Category Archives: Church of Scotland

New Moderators Take To The Web

With most of the General Assemblies now concluded it is interesting to see new Moderators taking to the web in various forms. Here is a quick run-down of what I have seen so far…

The stand-out, in my opinion, is the Rev. Dr. Herb Gale , Moderator of the 136th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, who has not only taken to blogging quickly, but with gusto as well. He is writing an official blog where he has already posted 12 entries, ten of them since the General Assembly where he was installed. Of course, it helps to have something to write about and his last four entries (1, 2, 3, 4 ) detail his experience of attending a reception for the British Monarch on her visit to Canada. In particular I would recommend the last one in the series where he reflects on the event and makes some theological connections. He writes in part:

In the monarchical system as it has evolved in Canada, it doesn’t matter what our rank or station – whether we are a parking lot attendant or the Prime Minister of Canada – we are all servants of the Queen, who is herself a servant of the people. The fact that everyone addresses her as “Your Majesty” is in fact a great leveller of status, simultaneously lifting up the lowest in rank and lowering the highest in rank. Surely this is a reflection of the profound spiritual significance of what we experience as we submit to the sovereign grace of the true King of kings (and queens), Jesus Christ our Lord, who shed his blood that we might all attain true royal status. And as the lights suddenly came on as we stood in line to greet the Queen, as my own name was called to be introduced to Her Majesty, I thought of the passage from 1^st Peter:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people;

Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1^st Peter 2:9-10)

I look forward to reading more from Mr. Gale.

The other notable web presence is from Elder Cynthia Bolbach, Moderator of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the form of an official web page with her monthly column. I have been keeping an eye on her individual blog, Food for Thought, but she has posted nothing there since before the Assembly. She is however up to two tweets. And the Mod Squad Facebook Page has been transitioned to the new moderatorial team.

UPDATE: The Rev. Harry Reeder, the Moderator of the 38th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, has now posted his thoughts on the Assembly on his personal blog InPerspective.

On the other hand, it has been a bit disappointing that two other new Moderators have not yet, as best as I can tell, kept up the blogging that their predecessors began. It appears that the official Moderator blog of the Church of Scotland has disappeared and that the Rt. Rev. John Christie will not be keeping us updated on his thoughts and activities the way the Very Rev. William Hewitt did. (And it is disappointing that Rev. Hewitt’s entries have not been publicly archived.) Likewise, I am keeping an eye out for blogging activity from the Rev. Norman Hamilton, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, but I have not seen it yet either.

It is worth noting that the Rev. Landon Whitsitt, Vice-Moderator of the 219th General Assembly of the PC(USA), continues his active blogging on his personal blog, Landonville. It will be interesting to see how much he overlaps his personal musings with official duties in that space. (But if you want a preview of the book he is writing keep watching his writing blog. Interesting stuff there too. )

Finally, it is worth noting that two of the past moderators have not disappeared from the blogosphere. The Rev. Stafford Carson, immediate past Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, continues to write his blog as he returns to parish ministry. Similarly, the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow has posted his last official blog entry as Moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the PC(USA), but anyone that knows Bruce knows that his personal blog will keep going strong.

I hope that in the coming days I’ll find more official blogging out there but this is a start for this crop of Moderators.

Past Meets The Present In Scotland — Rome Amidst The Reformed

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It has been interesting to observe the dances, sometimes delicate and sometimes not, that have been going on in Scotland, and to a lesser degree all across the British Isles, this summer. We have the conjunction of two important events that each has implications for the other. One is the 450th anniversary of the Scottish Reformation and the other the visit of the Pope in September.

A little while back I commented on this visit and the fortuitus timing that will find the British Monarch in Scotland to welcome the Pope so that she will only be acting as head of state. If the Queen were to meet the Pope in England she would also be acting as the head of the Established Church.

There have also been rumblings about how the Scottish Parliament has been playing down the 450th anniversary. Speculation as to reasons includes sensitivity to the Pope’s visit, but also mentions the secularization of the nation, consideration for other faith traditions, and just apathy to the anniversary. Or, as one writer says about the Scottish Reformation and the anniversary “…a trail of violence, vandalism and destruction, from which Scotland’s heritage has never recovered, and which is the possibly the real reason authorities can not touch the 450th anniversary of the Reformation with a rather long barge-pole.”

But in the last few days the plans for the Pope’s arrival have been announced and the spectacle is to include a parade in Edinburgh which will include actors portraying historical figures. Amongst those characters will be John Knox, and that seems to be drawing all the attention.

Please note the irony, or down-right discordance, here. It was not just that John Knox lead the reform that separated Scotland from Rome. In the process he did not have a lot of nice things to say about the pontiff, specifically equating him with the antichrist. He is quoted in one instance as saying “the papal religion is but an abomination before God” and “flee out of Babylon, that you perish not with her.” (source ). Another quote from Knox says “The Papacy is the very Antichrist, the Pope being the son of perdition of whom Paul speaks.” (source ) Finally, the Scots Confession, of which Knox was a principle author, says this in Chapter 18:

So it is essential that the true kirk be distinguished from the filthy synagogues by clear and perfect notes lest we, being deceived, receive and embrace, to our own condemnation, the one for the other. The notes, signs, and assured tokens whereby the spotless bride of Christ is known from the horrible harlot, the malignant kirk, we state, are neither antiquity, usurped title, lineal succession, appointed place, nor the numbers of men approving an error.

Now, having gone through that background let me also add a few important points. First, while the Church of Scotland is today the National Church, the Catholic Church is the second largest faith tradition in the country. It is also important to know that the Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland are involved in ecumenical discussions and their Joint Committee is talking and producing reports seeking to have the different faith traditions better understand each other and find points of commonality. And while the Scots Confession is part of the Book of Confessions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Book of Confessions also contains in the Preface this disavowal:

Specific statements in 16th and 17th century confessions and catechisms in The Book of Confessions contain condemnations or derogatory characterizations of the Roman Catholic Church: Chapters XVIII and XXII of the Scots Confession; Questions and Answer 80 of the Heidelberg Catechism; and Chapters II, III, XVII, and XX, of the Second Helvetic Confession. (Chapters XXII, XXV, and XXIX of the Westminster Confession of Faith have been amended to remove anachronous and offensive language. Chapter XXVIII of the French Confession does not have constitutional standing.) While these statements emerged from substantial doctrinal disputes, they reflect 16th and 17th century polemics. Their condemnations and characterizations of the Catholic Church are not the position of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and are not applicable to current relationships between the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Catholic Church.

In line with this stance an article in The Scotsman contains quotes from an unnamed spokesman for the Church of Scotland saying:

“When Pope John Paul II met the Moderator of the General Assembly on his visit to Scotland, it represented a milestone in relations between the two churches, which greatly improved as a result, and we would hope that the Pope’s visit later this year will strengthen the links even further.

“It is a sign of a healthy nation that diversity within the Christian community is something to be celebrated as opposed to a source of division and struggle.

“It is a gift to those of us of a Protestant persuasion that, by including this figure [Knox], the Catholic Church is contributing to the celebrations of the Reformation.”

Along the same lines, the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Rev. Dr. Norman Hamilton, approves of the visit and the Queen’s decision to invite him. Will Crawley of the BBC quotes him:

As someone who is committed to Christ, I have no sense of threat or fear by the visit of any world leader to our country, whether he be a political or a faith leader or a cultural leader. I have to say I don’t feel undermined, I don’t feel diminished, I don’t feel undervalued by any visitor to these shores.

However, the welcoming attitude is not present in all of the Presbyterian branches of the UK. The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland has published a short book with six essays critical of the Pope and his visit. Similarly, the Rev. Dr. Ian Paisley, a political figure in Northern Ireland and founding member of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ireland , has called the visit a “mistake.”

Finally, it is important to note that there are other reasons besides the anniversary of the Reformation that this visit to the UK may feel a bit awkward. One is the difficulties involved in resolving a major clergy abuse scandal in Ireland. Another is the cost of this trip at a time when the economy is struggling to recover. Finally, there are also the current controversies in the Church of England and the invitation that the Pope has extended for Anglo-Catholics to realign with the Catholic Church, a realignment that will be echoed during the visit in the beatification of Cardinal Newman who switched between these churches in an earlier century.

So, come September it will be interesting to see in what degree history leads to conflict or coexistence, or maybe just confusion. If nothing else it will be a spectacle that will give us something to watch and ponder.

The 2010 Assemblies Discussing Central Points Of Presbyterian And Reformed Thought

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This past weekend the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held a special session to celebrate and remember the 450th anniversary of the Reformation in Scotland that produced the Presbyterian church. (You can watch the two hour long session on the Church of Scotland web site.) And for those who keep track, this past Thursday (when I started writing this) marked the 446th anniversary of John Calvin’s death. It seems to me the various Assemblies this year in their business have more ties to Calvin and Knox than happens in most years.

As I think back on the Church of Scotland Assembly I’m sure that for many of us who followed the meeting there was an interesting sense of paradox (or irony or outright contradiction even) having to do with the fact that on the one hand the Assembly endorsed the Third Article Declaratory defining the Kirk as a territorial church with a mission to the whole of Scotland, while on the other hand cutting ministerial staffing 10%. I probably can not state it any better than Davidkhr who says in his blog post about the Assembly:

It’s all very well making potentially visionary statements looking at alternative forms of ministry, but the education process within the membership will be impossible. Let’s face it, and the Committee/commission didn’t, the vast majority of ordinary members expect a form of ministry that may have happened 40 years ago, and the only ‘visit’ from the church that is valid is the dog collar. That is plainly ridiculous in today’s situation. Parishes will get bigger, more vacancies are planned for, more churches needing covered with interim ministries, it’s a recipe for meltdown….

Or have I missed something in all this ?

And this in a Presbyterian branch which has been proactive about considering the church of the future with their Church Without Walls initiative and the various Commissions and Panels on restructuring the church.

I’ll return to this in a moment, but as I consider the Assembly meetings now adjourned and those yet to convene it strikes me that more than most years there will be a lot of discussion, more than usual, around the application and relevance of several points which many of us consider central to what it means to be Reformed and Presbyterian. Some of these are…

Worship
We are all familiar with the “worship wars” but the echoes this year seem to be very much concerned with the original Reformed understanding of divine worship and the inspiration and value of the Psalter. At their Assembly, the commissioners of the Free Church of Scotland agreed to a special Plenary Assembly later in the year to discuss the possibility of permitting flexibility in worship and providing for a congregation to include music other than unaccompanied exclusive psalmody.

But I found it meaningful how much unaccompanied Psalm singing there was at the Church of Scotland Assembly, not just at the special session but throughout the week. A significantly larger amount of the music sung that week was unaccompanied Psalms, more than I remember from previous years.

Teaching and Ruling Elders in Joint Ministry
This gets to the heart of many discussions this year and especially part of the solution of the Third Article and the ministry cuts paradox. The Special Commission on the Third Article Declaratory in their report made it clear that to accomplish that mission would require new ways of being the church. And as Davidkhr makes clear above it will fail, meltdown in his language, if there are not new ways.

But that is the beauty of the model of shared ministry that we see in the Presbyterian and Reformed system. Under no circumstances is leadership for the teaching elder alone. Authority, responsibility, and accountability lie with both the teaching and ruling elders. And while there are plenty of service roles for others in the church, in times of reduced staffing there is opportunity and responsibility for the ruling elders to live into their role and help leading the church where there is now need. Yes, there is need for training regarding some areas, but a great opportunity for ruling elders to be part of the joint leadership the Reformed tradition recovered.

And I would say that many Presbyterian branches would benefit from being intentional about the joint ministry of teaching and ruling elders. This is not necessarily a budgetary argument but an understanding of call.

But in this regard there are a couple of other points where our GA’s are touching on this joint ministry. One of these is in the balance of teaching elders and ruling elders standing for Moderator and Vice-Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Five of the six Moderator candidates are teaching elders and all four of the announced Vice-Moderator candidates are teaching elders. Only one in ten, 10%, is a ruling elder. Now I actually think this says something about how the PC(USA) structures these position and I will ~~rant about~~ discuss that another time, but at a minimum it does implicitly say something about how the church looks at this joint ministry.

Another branch where this joint ministry has been mentioned as lacking is in the Presbyterian Church in America. Commentators have pointed out that having teaching and ruling elder parity at GA is a problem with more conflicts and less incentive for ruling elders to attend. This is one of the “back stories” to the Strategic Plan…

Connectionalism
This leads us into one of the areas that is constantly being worked out in Presbyterian branches, and that is our connectionalism — how each governing body is connected to the others. I have to think that if we were not a fallen and sinful people this would come naturally, or even be unnecessary, but having our sinful nature it does not come as easily for us to determine what of our authority, power and treasure we are to reserve for one governing body and what portion is properly exercised by higher or lower bodies. Just as we believe that our human nature is such that authority should not be concentrated in one individual but rather in a body, we also believe authority should not be concentrated in one governing body but shared (not necessarily equally) across higher and lower governing bodies with review and appeal between them. (And this is just the polity argument and not the role of connectionalism as representative of the Church as the Body of Christ.)

Having said this, the connectional level of Presbyterian polity is one of the most sensitive issues in several branches right now and for the PCA Strategic Plan the several ways that it proposes to improve connectionalism may be the most controversial and contentious points. One thing the report considers is how the Administrative and Assembly functions of the denomination should be supported and how to assess churches for the financial support of these areas. There are numerous analyses and a counter proposal being circulated so at the Assembly we will have a significant discussion on the specific implications of connectionalism.

At the upcoming Assembly of the PC(USA) a different situation will be on the floor. The PCA Strategic Report begins with the position that growth has slowed and started to reverse and asks the question “What do we need to do to start growing again?” The PC(USA) discussion begins with the fact that the current structure was designed for a church roughly one million members larger and asks the question “How do we need to structure ourselves for our smaller size?” There are proposals for specific tweaks, like abolishing synods, to requests for creating a committee or commission to study the role of higher governing bodies and suggest, and in the case of the commission implement, changes to the presbytery and synod structure of the denomination.

As a parallel proposal, there is also a PC(USA) overture for a “New Synod,” and flexible presbyteries, that would allow connectionalism along the lines of theological affinity. But the PC(USA) is not alone here because the Evangelical Presbyterian Church also has a proposal before it for presbyteries to have, in my words, “fuzzy boundaries,” to allow for congregations to align themselves in presbyteries that have a similar stance but on one very specific issue, the ordination of women as teaching elders.

And finally, the Church of Scotland, in several reports including the Panel on Review and Reform, is looking at devolving responsibilities from the General Assembly level to the presbytery level. We will see more of these specifics as the year unfolds and they are discussed and implemented.

Confessions
I would be remiss if I did not mention one more traditional item and that is our confessional nature as Presbyterians. The PC(USA) GA will be discussing a recommendation to add the Belhar Confession as a confessional standard. I will leave it at that for now as I am working on a much more extensive post on the PC(USA) and its confessions.

So that is what I am seeing. In my memory I can’t remember so many Presbyterian branches dealing with so many of the characteristics that we of the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition consider core to our doctrinal framework. So hold on — it looks to be an interesting summer.

Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei

General Assembly Of The Church Of Scotland — Being The Churh Where You Are

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Today’s business of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland had some interesting threads about the geographic nature of the church and what it means to be the Church where you are. There is also an interesting “personality” thread that I will return to in a moment.

The morning worship began with a nice metric setting of Psalm 24 from the 1929 Scottish Psalter (“Ye gates lift up your heads on high”) and included holy communion. (The morning video update contains a lengthy section of that Psalm singing. And according to the order of worship the Sanctus in the Great Thanksgiving was sung.)

The balance of the morning and part of the afternoon was spent discussing the Report of the Special Commission on the Third Article Declaratory. (Due to the time difference I was not able to follow much of the morning session live and so am depending on the video update and to a much lesser extent the archived real time updates.) Since I have previously discussed this report at length I am not going to revisit the written report. The comments from the convener of the Special Commission, the Very Rev. Dr. Alan D. McDonald, included pointing out that as the Special Commission traveled around and talked with people and congregations they found that “being a territorial church is regarded as a privilege.” As Mr. McDonald is quoted as saying, “The Kirk is not a supermarket, in business only where there is a customer base.” As the morning update puts it, the Commission came to the point where the question was not whether the Third Article should be retained or deleted but rather, “how can the principles it enshrines be implemented not in 1929, but in the present context?” In response to a question about how the Kirk, with its already tight resources, can continue to minister everywhere. The convener is quoted as replying that where there are people but no minister “the people fulfill the remit.”

In the end the deliverance was approved with only minor modifications in wording.

In the afternoon session one of the items following the Special Commission report was the Report of the World Mission Council. For this discussion I would like to cast a very narrow focus on item 9 in the deliverance:

9. Noting the desire of the congregations of St Andrew’s Nassau and Lucaya Kirk, Freeport to affiliate to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (USA) as an interim step towards the formation of a Presbyterian Church of Bahamas, agree to their severance from the Church of Scotland, commend them for their Christian mission and service over the past two hundred years and wish them God’s continuing blessing as they take forward their life and witness in the Bahamas.

Let me press rewind for a moment because this item has been hitting the press the last few days. Consider this headline and lede from heraldscotland:

Congregation quits Kirk in protest over gay ordination

17 May 2010

An entire congregation has quit the Church of Scotland in the Bahamas after its minister resigned over the issue ofthe first gay ordination.

Around 800 members of the Kirk will hear at its annual General Assembly in Edinburgh this week that after the Reverend John MacLeod resigned from St Andrew’s in Nassau, the capital of the islands, his congregation has opted to leave the Church.

It is also expected that the 200-year-old parish will be followed by another in the Bahamas, Lucaya Kirk at Freeport, at a time when the Church of Scotland faces potentially its greatest schism in its 450-year history – over the issue of gay ordination.

The World Mission Council of the Kirk will reveal that the congregation in Nassau voted in favour of leaving the Kirk, almost immediately after approval of the assembly to join the fundamentalist Evangelical Presbyterian Church of America, which takes the position homosexuality is against the Scriptures and is opposed to women being ordained.

It is interesting, having watched the full Assembly discussion on this item, that I did not hear one comment regarding the current controversies in the Church of Scotland. And they clearly did not do their homework when they call the EPC “fundamentalist” (if they should be using that term at all) since it is, to put it one way, the most liberal of the conservative Presbyterians in the U.S. allowing the ordination of women under “local option.”

Yesterday’s Tribune article tries to set this straight:

Presbyterian Church breakaway ‘not linked to gay issue’

Published On: Thursday, May 20, 2010

REVEREND Scott Kirkland has rejected claims that the ordination of gay ministers in the Church of Scotland drove Presbyterian kirks in the Bahamas to break away.

The minister of Lucaya Presbyterian Church in Freeport announced at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in Scotland this week that Presbyterian congregations in the Bahamas had voted in favour of leaving the “mother church” after 200 years to align with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) in the United States.

A total of 39 church members voted in favour of joining the EPC and three against after Rev John Macleod resigned from St Andrew’s Presbyterian Kirk in Nassau and admitted it was partially over the Church of Scotland’s ordination of its first openly gay minister, Scott Rennie.

So yes, we are dealing with two different churches and two different clergy on only one was represented at the Assembly. But, the Rev. Kirkland gave a nice speech from the floor of the Assembly about the realignment of the church. As I said, neither he nor anyone else in the Assembly session, linked the departure of these two parishes to controversies. The decisions are related to geography, proximity to their new presbytery in Florida, and the EPC’s experience with developing new foreign presbyteries with the vision of one day having established stronger churches in those areas. He specifically mentioned the work the EPC is doing with St. Andrews Presbytery in Argentina and the five-year cooperative agreement there between the EPC and St. Andrews. The plan that is being proposed is a similar one to build up the church to do mission in the Bahamas.

I will close with comments from the Very Rev. Andrew McLellan on both these topics. Regarding the subject of territorial mission, the video update relates his telling two stories from his own experience related to the importance of the Kirk “being there.” One was from his work with prisons and a particular inmate who did not know he had a pastor until the pastor from his home parish came to visit him. As Mr. McLellan told the story, the fact that he had a pastor and the pastor had visited him meant a lot to that individual. The second story was about an employer/employee tribunal and a colleague of Rev. McLellan’s who was asked to be with the employee, but found he was welcomed as well by the employee’s supervisor because he was trusted by both of them. Those stories were offered as examples of what territorial ministry means.

Regarding the Lucaya Presbyterian Church in Freeport, Rev. McLellan spoke of his father who was at one time the pastor of that church and is buried in the church yard there. He spoke of his father’s devotion and stubborn loyalty to the Church of Scotland and paraphrasing Rupert Brookes he spoke of how even though the church may realign with the EPC, “There will forever be some part of that foreign field that will for ever be Church of Scotland.”

As I write this over my lunch hour in L.A. the evening session is under way in Edinburgh and the section with the past Moderator’s address is closing with the hymn “As A Fire is meant for burning.” I leave you with the first verse which ties all this up nicely –

As a fire is meant for burning
with a bright and warming flame,
so the Church is meant for mission,
giving glory to God’s name.
Preaching Christ, and not our customs,
let us build a bridge of care,
joining hands across the nations,
finding neighbours everywhere.

The General Assembly Of The Church Of Scotland

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The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland will convene tomorrow, 20 May, in Edinburgh at 10 AM local time. The occasion will be marked by the unique honor of a 21-gun salute from Edinburgh Castle. The Assembly continues through 26 May.

There is plenty of on-line information to keep a G.A. Junkie entertained for the next week:

There will be a live audio and video webcast.

For the scheduled business check out the Daily Agenda page and to follow along you can find the Committee Reports on another page.

You can get the information on what has taken place from the Official Press Releases (already in high gear) and the Daily Updates which should include both an archived version of the daily web updates and a once or twice a day audio recap.

For all the other stuff that is going on for Assembly week check out the Events page.

This year there is an official 2010 General Assembly blog.

The Assembly does a great job on Twitter and you can follow the official feed @generalassembly and all the rest of us using the hashtag #ga2010 (although a couple other Presbyterian branches and a couple of non-Presbyterians seem to be using it as well.

Youth delegates from the Church of Scotland Youthwork program will be participating in the Assembly and blogging on the COSYBlog, as well as on Twitter at @cosy_nya and on Flickr.

The Moderator of this Assembly will be the Right Reverend John Cairns Christie of St Andrew’s Church, West Kilbride. The Lord High Commissioner will be Lord Wilson of Tillyorn KT. (I had to look it up – KT is the suffix for the The Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle.)

I have already mentioned a couple of items on the docket for this Assembly – The Third Article Declaratory, a Ministries Council report that reduces ministerial staffing by 10% over four years, and the strategic plan for property management and disposal. And we must remember that the Special Commission considering ordination standards does not report back this year. But there is plenty more on the docket to be considered.

So tune in and follow along because it should be a good meeting.

The PCA Strategic Plan — How Do You Grow Larger?

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The 38th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America will be considering the new Strategic Plan for the PCA. The church is putting significant effort into presenting and interpreting the Plan including the main report with the narrative of the Plan, an executive summary dealing mainly with the funding proposals contained in the Plan as well as a slightly longer detailed description of the funding formula, and a concise summary of the changes to the Book of Church Order that would be necessary to implement one part of the Plan. On the interpretation side, there is a five part video on the Plan web page that I think does a good job explaining the situation and what the Plan includes to address those issues. There is also an FAQ and a page of comments about the Plan from “PCA leaders” (a note that all the comments are positive, a fact noted in the file name which contains the word “endorsements”). The PCA publication byFaith has articles about the committee approving the Plan, reaction to the Plan (again positive) from pastors, and responses to questions/criticisms that have been raised. Speaking of criticisms, the PCA blogosphere has been buzzing about the Plan and from what I have read it has generally been doubtful or critical of the plan. For a collected list of all these responses keep an eye on the blog Johannes Weslianus where Wes White has been keeping track of all this. He posted his latest list yesterday where it is instructive to note that there are no unofficial positive responses to the Plan but 10 (some in multiple parts) “cautious/skeptical” responses and two “opposed” — But that is the nature of the blogosphere which, interestingly, is something the Plan comments on ( pg. 13 ). Wes also includes his picks for “Best Concise Summary” of the Plan.

I have made selective general comments about the Plan twice now, but before I launch into my more detailed analysis I think it is important to remind you of the lens that I read the Plan through. On the one hand I am a ruling elder in a denomination other than the PCA so as I read the report I can miss some of the history, nuances and subtleties that it contains, references, or includes implicitly from the ethos of the denomination. On the other hand, I am an observer and student of “big picture” Presbyterianism and some of the conclusions I have drawn from the report are similarly big picture and I have not seen them mentioned in the comments on other blogs (although I have fallen behind in my reading so if this is bringing the observation to the party late I apologize).

Let me begin with my two general observations about the Strategic Plan. The first is that it does a very good job of describing the situation and circumstances that the PCA finds itself in today. In fact, the point of my first post was that the insight of the report is so good that their observations and isolation of the issues can be applied to not just the PCA but to may of the Presbyterian and Reformed branches at this time. While I previously highlighted the opening section of Identifying Our Challenges (p. 7) I found the whole section, including the North American and European Challenges, Global Challenges, and Internal Challenges to be comprehensive and useful. I also found the sections on Identifying Opportunities and Identifying Strengths to be good. More on some of those specifics in a moment.

The other thing that struck me was that as I read through the report, and especially the recommendations, I kept thinking “that is something a ‘large denomination’ does.” After thinking that enough times it struck me that what the report seems to be proposing, intentionally or not, are ways for the PCA to make the structural leap from a medium sized denomination to a large denomination. Let me explain…

There are widely recognized and described styles of congregations based upon their size — one of the most widely used, the Rothauge system, has Family, Pastoral, Program, and Corporate churches from smallest to largest in size. While the styles and boundaries between them are not hard and fast (I would say that my own congregation well into the Program size still has strong characteristics of the Pastoral style) it is a useful general scheme for understanding congregational dynamics. A similar system could probably be developed based on denomination size although I am not aware of one. And while the congregation size system has some variability, I would expect the denomination system to be even more variable depending on where a particular church falls in the congregational-hierarchical polity spectrum. But having said that, the PCA is one of a few Presbyterian branches in the vicinity of 300,000 members and I have suspected that for Presbyterian branches there may be a transition point there. One indication of this may be the slowing growth the PCA has seen recently (although there are numerous other possible explanations as well).

Why is there a transition point? As the Report itself identifies (p. 13) “Our organizational cohesion has not primarily been achieved by shared mission goals, ministry practice, organizational support, worship style, ethnicity, political perspectives or economic status – but by doctrinal agreement.” To go forward the Report describes the evolution of the denomination in this way:

Our values are well identified in the “motto” of the PCA: Faithful to Scripture, True to the Reformed Faith, and Obedient to the Great Commission.

The phrases of this motto also provide insight into the missional development of the PCA. It is fair to say that commitment to the inerrancy of Scripture was the driving force of our founding and that the churches who initially came into the PCA immediately united in this value. Determining what it meant to be true to the Reformed faith was not as unifying, and created significant debates among us for the next 30 years. These debates both clouded understanding of our mission and inhibited cooperative participation in it. While progress has been made in defining how we will hold each other accountable for being true to the Reformed faith, relational tensions wax and wane around this issue. Thus, the next stage of PCA development likely relates to the last phrase of our motto. How we do mission together, and whether we can do mission together, is the key to our future. If we are able to unite in missional purpose, we have much to contribute to the future of the Kingdom; if we cannot, then our future is likely incessant, inward-focused pettiness.

To put it into general terms – when small a branch can be held together by a strong common tie, probably historical or doctrinal, but as it grows the increase in size creates enough diversity that at a certain point a “critical mass” is reached where well-intentioned and sincerely held doctrinal differences threaten the cohesion of the group and unity needs to be found in something other than shared history or doctrinal conformity. At least that is my perspective on denominational size and where I see the PCA as I read this report.

So as I read through the report I saw several items that I would identify with a “large denomination.” These proposals include advisory delegates, representation/quotas/places at the table, pro rated and progressive assessments for Administrative work, and “safe places” to talk. And when I say “large denomination” I’m sure that many in the PCA would rightly think PC(USA) , but I would also include the few other large Reformed branches, like the RCA and the Church of Scotland as well. Therefore, to emphasize the generality of my argument I use the generic label rather than a specific denomination.

Now, let me also say that in a general sense the proposals for growth are in and of themselves neutral. It will be how they are implemented and used that determines their usefulness and missional applicability and validity.

One final comment about the report in general: As I read it I had to agree with many of the other commentators that when it got to the actual plan portion it got very specific and business-like and it was tough to tell that this had anything to do with a church. Taking from one of Wes White’s Best Concise Summaries, David A. Booth says this:

Addressing specific details in the PCA’s proposed strategic plan that one Elder or another objects to still leaves the denomination approaching Christ’s Church like a non-profit organization that simply needs to be managed better. This is not to imply that the men involved in crafting the PCA’s proposed strategic plan have anything other than good motives. Furthermore, some of the problems that the report is wrestling with are very real problems for the PCA. What should be called into question is the very idea of grand strategic planning within the Church of Jesus Christ. We cannot manage-in the Kingdom of God.

There is a tension in how we use human means to organize ourselves to do God’s work.

As something of a counter argument I would recommend watching the five part video posted on the web page. It not only adds substantial and much-needed theological depth that the printed report itself lacks, but provides an interesting commentary on the challenges the church in general faces and the changes in society. Even non-PCA members might find the first three segments of this presentation interesting where the general challenges are discussed. (It is about the first 30 minutes of this 49 minute presentation.)

Having now expended a substantial number of words on my general observations I will only briefly touch on just a few of the specifics of the report.

In the report it talks about “animating values” (what gets us interested) and “formal values” (stated standards of the church). There is a list of 27 animating values of local churches (p. 5) and I did not see where those came from and whether there was a particular order to them. I must admit that if ordered I would have “Right administration of the Sacraments” and “Good Bible preaching” higher than their respective 8 and 10 on the published list. I was also a little surprised for a Reformed branch to include “Revival thru viral repentance and faith” in the list but maybe I’m not interpreting that correctly. (Or maybe I’m too T.R. for my own good.)

There is a great list on page 6 related to the animating values of groups that I think does an good job of classifying the various identities within the PCA and how they are viewed by others. One thought that crossed my mind as I read the report, and that seems to be a sub-text in some of the discussions in the PCA, is how the churches from the former RPCES are, or are not, part of this group identity? While “Southern Presbyterianism” seems to be a factor in places in the report, the RPCES heritage is not.

Another great list is that of Internal Challenges (p. 12-14) which, as I noted above, transcends the PCA. I was particularly interested to see item 6 on the list:

6. Pervasive Disregard for Eph. 4:15 and Matthew 18 in Discussions of Differences
Our organizational cohesion has not primarily been achieved by shared mission goals, ministry practice, organizational support, worship style, ethnicity, political perspectives or economic status – but by doctrinal agreement. The downside of so valuing doctrine is that we have little tolerance within or without the church for theological variance. Our tendency is not simply to consider those who differ with us wrong – but to consider them bad (because they are obviously “compromisers” or “unbiblical”). It is easy for us to give moral status to our theological perspective – even on secondary issues, and thus rationalize uncharitable characterizations of those who differ (esp. on blogs)

I think this is an issue that has not been vocalized enough but will have to be in the future as more of our interaction goes into the virtual world. A topic for another time and nice to see listed, but we must be careful not to uniformly demonize the web.

On that same list item 18 had me scratching my head a little bit: “Lack of Desire among Young Leaders to Assume Positions with PCA’s Most Significant Pulpits and Organizations (perception that they are moribund and dangerous for families)” If read at face value this is interesting because the “clergy crunch” currently is typically described as small rural churches, not flagship or tall steeple. But maybe with my lack of connection to the PCA I am missing something here.

Let me move on to the specific recommendations.

Theme 1. Safe Places – This would provide open forums for expressing any opinions regarding the selected topic at GA meetings and encourage similar forums in a presbytery context. The goal is to provide a safe, non-judgmental environment for bringing up differing viewpoints on Biblical Belief, Ministry and Mission.

Theme 2. More Seats – These recommendations relate to getting representatives at the table from currently unrepresented groups: younger generation, women, ethnic leaders, global church representatives. Some of this involves participation on committees, in forums, and mentoring. This theme also includes identifying, credentialling, and encouraging non-ordained vocational ministries.

Theme 3. Global Mission – This is more of a mixed bag and more controversial.

Means 1 – I would describe this as being more intentional about working in Gospel outreach outside the PCA.

Means 2 – “Develop a unifying funding means” – This is the revision of the funding model for the Administrative Committee and the only part of the report that requires a change to the Book of Church Order. For the details here see the Rules Changes document, but the change to BCO 14-1 would empower the GA to collect the mandatory assessment, and the change to 14-2 specifies that TE and RE commissioners to the Assembly are only in good standing if their congregations have paid the fees. Otherwise they have voice but not vote. The last action would change the Rules of Assembly Operations 14-11 to describe the fee, proposed to be capped at 0.4% “of local church Tithes and Offerings.”

Means 3 – To develop a method to evaluate GA level ministry to support only those “critical to our calling.”

Means 4 – “Partner with national & international ministries with whom we can most effectively participate in God’s global mission.” This would have the church be selective in who they partner with and withdraw from organizations with whom they do not share “ministry priorities,” and NAPARC is mentioned by name to withdraw from. In other words, put resources of gifts and talents towards ministry and not doctrine.

Well, that is a summary of the document. There is plenty of reading there for you as well as in all the various responses. At great risk of being too selective I am going to highlight one particular response that seems to have gotten referenced around the blogosphere as much as any of them have…

On the Aquila Report William M. Schweitzer has a commentary titled “Thoughts on the PCA Strategic Plan: Is It Presbyterian?” In this article he highlights three areas where the Strategic Plan would compromise ecclesiastical standards as Presbyterians understand them. First, the provisions for future planning and implementation decision making shifts power from the presbyteries to the Cooperative Ministries Committee. Second, the use of non-ordained vocational ministries would circumvent the process of call, exploration, and response understood in our process of certification and ordination and derived from the Pastoral Epistles. And finally, the idea of more “seats at the table” compromises the role of “biblically qualified and ordained elders” and shifts power from elders to advisory delegates.

Well, as I said, the on-line response has been very concerned to negative but what will ultimately matter is the discernment of the body through the debate and vote on the floor of the Assembly. Is the question whether the PCA has reached a point in their size where structural changes are needed to grow? Or does the church go back to “being the church” and concentrate on spreading the Gospel. (Which is one of the theme of the Plan.) There are well known names on both sides of this issue at the moment and it will be interesting to hear from the broad range of commissioners as they discuss this. I’m sure there are a lot more viewpoints out there that have not been expressed yet. Stay tuned.

Church Of Scotland/Roman Catholic Agreement On Baptism

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In reading through materials for the Church of Scotland General Assembly that will convene its meeting in just over a week my attention was caught by an item contained in the report of the Committee on Ecumenical Relations. It seems that although the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops did not sign off on an ecumenical statement on baptism with some American Reformed churches, a similar agreement is in place in Scotland. The deliverance of the Committee on Ecumenical Relations asks the Assembly to “4. Encourage the use of the Liturgy for the Renewal of Baptismal vows on appropriate ecumenical occasions as part of the fruits of the Joint Commission on Doctrine’s study on Baptism.”

Within the body of the report they say this about the agreement and the liturgy:

5.3 The Joint Commission on Doctrine (Church of Scotland – Roman Catholic Church) published a joint report on baptism as a study guide for local congregations in 2008. This booklet could not have been written 20 years ago and harvests the fruits of decades of faith and order discussion within the World Council of Churches and between the WCC and the Vatican in the Joint Working Group. Though some may dismiss this important aspect of the ecumenical movement as “old fashioned”, the faith and order agenda continues to provide the platform on which local developments can grow. The Joint Commission has followed up its study on Baptism by producing a PowerPoint presentation that gives the framework out of which the study has come and by commissioning the production of a joint liturgy for the reaffirmation of baptismal vows. All three resources belong together as the fruit of the Joint Commission’ study on Baptism and it is hoped that they will be widely used. The liturgy has been drawn up by a small group that included representation from the Scottish Episcopal Church. This liturgy is now available for general use on appropriate ecumenical occasions.

Now, while the report says the “liturgy is now available” I have not found it in electronic form in the report, on the Committee’s web pages, including the resources page , or in their extranet area . (If it is there and I missed it please let me know.)

The bottom line here is that while I am not currently in a position to see how the two forms of agreement differ, it is interesting that one Reformed/Roman Catholic dialogue was able to craft a mutually agreed statement while another has not been able to do so yet.

Financial Implications — Decisions Coming To General Assemblies

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I am struck by the number of Presbyterian branches that have financial issues to deal with right at the moment. I highlighted some of these a couple of weeks ago when I posted a large block of text from the new Strategic Plan from the Presbyterian Church in America . A few brief excerpts that are relevant for today’s purpose say:

[D]espite our formal values of connectional polity and cooperative ministry, less than half of the churches of the PCA support any denominational agency or committee (less than 20 percent give at the Partnership Share level).
…
The cooperative efforts that do exist are often directed toward affinity gatherings or the ministries of large churches that have become missional expressions of the animating values of specific groups.
…
We remain an anti-denominational denomination – excusing individualistic ministry by re-telling the narratives of past abuses in former denominations, demonizing denominational leadership or movements to justify non-support of the larger church, or simply making self-survival or self-fulfillment the consuming goal of local church ministry.

I bring these up as a very good summary of where Presbyterian denominations find themselves today in these still-challenging economic times. Compared to other branches the PCA finds itself in a relatively good financial position. However, the GA will be considering this report and its recommendations for implementing a new formula for supporting the work of the Assembly.

A situation a bit more stressful is that of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland whose General Assembly held at special meeting at which they authorized raising £1 million for a special hardship fund for those impacted by the collapse of the Presbyterian Mutual Society. While this is being raised through a special appeal and not general funds, the plan will be presented to next month’s GA for approval.

To the east across the North Channel the Church of Scotland General Assembly will be debating plans to reduce expenses by disposing of property, including church buildings, and reducing ministerial staffing, as measured by FTE’s, by 10%. As the report of the Ministries Council says:

“Where there is no vision, the people perish”(Prov 28:19), declares the Wisdom writer. This was a sentiment most likely forged in crisis, addressed to people who found the pressures around too great to raise their heads and look around. These are words which speak into our current situation in the Church of Scotland, facing as we do a significant crisis in relation to ministries. A deficit budget of £5.7M is quite simply unsustainable. Given that the Ministries Council is responsible for 87% of the Church’s budget, this is a crisis for the whole Church, not just for the Ministries Council.

Which brings us to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and hard decisions that continue to be needed, right now by the General Assembly Mission Council but soon by the General Assembly itself. As followers of the PC(USA) know this is not new — the Outlook Article reminds us that over the last eight years about 250 positions have already been eliminated. Thirty of those were early retirement packages offered to staff following the February 2010 GAMC meeting. At that meeting CFO Joey Bailey presented financial projections of 15 – 20% lower unrestricted funding for 2011. The Council also approved a new set of Guiding Principles for Planning Decisions. Going into the GAMC meeting this week Leslie Scanlon of the Outlook writes:

This time, denominational leaders have warned that the cuts could mean the elimination of entire programs or areas of ministry. As council member Matt Schramm put it in February: “We may have to say goodbye to some long-treasured programs that no longer serve the needs of the church.”

Expect significant news to develop over the rest of this week as the GAMC wrestles with significant decisions.

But the 219th General Assembly will have review on some of these actions, responsibility for approving overtures with “financial implications” that will affect the GAMC’s proposed budgets, and setting per capita for the next two years. In addition, there are overtures to the GA that not only have financial implications but address the financial practices directly.

One of these is Item 03-09 (overture 72) from Great Rivers Presbytery which would add a line to the section about special committees that says “Special committees and commissions should be appointed only in very rare and exceptional circumstances, i.e. national or denominational crisis.” The rational makes clear that this is suggested for representational and procedural reasons, but knowing how the special committee I was on was constrained by budgetary considerations I know that carefully controlling the creation of special committees will put less strain on budgets.

Another more direct one is item 03-04 (overture 54) from San Diego Presbytery that would, for budgetary reasons, restore the number of GA commissioners to the lower levels before the switch to biennial Assembly meetings.

Finally, for today, there is item 09-02 (overture 34) from Sierra Blanca Presbytery requesting “the 219th General Assembly (2010) to consider that all undesignated funds flowing from the Presbyterian Foundation to the General Assembly Mission Council (GAMC), a Corporation, be allocated directly to individual presbyteries (by percentage of denominational membership) for direct dispersal to particular churches of that presbytery, as each presbytery determines.” While this overture seeks to implement G-9.0402b (“The administration of mission should be performed by the governing body that can most effectively and efficiently accomplish it at the level of jurisdiction nearest the congregation.”) the rational acknowledges that it will impact the GAMC in unspecified ways. (Although I am pretty certain someone in leadership on the GAMC has come up with at least some rough figures.)

So where does this take us? It all depends on how you view and address the challenges.

In the PC(USA) there are two proposals, one from the Office of the General Assembly, the other overture 58 from Synod of the Southwest (with five presbyteries and one synod concurring), that would review the middle governing bodies of the PC(USA) but neither of these would directly review the structure of the General Assembly and its agencies.

For the PCA the Strategic Plan suggests:

This Strategic Plan seeks to address these realities by helping the PCA identify its challenges, address them with strategies that are consistent with our biblical values, and build denominational support for implementing these strategies. The overall goal is to enable the church to work together to steward its blessings and resources to advance the cause of Christ according to the principles and priorities of his Word.

For the C of S Ministries Council they answer their opening statement that I quoted above with this statement:

Out of crisis, however, can come both vision and opportunity. The remit of the Council is: the enabling of ministries in every part of Scotland and elsewhere where appropriate, giving special priority to the poorest and most marginalized, through recruitment, training and support of recognised ministries of the Church and the assessment and monitoring of patterns of deployment of those ministries. In fulfilling this, we want to take seriously the scale of work which needs to be done, initially to 2014, then beyond towards a revitalized ministry at the end of this new decade. 2020 Vision does not imply that we can wait until 2020 to sort things out! Far from it, change must begin now and continue as a full and natural part of life for the years ahead.

Now it is up to the Assemblies to each collectively discern God’s will and lead their respective branches in the mission that they decide on. May the Lord bless them and guide them in this mission.

Update 5/24/10 – Corrected the spelling of Matt Schramm’s name.

The General Assembly Of The Church Of Scotland — What Is Making The Rounds Of The Press (And What Is Not)

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I will admit that I do use the reports that crop up in the media to help track the news from a particular Presbyterian branch. The news from the Scottish media in advance of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is no exception. But it also needs to be recognized that the Kirk itself is driving the reporting with their own press releases and associated news conferences about the business of the Assembly. (Maybe they would consider putting an RSS feed on their press releases and I could track them directly.)

I have already mentioned two reports to the Assembly that have had accounts circulate in the mainstream media. The first chronologically (second in my posting ) was the Ministries Council report with the Panel on Review and Reform. What got picked up was the reduction in staffing with coverage by many national and local news outlets including the Scotsman, Herald, Aberdeen Press and Journal, and Inverness Courier among many.

The other one that I have talked about is the second report on the Third Article Declaratory which got some coverage, but usually in association with the Ministries Council report like this article from the Herald.

While my counting of media reports is not scientific, my informal count places the second most covered story as being the third press release about the General Trustees’ report and goal of a strategic plan for buildings in the church. The coverage of this issue includes a good report from The Herald which goes well beyond the press release, as well as the Aberdeen Press and Journal and the religious news outlet Ekklesia.

It is interesting to note how the coverage spun on the fourth press release . The church gave it the headline “Women make up half of Kirk’s eldership” but the media picked up on the “sexism” (a word that does not appear in the press release but comes from a verbal response at the associated press conference) related to some congregations having no female elders and only 20% of the ministers of word and sacrament being women. Outlets that picked this up include the Aberdeen Press and Journal – “Minister Hits Out At ‘Sexism'” – and the Scotsman – “Kirk admits it is still sexist towards women ministers.” It would be interesting to know if the headlines and stories are more sensational than the press conference made this point out to be.

It is interesting that press release five on HIV/AIDS and press release seven on solidarity with persecuted Christians have gotten almost no press coverage that I can find but they have only been released yesterday and today respectively. (I will update here if a flurry of articles appear in the next day or two.)

However, yesterday’s press release on new models of church has been quickly reported on by a number of outlets including the Press and Journal, Ekklesia, and Christian Today. The new models of church part is actually not new, but is part of an on-going Ministries Council program named the Emerging Ministries Fund. What is new is the plan expressed in the Joint Report of the Mission and Discipleship and Ministries Councils on the Emerging Church to leverage this funding and study the projects underway to identify the most important features in these new models. This report to the GA is a progress report and a final report from this Joint group is not due until next year’s Assembly.

That is what the church has identified so far but two other items have been making the news. The biggest story related to the Church of Scotland right now is the British elections later this week in which it is looking likely that “son of the manse” Prime Minister Gordon Brown, will likely lose that position with seats in parliament for his party. But throughout the campaign he has appealed to his religious and humble roots with frequent references to his father, the late Rev. John Ebenezer Brown, maybe to a fault as one columnist views it.

The other item appears to have started with a story in the Aberdeen Press and Journal and has been picked up in some specialized media is regarding the work of the Special Commission on Same-sex Relationships and the Ministry. The news story appears to be trying to discern the possible outcome of the consultation with the church based on the Consultation Paper. In particular, they are looking at the section on the “Context of the Civil Law” (p. 4-5) and seeing how that could force the church in a particular direction. The section says, in part:

The regulations allow discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in relation to an occupation for the purposes of an organised religion in two circumstances. They are where the employer applies a requirement related to sexual orientation (i) so as to comply with the doctrines of the religion or (ii) because of the nature of the employment and the context in which it is carried out, so as to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion’s followers.

The legal advisers suggest that the courts will interpret the exceptions to the prohibition against discrimination narrowly and that it will not be easy to satisfy the tests… The legal advisers disagree on whether it would be easier for the Church to defend a ban on all sexual relations outside marriage. If the Church were of one mind on the issue of homosexual practice, it might be possible to argue that the ban was a proportionate means of complying with the doctrines of our religion. But having regard to the divided views of the Church, which the 2007 Report recorded, it may be that an employing organisation within the Church would have to rely on the second circumstance (ie. circumstance (ii) above).

Our legal advisers are agreed that, if the Equality Bill is enacted, there is a problem in that the civil law requires any occupational requirement which involves discrimination to be proportionate. In that context there may be greater scope for compliance with the civil law if the Church were to leave the decision whether to require celibacy of a homosexual candidate to each Presbytery and Kirk Session rather than to impose a Church-wide rule, which might be held to be disproportionate and therefore illegal. But this is not clear and it may be possible for the Church to defend a prohibition on any sexual relations outside marriage in the civil courts.

(On a side note the suggestion in there on local option would return the ordination decision to the presbytery and session as the ordaining bodies. The irony is that the civil context may end up mirroring our polity understanding.)

The newspaper may have properly assessed this situation and the way it fits within UK civil statutes and the very last line I quote from the report is the solution they predict will at least be presented to the church for their consideration as a possible resolution. But, that is not for this GA and rather it will be waiting in the wings for the 2011 meeting.

The General Assembly Of The Church Of Scotland — Review And Reform And Ministries

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Nothing like starting off with a “bang.” But Mike gave us the heads-up on this…

Monday the first two reports to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland appeared on the Kirk web site and you know they are significant when the Kirk also issues a press release . The two reports are for the Ministries Council and the Panel on Review and Reform . And I intentionally let the names run together in the title since there is a great deal of review and reform in the Ministries report.

As anyone who has served on a ministries board would expect, the Ministries Council report contains a varied set of action items (25 total) dealing with various aspects of the ordained ministry from the system of tenure, to the process of training for the ministry, to the new Priority Areas Action Plan. While all important items I will concentrate today on the part of the report that is the high-profile section, the proposal to reduce the ministerial work-force in the Kirk to “1,000 full time equivalent” posts. And this is not central office staff but parish ministers and remember that all parish ministers are paid from the General Assembly level out of their budget, not at the congregation or presbytery levels. Key among the reasons for this proposed change is the budget situation which due to the combination of economic factors and declining membership will leave the Ministries Council with a deficit of £5.7 million in 2010. Because of the payment of salary to clergy through the Ministries Council it’s budget represents 87% of the total budget of the church. The report has recommendations with both 2014 and 2020 target dates.

But as the report says “Out of crisis, however, can come both vision and opportunity.” Specifically, the Council says of their work:

Undoubtedly the most urgent part of the 2020 Vision in terms of decision-making this year will be Building for Sustainable Future Patterns of Ministries, Finance and Presbytery Planning (1.4). In presenting the overall vision for the future, the theological and economic challenges contained in the proposals for reshaping ministries, planning for variety and achieving a sustainable pattern for the future through pruning for growth, the Council recognises the size of the task ahead for all of us. In the overarching context of 2020 Vision, however, it is a task which is full of opportunity if we can grasp the vision together. The task is both theological and financial: there is a budget to be balanced and that is a financial challenge. There is also, of more lasting theological significance, the need to establish patterns of ministry for the 21st century which see the stipendiary ministries of the Church more clearly in their proper context, the ministry of all God’s people. The Council invites the General Assembly to step forward into the future boldly and with hope.

The bottom line for this assembly, and almost certainly the next few as well, will be the summary of the report of the Special Commission on the Third Article Declaratory that the church has a call from Jesus Christ to bring the Gospel to the whole of Scotland, but not an obligation to keep doing it the same way.

To this end, the section on Building for Sustainable Future Patterns of Ministry (1.4) begins with this introduction:

1.4.1 Introduction
To address the issues facing the Church in terms of ministries will require both vision and discipline. The Council has offered such vision to the General Assembly in successive years… In receiving these reports the General Assembly affirmed ‘the concept of a “mixed economy church” within the Church of Scotland, where both existing and fresh expressions of church co-exist, not at the expense of the other, but for the benefit of the whole.’ (Deliverance 4, 2008).

In reality there is nothing new in this. This is the story of the church through two millennia. In dependence on the Holy Spirit every generation has gratefully accepted the best that exists and supplemented it with fresh ideas. Change is the norm rather than something surprising in the life of a Church which moves in tune with God’s Spirit.

As we embark on a process towards balancing the budget of the Council, it is crucial to see this in context. The theological work which has been ongoing to enable a rethinking of patterns of ministry is not an innovation to try and give some positive ‘spin’ to bad news about financial cuts! Far from it: the Council has been urging serious thinking about the shape of ministries since at least 2006 because it believes this is right for the mission and growth of the Church in the new millennium. That it is now also urged upon us by the economic circumstances should not allow us to lose sight of the genuine opportunity to find a future shape for ministry which recovers more strongly our historical and reformed commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ as a ministry of all God’s people.

And the Council points out they can not do it alone and there is no single “fix.” The major “levers,” as they call them, that must work together are territorial ministry, presbytery structure, presbytery planning, training for ministries, and congregational resourcing. The report then goes on to discuss the new staffing model:

The Council is absolutely clear that the issue of creating sustainable ministries is both a theological and an economic question. Theologically, we are being challenged to create new patterns of ministry which can carry the mission of the Gospel forward in the communities of Scotland and, where appropriate, beyond. Economically, there is the stark reality of a £5.7M deficit which must be addressed at once.

Having looked carefully into this, the Council has concluded that the Church can now afford 1000 full-time ministries and 75 two-day locums.

For reference, the report says that there are currently 1,234 posts although roughly 10% are usually vacant at any time. The report allocates ministry posts across the presbyteries (Appendix 1) and explains:

It is the intention of the Ministries Council to move towards allocating each Presbytery a ministries budget which relates to the number of FTE posts. It wants to encourage Presbyteries to think creatively about ministries and believes that giving each Presbytery responsibility for its own ministries budget will help it do this.

The body of the report paraphrases the action requested in the deliverance (items 7 and 8) like this:

The Council invites the General Assembly to instruct all Presbyteries to review their plans with a view to achieving 1000 ministries by 2014. The intention is that all Presbyteries will begin this process at once seeking to implement the figure in column 4 of the table as soon as possible.

But as I quoted at the beginning “Out of crisis, however, can come both vision and opportunity.”

The need to create sustainable units in non-urban areas has often resulted in a series of linkages and/or unions, so that a minister today is often serving an area that four people might have served 50 years ago…

Now is the time to turn that notion on its head. Instead of asking, what area constitutes a viable unit that can justify the employment of a full-time minister, we should ask, what form of ministry is appropriate for the people of faith in this distinct community. If effective ministry and mission occurs in community networks we need to find ways of fitting ministry into existing communities, rather than creating artificial communities that fit a particular model of ministry.

Our planning has essentially worked with a single model of ministry, full-time Parish Ministers. While there are many places where this is the appropriate model of ministry and therefore should continue, in others places it is not.
…
While it is possible for paid and unpaid, ordained and lay people to work together, current structures do not encourage this. Those who try to work in this way often feel they are fighting against the structures rather than being assisted by them.

To this end the report lists several different types of pastoral ministry. These would include non-stipendiary ministers, bi-vocational ministers and ordained local ministers which would all be filled by individuals “assessed, trained and qualified” for Ordained National Ministry but serving at different levels of church employment possibly with additional non-church employment. In addition there are Readers who are locally trained and assessed and would receive payment just for pulpit supply.

To reach this goal the report notes the “chicken and egg problem” of planning and training.

The Ministries Council is currently engaged in a thorough review of training. Serious thought is being given to an approach to training that would lead to people serving not simply as full-time ministers of word and sacrament, but also in all the different styles mentioned. It thus makes sense for Presbyteries to begin thinking about how their mission might be enhanced if they could use people in these roles alongside full-time ministers of word and sacrament, and also to begin encouraging people to consider offering themselves for service in these roles.

Change is not easy, and at the end I’ll return the Ministry Council’s comment on that, but additional evidence for this is provided in the report of the Panel on Review and Reform where their first action item (after receiving the report) is

Approve the request for an extension of time to develop the proposals for reform set out in section 2 of the report and instruct the Panel to report further to the General Assembly of 2011.

The Panel has been involved in consultation and gathering input on at least five different models of presbytery restructuring and implications for devolved powers, resourcing, and the role and size of presbyteries, among other things. The Panel comments on the complexity of the process saying:

2.1.4 There is no one single or normative model of church life. The Panel believes an agreed model for an alternative structure should take into account the particular circumstances in which a presbytery may find itself at any given time. For example, Highlands and Islands, central belt, urban, suburban, priority area and rural charges will have a common operating structure but require sufficient flexibility according to regional and local need. The Panel recognises that one size does not fit all and invites Presbyteries to work with them on a more dynamic model for the Church.

So to develop models the Panel proposes forming “Presbytery Pilot Regions [PPRs] to plan and prepare the Church for reform.” To implement this the report says:

2.1.9 The Panel proposes a progressive implementation of these proposals to begin in September 2010. Those presbyteries choosing to participate in the pilot will work with the Panel to develop their own structures and procedures that support mission. During 2011 and 2012, more presbyteries will be encouraged to join the pilot.
…
2.3.1 The Panel proposes to test a new model of regional church by establishing a scheme the purpose of which is to encourage presbyteries to focus on mission in the local context and to experiment with different forms of operation appropriate to their own situations…This is not about structural change for the sake of it but about renewal and engagement within and beyond existing structures where the presbytery is the regional resource and support for delivery of local mission initiatives.
…
2.3.4 The Panel’s consultations with Presbyteries demonstrated their wish to be mission-oriented rather than administration-driven. The primary objective of the pilot scheme is to strengthen presbyteries in ways that enable them to further the mission of the Church, to share the Gospel with all, and to provide resources and effective encouragement for the total Christian effort within the region. They would need to be adaptable to change and continual review, flexible enough to be aware of the possibilities for different forms of ministry, and open to exploring new directions where missional imagination could be realised.

The report then goes on to discuss at great length the vision of the church and the role of presbyteries as well as aspects of implementation of the pilot plan. It does not discuss the structure or plan for any pilot region since that is to come from the pilot region itself. This section of the report concludes with this:

2.20 A Church under reconstruction and unafraid of change

The Book of Nehemiah
is an important one for church
leadership. It is a significant model for the church
today: the origin of vision through prayer, the need to
share vision, and enable and empower others to become
involved in making it happen, and the need to maintain
leadership through periods of conflict and opposition.
(Panel on Review and
Reform, Strategy Paper, 2009)

2.20.1 Nehemiah challenged his people with a compelling vision to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. He created an atmosphere which encouraged people to speak up. He recruited the leaders of the city to do the work. He used forty leaders with their teams working side-by-side and shoulder-to-shoulder to rebuild the wall. Some built large sections; others built next to where they lived. They each did according to their ability and resources. The wall was just the pilot project for Nehemiah’s plan to restore the nation. He had mechanisms in place to enable feedback about progress.

2.20.2 The Panel has tried to follow Nehemiah’s model as it works to

1. offer a method to determine an alternative presbytery structure
2. ensure that enough time is allowed to do the task thoroughly
3. highlight the financial implications of reform
4. ensure the appointment of staff with the appropriate skills
5. provide training in place for those who need it
6. create an opportunity for all presbyteries to participate throughout the process.

2.20.3 It is our reformed tradition that we have been able to improve – sometimes quite radically – yet we retain our identity and our sense of calling and purpose as God’s people. We must constantly seek to re-articulate our vision, re-interpreting what it means to bring the ordinances of religion to the people in every parish of Scotland through a territorial ministry.

2.20.4 The whole witness of the Bible points to a God who calls his people out and on from where they are, not knowing where they are to go, and the true image of the Church is of the community of the future and not of the past.

2.20.5 The Panel offers a vision for taking measured steps to reform the regional structure of the Church to align with a mission strategy. We are excited by the challenge and opportunity that lies before us and trust that the wider Church will become enthused by the prospect of together reforming a church whose structures would be more focused on bringing the kingdom closer to the people of Scotland.

Similarly, the penultimate part of this section of the Ministries Council report is titled “It can’t be done!” It echoes the need for a model of ministry appropriate to the local situation. I leave you with this section:

In many Presbyteries there is a belief that it will not be possible for charges to continue to serve their communities if there is a further reduction in ministries numbers. This belief is found from cities to islands. Each Presbytery faces particular issues and each Presbytery believes the issues it is facing are unique and merit special dispensation. Through its contact with Presbyteries the Ministries Council is aware of the challenges facing the Church across the country. The Council does not believe that the answer is to give one Presbytery additional ministries, which can only come at the expense of all the other Presbyteries. Instead the Council believes that the answer lies in tackling ministry using these different models.

The Council has for some time been casting a vision of a different approach to ministries. Rather than having a single model of ministry (the full-time, professional minister serving a charge whose size is determined by the need to be sustainable as a full-time post), the Council believes there needs to be a range of ministry models, some full-time and some part-time, some paid and some not. The proposal to allocate each Presbytery a ministries budget based on FTE posts will gradually allow each one to determine what patterns of ministry are best suited to serve all the communities for which it is responsible.

The GA Junkie

The Politics of Presbyterianism

Category Archives: Church of Scotland

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The 2010 Assemblies Discussing Central Points Of Presbyterian And Reformed Thought

General Assembly Of The Church Of Scotland — Being The Churh Where You Are

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Financial Implications — Decisions Coming To General Assemblies

The General Assembly Of The Church Of Scotland — What Is Making The Rounds Of The Press (And What Is Not)

The General Assembly Of The Church Of Scotland — Review And Reform And Ministries