The Mod and Machines and the Future of Scotland
If only my father could have seen me the other day standing here beside a huge tractor. My father was a plough boy at the age of twelve. He was someone who was always connected to the land. The soil was in his blood you might say. The one thing he detested was tractors. He believed that they were too big and heavy and that they would affect the quality of the soil over the years. For him there was nothing better than the horses pulling the plough.
We've moved on from that debate yet there may well be truth in what James believed. One thing is for certain more people are thinking about the soil and the importance of what we put on the soil, that might just include tractors. When you think of the shear weight of the machine I'm standing on, he could have a point.
Today I'm off to the Solas Festival at Wiston Lodge near Biggar. I'm taking part in a discussion centred around the future of Scotland. All the churches in Scotland are asking people across the country to begin to discuss what we want the future of Scotland to look like. Its an important part of the discuss that has to take place before we all begin to think about the referendum on the independence issue which will come up in 2014.
the churches in Scotland are not willing to engage at an official level in party politics, but the churches believe that it is important that we discuss what kind of Scotland we want to be part of in the future. The thing is when you start asking these fundamental questions it is inevitable that you will stray into politics. However I think it is important to think through principles before moving to the practical implications of constitutional furniture arranging.
Its the same argument we began to have away back in 1999 when I was part of the Commission set up to look at the future of the Church of Scotland. There were those who had all sorts of ideas about what the shape of the church government should look like. People who wanted to disband the offices at 121 George Street, others who wanted bigger presbyteries, but what was required was for our thinking to go much further. We required to ask ourselves. Who we were? What was the context of our world, What would shape our institution. Now we came up with four shapers.
1. We want to be shaped by the Gospel. We invited ministers and elders to lead discussion for a whole year on one of the gospels and to ask how is this informing how we live today.
2. We said we need to be shaped by friendship because as we see it at the heart of the Gospel is the story of Jesus who lived his life in relationships and friendship, often with the most unexpected of people. Thirdly we said we need to be shaped by the locality. The world in which we live. We need to understand that world and shape our messah=ge so that the world around us understands it. we need to be incarnational in the way we live. Just like Jesus. Fourthly we came to the conclusion that we needed to be shaped by the Gifts of God's people. In other words the future of the church would hinge around the people of God and their gifts. These gifts we believe come from God and are essential to be included in the future effectiveness of the Christian faith.
Now here is an interesting thing. You might ask yourself, what happened to your CWW report or for Special Commission. Well it was well received and embraced by many. However the next year a group of people came to the GA with proposals to re-organise the structures of the church. The present structures they said were no longer fit for purpose. So we underwent a two or three year reorganisation of the church. This meant that a great deal of the important thinking about what we wanted to be as a church was overlooked or put on the back burner. Instead we went through a structural re-organisation that in the end I think made very little difference to the mission of the church.
What I'm saying is that it is essential that we understand what we want to be as a nation before we come up with structural solutions. In writing this document perhaps these values that we have suggested for the church might well be good values that could be used in the debate as we think about what kind of Scotland we want.
A nation shaped by the Gospel - which as at its heart forgiveness and grace
A nations shaped by Friendship - loving our neighbours as ourselves
A nation shaped by locality- recognising the land and the culture we have been part of
A nation shaped by the gifts of its people.
You know what I think these are good starting points.
Don't you? Tell me what you think.
Posted By: italker On: 25 Jun 2012 At: 9:51pm
I’d like to add that perhaps we didn’t take enough time to let the CWW mindset change the church. The restructuring in itself was never going to produce what is required for renewal. No doubt structures can help.
The structure should be like the scaffolding that helps us put up the building. It is not the building. Too often we see the structures as the building.