Church Without Walls V
CRISIS - WHAT CRISIS?!
Sermon preached at Barclay Church, Edinburgh by Rev D. Graham Leitch
12 May 2002

As part of the series of services from which this web page is adapted the nature of the crisis presently facing the Church of Scotland was summed up and solution proposed in relation a fourfold crisis:

A MINISTRY CRISIS
A MEMBERSHIP CRISIS
A MONEY CRISIS
A MISSIONARY CRISIS

What follows is a summary of this presentation. For ease of understanding the material has been re-arranged and presented in a different format,

1
A MINISTRY CRISIS

There’s a MINISTERIAL MANPOWER crisis. Already there are 175 parishes vacant, with many unable to find a minister. Through death, retirement ,or ministers leaving parish ministry, the Church of Scotland is losing its parish ministers at the rate of more than one per week.

Meanwhile the number of candidates coming in to the full time ministry of the church is reducing - to take just two years as examples. It is projected that in 2003 (next year) the church will lose 57 of its ministers. But only 14 are expected to be ordained. In 2004 the church is predicted to lose 74 of its ministers - but only 23 are expected to be ordained.

It isn’t hard to see the problem - with three or four times as many leaving parishes (through retirement, death or for others reasons) as going into them - not enough ministers!! Already there are 175 vacancies - in just five years time there will be twice as many - an estimated 350 parishes will be without a minister!!

2
A MEMBERSHIP CRISIS

Secondly, there’s a MEMBERSHIP CRISIS - When the present Church of Scotland was formed in 1929, 26% of the total population of Scotland belonged to the Church of Scotland - at its peak in 1942 27% of the population was in membership. By 1967, 25 years later, this had fallen - but only by 2% - a quarter of Scotland’s adults (25%) were still members of the Church of Scotland!

But with the 1960’s came a dramatic increase in the rate of the church’s decline - it changed from a trickle to a torrent - and in the last forty years the Church’s membership has been reducing year on year - not by a few hundred or even a few thousand but by between 15,000 and 19,000 every year.

This is reflected in church membership throughout the country.

Our own congregation is commonly regarded as one of the most healthy and strong in our Presbytery. But since the union in 1980 between Chalmers Lauriston and Barclay Bruntsfield Churches the membership has declined from over 800 then to under 500 today!!

This membership crisis isn’t someone else’s problem - it’s our problem too!! In the past ten years the number of members admitted to our own congregation by profession of faith has been steadily dropping.

.... it isn’t someone else’s problem - it’s our problem....

In 1873 (8 years after Barclay Church was first opened for worship) no less than 103 young people stood at the front of this church to confess their faith in Jesus Christ and were welcomed into membership in a six month period. In a six year period today the number admitted by profession of faith is less than 10. The number of new members is to be counted no longer in hundreds or even in tens but in ones and twos - one this year, maybe two next year and none the year after!!

And, despite occasional exceptions, this pattern is general throughout the length and breadth of Scotland.

The Board of National Mission, in its report to the 2002 General Assembly , points out that, if the rate of decline over the past 20 years continues into the future, the Church of Scotland will be extinct by the year 2050!!

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A MONEY CRISIS

Third, and in part it’s related to the membership crisis of course, there is a MONEY CRISIS. At the local level many churches are struggling to meet their basic costs and is some cases see mounting sums used or impossible amounts needed just to make their buildings wind and watertight. The number of congregations unable to be self-financing is growing.

At the same time, at the national level, to maintain its existing services the church has had to live beyond its means!! Commissioners to the 2002 General Assembly will hear that the Board of National Mission spent £500,000 more than it received. So did the Board of Parish Education! The Board of Communications deficit was only £264,000! While the Board of Social Responsibility spent £3,269,000 more than it received and had an actual operating deficit of over £5 million in the financial year to December 2001.

While these sums are met from the Boards Capital reserves (its accumulated investments), there is clearly, and likely to be, a growing problem in maintaining the present level of the churches work.

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A MISSIONARY CRISIS

Finally, there is a MISSIONARY CRISIS. When I say that the church has a missionary crisis I don’t want to be misunderstood. I’m not speaking about world mission but about HOME MISSION! I’m not talking about winning others to faith and making followers of Christ in Africa and India, in Asia or China! I’m talking about making disciples at home here in Scotland!!

Of course it would be an encouragement if God called out from amongst us - as he so frequently did in the first fifty years of this church’s life - young men and women (and perhaps the not so young!) to serve him in the foreign mission field. For this we should long and pray! But as needy to day is the home mission field. The church has all but lost the art of making disciples -and of winning the unchurched for Jesus Christ.

The church has relied for too long upon its history and traditions and operated upon the assumption that it doesn’t need to GO to others because others will COME to it.

The Church of Scotland has relied for too long upon its history and traditions and operated upon the assumption that it doesn’t need to GO to others because others will COME to it.

“I will make you fishers for others” Jesus told Simon and Andrew and James and John. Today’s church leaders find themselves all to often in the role of mere aquarium keepers, endeavouring to provide food or expected to provide a comfortable environment for the diminishing number of fish in the ecclesiastical tank!!

What is the Spirit saying to the churches - and saying to the Church of Scotland today - about these areas in its church life?

MINISTRY IN THE 21st CENTURY

Take first its MINISTRY. I have taken the three words FOCUS, FRESHNESS and FULLNESS to sum up what I believe needs to happen if the MINISTRY of the church is to serve it well into the future.

i) FOCUS OF MINISTRY
I choose the word FOCUS first. Ever since the Reformation the focus of the church’s ordained ministry has been on WORD and SACRAMENT. A reformed church is one in which the Word of God is faithfully preached and the Sacraments of the Church, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, are properly administered.

In effect and almost universally these activities have taken place IN the church and FOR the church. Where has the Word of God been preached - from the pulpit. For whom have the sacraments been administered - for the congregation.

Of course this made more sense at the time of the Reformation in a Christian nation. The nation has changed but the church is lagging behind. - the ministry of Word and Sacrament is still at the heart of the church’s understanding of its ordained ministry. As a result the focus of the ordained ministry is upon the congregation, the membership - upon insiders not outsiders!!Now the feeding and building up of Christians in the Word and the celebration and enjoyment of the sacraments is good - BUT!

THE NEED FOR EVANGELISM
The focus must change and evangelism must be given greater priority in ministerial training and greater part in the minister’s work. Indeed arguably it is not so much ministry to believers that the church urgently needs today as the evangelism of unbelievers. It isn’t just a new mindset the church of tomorrow needs but a new kind of ministry.

Many ministers today are weighed down with the continuing burden of the church’s fabric and financial problems - which act like a ball and chain weighing down the minister and wearing out the church.

Others are conducting up to 150 funerals a year leaving time for little else.

It isn't 150 extra ordained MINISTERS the church needs today as much as advocated and inspirers and leaders of a new evangelism that combines a faithful and imaginative proclamation of the Gospel with radical demonstrations of its power to change life and society today at the local as well as the national level. A new focus in ministry is called for if the ministry is to serve the church well into the future.

The emphasis on ministry to believers is important, but it is our MISSION TO UNBELIEVERS - the winning of new Christians, the making of disciples, the converting of the unbelievers of today and tomorrow - that is the urgent thing.
Feeding the flock of is fine - but we must start catching fish as well (forgive the mixed imagery!).

It isn’t just a new mindset the church of tomorrow needs but a new kind of ministry.

ii) FRESHNESS OF MINISTRY
Second comes FRESHNESS - the pressures and difficulties faced by congregations generally and by ministers in particular today mean they require and deserve more encouragement and support than they often get either from their congregations or from the central church.

I mean spiritually, not practically. At the Reformation, the Report points out, the birth of Presbyteries lay in the “weekly exercises” for ministers to find spiritual support for their pastoral and evangelistic calling - we need to recover something of this again today.

To quote the Report:
“The perception of many...is of a Presbytery as a necessary irrelevance..necessary for maintaining the system but irrelevant except in the case of a vacancy or readjustment.....”

As the report points out, the Presbyteries of today are mainly to do with legal procedures and admin-istrative, technical and business matters.

If the Church is to recover its vitality it seems certain that the church must somehow free its Presbyteries from the weight of their administrative and legislative functions to pastor its ministers more effectively and offer them spiritual encouragement and contribute to the building of vision.


ii) FOCUS OF MINISTRY
Still on ministry - the third word I have chosen is FULLNESS - for there is a need for the church to recover the scriptural notion of gifts and ministries not belonging to the one - THE minister - but to the many - the people!!

“The Report of the Special Commission anent Review and Reform encourages the church to return the ministry of the Gospel to the people of God.”

(Readers are referred to Chapter 7 for a fuller treatment of ministry as the task of the whole people of God - the recovery of this Biblical notion is essential to the future health of the Church of Scotland in all its parts)

MEMBERSHIP IN THE 21st CENTURY

Moving from the MINISTRY MANPOWER crisis to the MEMBERSHIP crisis. What I’ve said already about a change of focus or emphasis in the Church's ministry - from feeding flocks to catching fish - is relevant. What I'm going to say about our missionary crisis will be relevant too.

For now, I merely offer as an observation - not original but certainly important, that in today’s culture people are not “joiners” - this is not just the case when it comes to religion - it applies as much in the political and social spheres too - to quote the report:

“Membership is alien to people who see life as a journey or who want a real challenge. Church Membership seems too static for the searchers and tamely passive for the adventurers. They are looking for looser patterns of belonging that make a real difference to the world.”

That this is so is amply demonstrated by the consistent lack of interest in membership, as such, amongst the young within our own congregation.

IF THE CHURCH IS TO ATTRACT AND DISCIPLE THE YOUNG AND EFFECTIVELY INCORPORATE THEM INTO ITS LIFE. IT MUST FIND NEW WAYS OF FOSTERING RELATIONSHIPS WITH THEM WHICH LEAD TO ASSOCIATION, TO THE BIRTH OF FAITH AND THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP.

MONEY IN THE 21st CENTURY

Which brings me to the question of money. In revenue terms the church is short of money nationally, It doesn't have enough to maintain its present activities. In capital terms, however, the Church is comparatively wealthy. It has around £300 million apart from its properties (made up mainly of churches and manses).

While the financial capital held by the national church generates substantial income which is used to support the church’s existing work nationwide, the Commission has recommended, and the Assembly accepted, that over the next 4-5 years £7.5 million be released to establish and develop major innovative projects in Christian mission throughout the length and breadth of Scotland.

What the church is doing nationally, we may need to consider locally. The release of capital to fund imaginative projects in Christian mission, where this is possible, could play a significant part in the regeneration of the Church’s life throughout Scotland.

After all, what the Church needs is not more money but more people, more committed Christian believers, more men and women choosing the Christian path, joining the Christian Church and living the Christian way. The way to a growing income is an expanding membership base.

The way to a growing income is an expanding membership base.

MISSION IN THE 21st CENTURY

Finally, we turn to what I’ve called the missionary crisis and to what the Report calls “the lost art of making disciples” Feeding the flock is fine, but we must start catching fish!!

I’ve already emphasised the need for a new focus in ministry which gives higher priority to outreach. Alongside the traditional ministry, complementing it - or as part of it - we need those with evangelistic gifts and training. As the Report says:

“The traditional minister’s monopoly on the term ‘ministry’ needs to be broken.......we recommend that in our time we recognise, recruit, select and train evangelists who can help share the Gospel with others.”

What the Commission says is true, as far as it goes, yet we must go further still. In his book “Let my People Grow” Michael Harper is right to say that “the main weight of evangelism should be part of the regular life of the church, not an occasional whim or fancy of the minister...” And he adds, “the church today does not need evangelists; it needs to begin to be evangelistic...a church which does not give its life to others will ultimately lose its life...”

“the church today does not need evangelists. . . it needs to begin to be evangelistic”