It’s time Christianity in Scotland got out of its ‘encultured’ yogurt/jelly like status and instead had more of a specifically Christian taste.

I have just spent a whole afternoon reading Assembly reports from the Free Church and the Church of Scotland. It many ways it was not edifying reading. The state of the Church in Scotland is not good. We seem to have been saying this for years and people have been complaining that we are just a ‘Jeremiah’, exaggerating the badness of the situation – and yet the truth is that the half has not been told.

In a Hole….
Let’s deal first with the Church of Scotland. It is in a hole….and keeps digging deeper. The scale of the crisis is becoming clear. Consider the following:

1) The Church is losing £5 million per year and will run out of reserves by 2017.

2) There are proposals to sell 1500 out of 3,000 church properties to help fill the financial black hole.

3) It is also proposed to cut 30 full time ministers posts per year over the next five years.

Furthermore the decline in church membership continues and there is the continuing debacle over the question of allowing practising homosexuals to be ministers within the church. All this is not hopeful but none of it is new.

However the full horror of the situation only came home in a press report which was headlined in The Scotsman ‘Kirk admits it is still sexist towards women ministers’. Note that this report came entirely from a press release from the Church of Scotland itself and was based on a report to this year’s General Assembly.

In other words the Church of Scotland is issuing press releases criticising the Church of Scotland.

Why? What strange kind of spin is this? Why does the Church of Scotland want the press to publish this kind of material? Much as this might appear to be humble contrition, it is in fact indicative of what is wrong with the Church. Why? Because it is the Establishment playing at church politics.

This is not a report advocating repentance. It is a report pointing the finger, especially at conservative evangelicals ‘including congregations in the Central Belt” (shock, horror – subtext here is ‘we except this kind of backward thinking in the Highlands, but not in the sophisticated Central Belt’). And here is where the real problem lies.

No Opinions Allowed…
Moria Whyte, the council associate secretary, told the press: “I just feel that it has been the law of the Church for 42 years, so I don’t feel it should be an issue at all. It’s not an issue that’s going to change, it’s not something somebody can have an opinion on…it’s not a matter of conscience”.

You have to read that statement twice to get just how horrendous it is. In 1966 the Church of Scotland allowed the ordination of women elders, in 1968 this was followed by women ministers. At the time it was made perfectly clear that this was ‘permissive’ legislation. In the years that have followed there were no Acts which made it compulsory and yet we have now reached the situation where not only is it compulsory for every Church of Scotland to agree with the ordination of women, but it is now ‘not something that somebody can have an opinion on’.

Understand how serious this is. The Church of Scotland allows office bearers to have opinions about the resurrection, human sexuality, the person of Christ and many other teachings, which are contrary to 2,000 years of Christian tradition and the teaching of the Scriptures. But after 42 years of a permissive Act of Assembly, we are being told it is not even permissible to have a contrary opinion!

The doctrine of Assembly infallibility has replaced the doctrine of scriptural infallibility. And the Kirk boasts about it and sends out press releases rejoicing in its new found status! Let evangelicals be fully aware of the consequences of allowing permissive legislation on ministers in civil partnerships – within a decade it will be compulsory.

Of course there are practical consequences of this. You would expect an ex-cathedra Church to be an authoritarian Church – and so this report proves. It is suggested that a more diligent watch be kept on candidates for the ministry, whilst those obscurantist congregations who would rather go by the Scriptures than the dictates of the Assembly, should be dealt with.

Counter Counter-Cultural
In addition to this the report warns that there are people who want to reposition the church as a ‘counter cultural church’ instead of being ‘modernising, forward-thinking and encultured’ Mrs. Whyte told the press that this was ‘absolutely contrary to everything the Ministries Council is trying to do in its report this year’.

So there we have it. Our self-styled ‘liberals’ who in theory espouse radicalism and change, are in fact ‘encultured’. This ‘yogurt’ Christianity is about as far removed from the radicalism and counter-cultural Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is possible to be. Despite the jargon it is a fundamentalistic conservative position, conserving the values of a secular culture which largely rejects God, and oppressing those who seek to live according to the freedom and criteria of the Gospel. At a time when the culture is that of a rampant militant secularism in which Christians are under increasing pressure, persecution and discrimination, we need the church to be counter cultural. It is little wonder that our brothers and sisters in the Church of Scotland are confused, hurting, discouraged and looking for alternatives.

An Alternative Church?
At one level it would appear that the Free Church should be a natural alternative to the Church of Scotland for Presbyterian Christians who long for a biblical renewal and revival in Scotland. We are after all solidly conservative theologically, bible-centred and Presbyterian.

And yet there are several reasons that would prevent us uniting together. We too are in great danger of collapse. Firstly we are far too small and still declining – our finances are precarious and our plans (like the C of S) are more suited for managed decline and not gospel expansion in an aggressively secular culture.

Even more importantly than size is the question of whether we are prepared to be a Gospel and bible centred church. To some people within the Free Church this would appear a ridiculous question to ask, but it is the key question.

Can we really say that our allegiance is to the Gospel when it seems that we care more about the mechanics of public worship, than we do over the state of our nation and the fate of the lost? How we conduct the current debate on public worship, and in particular the basis on which we make a decision, as well as the decision we make, is far more about whether we are a Gospel, Christ and Bible-centred church, than it is about outward forms of worship.

I am afraid that I do not have much confidence in this respect. Just as the ‘liberal’ establishment in the Church of Scotland do not think it is permissible to have another opinion on the ordination of women, so the ‘conservative’ establishment in the Free Church do not think it is permissible to have a different opinion on the issue of worship.

Both will argue from the premise ‘it is the law of the Church’ to which the Scripture is in practice subordinate. In theory the Free Church holds to the principle of sola scriptura, but I suspect that is just a label rather than a way of life or a modus operandi. Scripture has become subservient to the traditions, rules and politics of the Church.

That is how we end up with the almost incredible position that office bearers will say ‘yes, I do not accept that ours is the only way to biblically worship and therefore our position (that every other way is wrong) is unbiblical’, but then in the same breath say ‘but I am bound by my vows to vote against any kind of change’. How did we get to a position where office bearers in a Reformed Church think that the essence of the Church is to be Never Reforming?!

If the problem for our brothers and sisters in the Church of Scotland is that the establishment is too compromised with the culture, what then of those of us in the Free Church? The danger is that we end tasteless and ineffective because we go to the opposite extreme. We have our own culture – narrow, traditional, ethnic, more concerned about preserving a particular ecclesiastical identity, rather than being salt and light within the culture.

A small example of this inwardlookingness is the recent decision to drop apologetics from the Free Church College course – at a time when there has never been a greater need or a greater demand for Christian apologetics! Perhaps we are the salt but we are firmly in the salt cellar – and unless we are shaken up are not much use. If the salt has lost its saltiness then what use is it? – except to be thrown out.

Spice and Salt…..
Yet there is an alternative – both to the conservatism of the yogurt liberals, and the rigid traditionalism of those for whom the bread of life has become stale. It is for the spice and hope of the Gospel. A wonderful example of this is demonstrated later in this edition of The Record.

When the Watoto choir visited us in Dundee we were not just given cute children singing in that wonderful African way. We were shown children who had been brutalised by war, and orphaned by Aids, who were full of joy, hope and faith in Christ. It was very uncomfortable for the ‘non-religious’ and indeed for many of the religious in the audience. But it was a tremendous testimony to the power of the Gospel and a demonstration of how it works. We need to get back to that.

The Church of Scotland seems beyond repair. We will soon see if the Free Church draws back from the edge of the abyss or if we too are finished. Who knows but it may be that in a post-Christendom culture the age of the denomination has ended?

Perhaps Ron Ferguson was right when he wrote in The Herald, “The churches will not disappear, but they need radical reformation. The current problems are literally a Godsend”. Right now Scotland and the UK need as many Bible centred, Christ glorifying, radical individual congregations as we can get. It would be wonderful if the Free Church was to be a denomination which consisted of, planted and encouraged such congregations (and on a more positive note we should be encouraged in this respect by, and encourage the work of the Home Missions Board in general, and Neil Macmillan in particular).

If that is not to be the case then those of us who share the same vision should at the very least be considering Gospel partnerships and Gospel networks, with believers of whatever denomination. It’s time Christianity in Scotland got out of its ‘encultured’ yogurt/jelly like status and instead had more of a specifically Christian taste. Adding spice and backbone will ensure that we are a far tastier dish – it will nauseate some, but many will also taste and see that God is good.

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). David went to Saint Peter’s in 1992 when the congregation had seven members. He was sent by the denomination to do a ‘redevelopment charge.’ There were people in the Free Church that thought David was going to go there and bury that congregation, but God in His mercy has built up that congregation to a sizable congregation, especially for Britain. 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.