The Key Question – is, or should be, what does the Scripture say? And what has become abundantly clear over the past couple of years…is that our current practice is by no means the only mandated practice in the Bible

The Board of Trustees report (which can be found here: Report on Worship) [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]

makes several recommendations, but essentially amounts to Free Church worship staying as it is. However, it is expected that the report will be challenged by Rev. Alex MacDonald, minister of Buccleuch Free Church, Edinburgh, who will ask for congregations to be given liberty to sing what their elders wish, as long as it corresponds with the Scriptures and the theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith. There is no suggestion of congregations being forced to change from psalms to hymns. All of the proposed amendments and addenda can be found here:……..

This is the first time that a plenary assembly has taken place since 1843 and the total number of Commissioners is expected to be in the region of 200. The Commissioners will fill the lower auditorium of the assembly hall, but the public will be able to watch and listen from the gallery.

The first meeting will be on Thursday 18th from 6pm to 10pm.

The second meeting will be on Friday 19th from 9am to 5pm (or earlier, if the Assembly concludes before then).

The issue of sung praise is one over which there are strong feelings. Please pray that there will be harmony amongst Commissioners, and that the Assembly’s debate and decision will be led by the Holy Spirit for the well-being of the Gospel in Scotland.

Above is the lead article in the November Record (FCS magazine). Having just done an interview with a Dutch newspaper, I thought it might be helpful to those of you who don’t get the Record, in order to help you understand what is happening in the Free Church and as we lead up to, at one level, an important Assembly that will help determine whether the Free Church has a future….

The Council of Edinburgh
There have been great councils and assemblies in the history of the Church – called to deal with some important points of doctrine or some ecclesiastical controversy; Chalcedon, Nicea and Westminster, immediately spring to mind. And now this month we have the Council of Edinburgh – a plenary Assembly called by the Free Church of Scotland to deal with the subject of worship.

OK, it’s not exactly in the same league, and it would be ridiculous for us to attach so much importance to a decision made by a tiny church, in this small nation. Even more ridiculous when the issue is not Chalcedon Christology, or the Westminster view of the Scripture. And yet this month’s Assembly will have great implications for many of us in the Church that the Lord has called us to serve in, and could have significance beyond our own borders.

There has been a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding about what is happening, so perhaps it will be helpful to clear some of this up, by answering some of the questions that have been put to us.

Why a Plenary Assembly? This started a few years ago when various issues concerning worship were raised by different people within the Free Church, particularly on the matter of instrumental music. The Worship committee were asked to provide a justification for the Free Church’s current practice, which is to ban the use of all musical instruments in public praise, and to restrict the content of that praise to either the psalms or paraphrases of the Bible.

Neither the committee nor the Assembly were able to provide that justification, at least to the satisfaction of many office bearers in the Free Church and so a process was set in place whereby the Trustees of the Church were asked to investigate the way ahead.

They commissioned a series of papers, looking at the issues involved (some of which have already been summarised in The Record), consulted Kirk Sessions and Presbyteries (one third of which indicated a desire for change) and in September held a plenary conference in Dingwall. The plenary Assembly, which will consist of every Presbytery, will meet on November 18th and 19th to discuss and vote on the options available to the Church.

What are the options? In practice the only realistic options are to allow the use of musical instruments and other scriptural songs, or to retain the status quo. Please note that there is no option to make hymns or musical instruments compulsory. Just as each Kirk Session is free to choose its own version of the Bible, so each would be free to choose, within biblical parameters, what the congregations sung praise should be.

What are the dangers of changing? It is certainly always more comfortable in the short term to stay with the status quo. And there are considerable dangers in allowing change.

· Disunity – Whilst the danger of the church splitting has been grossly exaggerated by those who use it as a cudgel to prevent change, there is concern that there will be a great deal of disharmony.

· Decline – Rather than encouraging growth, opponents of change think that a change would precipitate decline in the denomination. Sometimes it is pointed out that the Free Church began to decline after hymns were introduced in the 19th Century. This is to say the least erroneous history – the most that could be argued is that the hymns were a symptom of the decline, but in reality the causes of decline were not hymn singing, but an undermining of the authority and sufficiency of the Word of God.

· Disharmony – There is also the danger that change will result in a free for all and that the Free Church will head down the entertainment/worship wars route of much of the modern evangelical church. There is the very real danger that the psalms might be squeezed out.

· Doctrinal Error – If we allow the singing of other material is there not the danger of allowing heresy to be sung. Yes – in the same way that allowing people to preach rather than just read the sermons in the Bible, or pray, rather than just pray the prayers of the bible, is a danger of heresy coming in. And therefore it should be ‘policed’ in exactly the same way. Any congregation which preaches, prays or sings that which is unbiblical should be disciplined.

What about legal action? The argument goes that if we change our position then this will open us up to legal action because we will be changing our constitution. It is a sign of the lack of spiritual and historical understanding within the church that this argument is taken seriously by some. No Free Church man should ever contemplate the notion that the State or the civil courts have any right whatsoever in telling the church how to worship. All office bearers in their vows claim to uphold the Claim, Declaration and Protest of 1842, which is part of the constitution of the church and which explicitly declares ‘the exclusion of the civil magistrate’ from determining the worship, discipline and government of the Church, and declares that the Church has ‘exclusive and ultimate jurisdiction’ in these matters. You don’t need to consult a lawyer to know that King Jesus is head of the Church and only He has the right to tell us how we are to worship.

What are the dangers of remaining with the status quo?

· Disunity – The current official position is impossible – when more than one third of office bearers have already indicated that they do not agree with the current position then it becomes impossible to ignore that, and equally impossible to seek to discipline them – as the 1905 and 1910 Acts would require. To officially retain the status quo would undermine the discipline and government of the Church, unless the current legislation were to be enforced and then that would split the Church.

· Decline – Another danger is that the continuing steady decline of the Church would continue….ministers, elders and members would continue to drift away, and would not be replaced by new people coming in. Those of us who are involved in church planting and evangelism feel that whilst it is not totally impossible in the current situation, it is a bit like being asked to box with one arm tied behind your back.

· Disharmony – Finally the other great danger is just simply that of the unworkableness of the current situation– where public worship is defined in such a narrow way that we end up with benedictions being pronounced and then the congregation praising God with a hymn and musical accompaniment immediately afterwards. Where it is ok to sing Amazing Grace at a youth conference, women’s conference, men’s fellowship, or in other churches but it becomes a sin on a Sunday morning in a Free Church. It is difficult to realise how ludicrous that appears (and is) to almost everyone else in the world.

· Doctrinal Error – There is a real fear that despite paying lip service to the mantra ‘sola scriptura’, in effect the Free Church is governed more by tradition and the perception of being ‘Free Church’, rather than the Scriptures. At the plenary conference I was told by more than one elder that there concern was not with the theology but the practice of being ‘Free Church’. To them unaccompanied exclusive psalmody is the raison d’être of the Free Church. Such a view is a serious doctrinal error, taking away from the key doctrines of the sufficiency of Scripture, the headship of Christ, the unity of the Church, and the worship of God.

Are elders and ministers not bound by their ordination vows to vote against change? This is one of the most commonly believed myths which results in men, who do not agree that the current position is the only biblical one, voting for what they know to be wrong. But it is unnecessary. The ordination vows do not mention either exclusive psalmody or musical instruments. They refer to the ‘form of worship as presently practiced and allowed’. That form of worship can, and has been, changed several times during the course of the church’s history, with the ordination vows remaining exactly the same. Furthermore the vows do not just refer to worship but to the doctrine, discipline and government of the church. No one claims that they were bound by their vows when the government of the church is changed.

There are three views of the vows that are held.

1) Some believe the vows are limited to what goes on in the Free Church and do not include what happens elsewhere, or personal opinion. However the current wording does not allow that. To allow/encourage mental reservations about worship is to open the door to mental reservations on government and doctrine…. and then the discipline of the church will be gone.

2) Others believe that the vows are personal vows before God and bind us absolutely to the current position on worship so that if we change our views, we have to resign our office. This has the effect of making the current position unchangeable (except narrowing) and making the church infallible. For a Reformed Church to claim that the church cannot be reformed is a contradiction of all that the Free Church stands for.

3) Still others believe that the vows are serious vows which bind us to the current practice of the Church, honestly and sincerely. However the vows are not just about one issue – public worship – but also the doctrines of the inerrancy and sufficiency of scripture, the church, liberty of conscience and so on. If we believe that the current position is wrong then we have the right to ask the church to change. The church then does not have the right to bind the conscience of an individual office bearer without specific and clear scriptural warrant. If there is a lack of clarity or evidence the other way then what is practiced and allowed should be changed. This latter would have the effect of maintaining the vows, maintaining the Protestant doctrine of the Church, and maintaining the discipline and government of the church – as well as the worship.

The Key Question – is, or should be, what does the Scripture say? And what has become abundantly clear over the past couple of years, as we have looked at, and examined this subject, is that our current practice is by no means the only mandated practice in the Bible – and that few of our Free Church office bearers really believe that.

We do not have the right to bind the Church, or the consciences of Christians, to that which cannot be clearly demonstrated from the Scriptures.

Given the above it is clear that that vows do not need to be changed, the constitution does not need to be changed, and even the practice of individual congregations does not need to be changed. But the Assembly legislation should be changed to allow sung biblical truth and musical accompaniment, in those congregations where it is appropriate. However this must not be a free for all. Our legislation must make clear that the Free Church is a Reformed church which holds to a Reformed position of worship. We are not a ‘broadly evangelical’ church. We are The Free Church of Scotland – we will always be a psalm singing church (though inclusive psalmody rather than exclusive) and a church that is biblically reformed in doctrine, worship, evangelism, discipline and government

David Robertson is a minister in the Free Church of Scotland. He is currently serving as the pastor of St. Peter’s Church, Dundee (a pulpit once filled by Robert Murray M’Cheyne. He serves as editor for the Free Church of Scotland Monthly magazine, as well as being chaplain to international students for the University of Dundee Football Club. This article first appeared on his blog, http://www.stpeters-dundee.org.uk/davidblog, and is reprinted with his permission.