Scotland: what to do?

Many gospel churches within the Church of Scotland are under stress at the present time.

Ministers and congregations are seeking God’s wisdom as to whether to try to stay within or to leave and cut their ties with their denomination. Crucial decisions will be made in the next few months.

This follows the vote by the General Assembly of the Church in May to officially allow gay ministers to take on parishes.

A line crossed

Those who wish to remain faithful to Christ see such a move as in direct contradiction of the Scriptures and therefore of the Articles of their denomination which state: ‘The Church of Scotland adheres to the Scottish Reformation; receives the Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as its supreme rule of faith and life; and avows the fundamental doctrines of the Catholic faith founded thereupon’.

There is a recognition by many that a line has been crossed. Writing his pastoral letter, ‘From the Minister…’, William Philip, of St. George’s-Tron Church, Glasgow, said: ‘The decision of the General Assembly this year has set a clear “trajectory” … that leads away from the Christian Scriptures, the Christian gospel, and the love of Christ himself’. He continued: ‘If there is some comfort in all this, it is that God has now granted clarity as to the true position and direction of our denomination’.

Two opinions

Speaking at a meeting of evangelical ministers and elders on June 17 to consider what to do in the light of the denomination’s decision, Martyn Allen, retired minister from Chryston Church of Scotland and Chair of the Crieff Fellowship, said that two opinions would be sincerely held. The first is to act and work towards leaving the denomination; the second to wait and see what happens, believing that the direction taken is reversible.

Though the General Assembly in May called for a new report by 2013 on both proposals it had adopted and on allowing ministers to bless gay and lesbian relationships, Martyn Allen said that, though others were of a different view, he himself felt that things would not be able to be reversed. He also counselled that those contemplating leaving the denomination should seek to act together. With these two possibilities in mind, David Robertson of the Free Church of Scotland in Dundee has written to encourage evangelicals who take different paths in this matter to continue in fellowship and think the best of one another. (An edited version of David’s article is also in this month’s EN.)

Gilcomston

One of the congregations expected to seek to break away from the denomination is Gilcomston South Church in Aberdeen. This was the church where William Still exercised his influential biblical ministry from 1945-97. His successor and current minister of the church, Dominic Smart, told BBC Scotland: ‘The thing we disagree with is the way in which the Bible seems to have been marginalised’. He added: ‘Our decision is not a knee-jerk reaction. It is the culmination of careful study, sincere discussion and prayer over the last two-and-a-half years’.

In his July Minister’s Letter, Dominic Smart wrote that, were Gilcomston to withdraw from the Church of Scotland, ‘in terms of government we’d stay Presbyterian’. However, in association with others, he made it clear that this would be a different kind of Presbyterianism from that with which the congregation had previously been involved. He says: ‘There simply isn’t a single reference (in the New Testament) to anything called ‘church’ that describes a top-down hierarchy of courts modelled on a civil legal system, that relies on pitting brother against brother in order to make a decision and that exerts a centralised bureaucracy on congregations’.

High Church, Hilton

Peter Dickson, who leads High Church, Hilton in Aberdeen, commented to EN: ‘Every congregation faces a unique set of difficulties and challenges due to the hugely different circumstances, lengths of evangelical ministries and constitutions determining the ownership of buildings. But what many evangelical ministers and congregations share and have in common is a clear understanding that it will be impossible for the Church of Scotland to now ever reverse the series of decisions which have been taken over the past two and half years.

‘It is very obvious in our situation that there is no pathway ahead which does not involve enormous cost and potential division within the fellowship. What matters, then, is that each step is taken seeking the greatest possible honour for the gospel. Even when it becomes clear what the right thing to do is, it is not always obvious when to do it.’

If congregations seek to leave the denomination, they will doubtless face many legal difficulties. Often in these situations there is dispute over to whom any church buildings belong, whether the local congregation or the denomination. Facing such problems congregations need to stay united and be clear as to their greatest allegiance. The situation requires our prayers.