deliberations be guided by the Holy Spirit and the time productive for the advancement of The Kingdom. Best wishes to all.

General Assembly week in Edinburgh gets into full swing today as two addition GA’s convene this evening. One of these is the Free Church of Scotland 2019 General Assembly meeting at St. Columba’s Free Church in Edinburgh. The meeting will run until about noon on Thursday.

One of the features of this meeting is that it meets for business in the evenings so when the Church of Scotland meeting adjourns you can walk across the street to St. Columba’s Free Church and sit in on their meeting. You think I exaggerate? Here is St. Columba’s, and I took the picture from the public gallery entrance to the Kirk’s Assembly Hall. [One of my favourite lines from Doug Gay’s book Reforming the Kirk says “The Secession Church planted strategically while the Free Church planted competitively.” In my wanderings around Scotland last year it was not unusual to find a Church of Scotland building across the street from a Free Church building.]

So, to follow along here are some helpful starting points:

• Live streaming is available. And the word is the recordings will be available on the St. Columba’s YouTube channel.
• There is a draft programme for the week available online
• The advanced set of reports are available on the and Supplemental Reports may be released throughout the week.
• Daily updates are expected in the news stream.
• If you need the polity documents you can check the Acts of Assembly and Free Church Practice.

To follow along in social media you should be checking the official Free Church Facebook page as well as their Twitter feed @freechurchscot. The host church can be followed at @stcsfreechurch and the hashtag will be #fcga19, although sometimes tweets slip by with #fcga or #fcga2019. In addition, I would suggest also keeping an eye on the Twitter account for the official bookstore, Free Church Books (@freechurchbooks) who will have a pop-up bookstore at the Assembly. Also, the seminary, Edinburgh Theological Seminary (@ETS_Edinburgh) and the principal Iver Martin (@IverMartin), although he has not been active on Twitter recently. And I can add the new Mission Initiative “Generation” which tweets at @GenerationM18.

Regarding other individuals and churches tweeting the GA I am at a bit of a loss at the moment as the hashtag has been very quiet. One account who has mentioned that they will be present is Rosskeen Free Chuch at @RosskeenFC. I will stick my neck out and mention “Neil DM” who is an Elder at St. Columba’s and has the handle @neilbriogaisean.

Much of the business before the Assembly seems like the routine but necessary work of a connectional denomination. The reports include updates on two initiatives approved at the 2018 Assembly, the Generation Vision launch for mission work, and a recognition of the need for rural church planting and development. In another response from last year, the Board of Ministry reports on their consultation with the presbyteries about the Ordination Promises or Vows. While a variety of views were found, they noted a consensus that the current wording could be clarified or shortened and asks the GA to pass this along to another group currently revising the church’s Practice. There is also an item to send to the presbyteries under the Barrier Act an overture to dissolve the provincial synods. The 2009 GA suspended the meetings of synods and with presbytery reorganization, the synods are now seen as a redundant layer of judicatory. And I had to smile a bit at the deliverance from the Psalmody and Praise Committee that included the item:

6. The General Assembly remind congregations that where praise items are projected on screen or printed on orders of service, copyright acknowledgement must be made for each item, for all Sing Psalms, Sing Scripture and for all hymns. Scottish Psalter items do not require this, being out of copyright. Further guidance is available on the Free Church website, including links to PowerPoint slides.

I know a few churches, including my own, who need to be reminded of this.

Having been the recipient of their generous hospitality last year, I will be watching from afar this year to see how several of the items I saw debated last year are moved along by the body this year.

So our best wishes to the Free Church on their Assembly and we pray for the Holy Spirit to guide your discernment throughout.