There has so much hurt and division caused, and so much obfuscation, smoke and bewilderment, that the sooner we have an objective, independent assessment of the conduct of all the parties involved, the better for the Church itself. This matter has gone truly global, and the whole Reformed Church family, worldwide, is talking about it.

Here is an extract from a statement about the Tron Church, Glasgow, presently on the Church of Scotland’s website:

Much of the press coverage of the situation at St George’s Tron continues to give a very one sided view which misrepresents the situation. It is about time the Church of Scotland again set the record straight.

The claims made by the former minister and his supporters are extreme. To claim that the Church of Scotland is persecuting them, intimidating them and acting like a dictatorship does not stand up to examination. Since they announced that they were leaving the Church of Scotland last June – a decision which caused a great deal of sadness in the Church – we have gone more than the extra mile to persuade them to stay, to enter into meaningful discussions with them over the Church of Scotland assets they lay claim to, and to try to come to an acceptable agreement. However they have consistently refused to hand over the congregational records and other assets, and they have turned down an offer of a tenancy arrangement for the manse. They had given us no notice of any plans to move services out of the building after 9 December.

The Church of Scotland has issued a new press statement about the Tron Church in Glasgow. You can read the whole statement on the Church of Scotland website here [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.] and I suggest that you do. It is an eye-opener.

What is obvious is that a war of words is going on, and the tone of this latest installment from the Church of Scotland comes across as impatient and bothered. The Church has been poked in the ear with a stick with a horse’s head handle, to quote Stanley Holloway’s famous monologue, and it doesn’t like it. Now it is growling back.

It also sounds quite arrogant: ‘It is about time the Church of Scotland again set the record straight.’ In a statement that accuses the former Tron congregation of behaving in a high-handed manner, this statement sounds remarkably high-handed, does it not:

We have only taken legal action as a last resort. We remain willing to engage in meaningful discussion to resolve our differences, but it is impossible for us to do so when individuals are behaving in such a peremptory and high handed manner and seemingly prefer to act on their claims to assets rather than discuss matters.

You also have to ask what the prospects are of engaging in meaningful and realistic discussion when accusations such as these are made, including an accusation of ‘questionable financial management of the former congregation’? Is that a libelous thing to have written? I’m just looking for something more dignified and measured than this. It feels very much as though the Church of Scotland is stung badly by the comments of the departing minister and congregation and is striking back.

Many of us feel now that it is impossible to see this matter objectively any longer. There are strong voices on both sides claiming to be presenting a factual account of what has taken place, and much has been claimed. The Church of Scotland’s statement says that Messengers at Arms met the minister in a side room and that the serving of papers was reasonably amicable, ‘so we have been told.’ I find that a most distressing thing to read. It completely contradicts the account of matters given by the minister. I can’t think that I would find it an amicable business in the slightest to be served with legal papers. I think that I would find it a terribly frightening matter, and one that would cause quite a considerable degree of anxiety to me at the time and to my family members when I got home and told them all about it.

It would seem that no one from the Church of Scotland was present when this happened, hence the comment ‘so we have been told.’ Presumably by the Messengers at Arms! Why was no one from the Church of Scotland, or the Presbytery, present. Someone from the Church of Scotland surely knew when the papers were to be served? Why was someone not there, then? Why were disputed matters between Christian believers left entirely in the hands of Messengers at Arms? Did no one from the Church have the courage to go and face the minister and congregation at that moment?

I would really like to have thought that the Church of Scotland would have sent someone, a minister colleague perhaps, to be on site when those papers were served. Was that the best way to proceed, to set the legal ball rolling, and then to leave it entirely to Messengers at Arms to enter a church and serve papers on a minister of the Gospel. Messengers at Arms! This is where we have got to, and it is a messy place to be.

So my question is this, why was no Church of Scotland minister or representative of the Presbytery of Glasgow on the scene to do at least something, anything, to show Christian support, love and understanding in a frightening set of circumstances, even in the midst of a heated dispute, and to ensure that the Messengers at Arms conducted themselves appropriately in such a place and in such distressing circumstances for minister, family and congregation.

And let us think about this for a moment longer, where have we got to now? Messengers at Arms have been sent in to a church. Is this not a scandalous development? Is the world not laughing at us, and at the Christ? Does anyone think that that is the right way to go about disputes between Christians, and why does the Church believe that it is an acceptable thing to collude in the sending of Messangers at Arms to a place of worship, a house of prayer. Could not an alternative arrangement have been made? Could the minister and representatives not have been asked to meet elsewhere at a time of mutual convenience, and not at the church, at the time of a prayer meeting? I’m sure they would have agreed to that. This situation is simply becoming brutal and careless, and the Church of Scotland is fast becoming the laughing stock of the Church worldwide.

My natural sympathies are with the Tron. I want to say that. If the Church of Scotland had not embarked on a discussion about the rights and wrongs of same-sex marriage and ordination standards, a thing that God always regards as a wrong, and a thing about which the Church should not even contemplate, the Tron would not have been provoked into leaving the Church of Scotland, as High Church Hilton has done in Aberdeen, as Gilcomston South Church is about to do. If the Church of Scotland had not caved in to the spirit of the age and swallowed the secular zeitgeist, the Tron would not have taken the steps it has taken. These are matters that no Church should even consider. They should not cross our radar. The very discussion of them is an affront to the Holy Spirit who inspired the scriptures and a rejection of the male/female complementarianism built into the very fabric of creation itself. All of those who argue that the Church of Scotland has not taken a decision on this matter, and that we are awaiting a report in May 2013, are fooling themselves. We have already taken decisions, locally, to accept that which God does not accept, and through silence and inaction, by evangelical ministers and elders as much as anyone else, we have accepted much more.

Evangelical ministers and elders have remained silent when ministers and elders, to their knowledge, have continued serving and ministering whilst in forms of relationship openly that have always been proscribed by the Church. We have been sleeping whilst the Church and its ministry has been undermined and compromised. There has been a tacit acceptance of biblical immorality and ministerial indiscipline. My sympathies do naturally rest with the Tron. Whatever you think about the course of action they have taken, they have not been wrong about the scriptures or about God’s holiness.

And yet the Tron will not have made no mistakes at all in the journey it has taken to this point. It cannot be the case that the Presbytery of Glasgow has got it all wrong. No one believes that. I do myself believe that the Presbytery of Glasgow has tried to reach an accommodation. I do not know if the Presbytery did enough, or as much as it could have done. But not being a member of the Presbytery of Glasgow, I do not know what has fully taken place.

So, I believe this, that the Church of Scotland should begin an independent commission of enquiry into the circumstances surrounding the secession of the congregation that occupied the Tron Church premises, as soon as it is practicable to do so, examining the conduct of the Tron, as much as it can, and opening up for scrutiny the process and the decisions adopted and made by the Presbytery and all other parties concerned in dealing with the Tron Church. There has so much hurt and division caused, and so much obfuscation, smoke and bewilderment, that the sooner we have an objective, independent assessment of the conduct of all the parties involved, the better for the Church itself. This matter has gone truly global, and the whole Reformed Church family, worldwide, is talking about it.

Claim and counter-claim has not cleared the air. The most recent statement is tetchy and irritated, by anyone’s impartial standards. The Church of Scotland needs an enquiry so that we can all get at the facts and put the matter to rest, and so that, at the very least, we don’t have a repeated disaster of approaching or comparable magnitude in some other Presbytery. The Church of Scotland is right, it is about time it set the record straight, and it ought to establish an inquiry to do just that.

Soli Deo Gloria

Louis Kinsey is a minister in the Church of Scotland, serving as pastor of St Columba’s Church in Aberdeen, on the North East coast of Scotland.  This article appeared on his blog and is used with permission.