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.