What is in Kelvin's Head?

Here’s what I said @secsynod

11/06/2013

Here’s what I said as the Convener of the Information and Communication Board at General Synod in Edinburgh last week:

The report of the Information and Communication Board can be found on page 43 of the Blue Book. Apart from reiterating publicly my thanks to Lorna Finley the church’s Communication Officer, I shall not repeat in my presentation what can be found in that report.

Instead, I want to bring two areas of work to the synod’s attention. These are each topics in which the Board has an interest at Provincial level. However, they are areas which have a relevance in other contexts of the church too. They are engagement with the press and the issue of the online presence of the church.

Firstly, I wish to highlight the increased coverage that our church has been getting in the press. (And generally, coverage for positive reasons!) At one time, we were getting lots of column inches in the press but not always for terribly serious stories. Typically we were seen as a soft touch by journalists simply seeking the quirky and the bizarre. Now, the odd quirky story is not necessarily a bad thing – it reminds people that we are here. However, it seemed to the Board a few years ago that there was a task to be done trying to engage with issues a little more. At that time, a review of the Communications Strategy suggested that some attention needed to be paid, largely through support that could be offered by the Communications Officer to enable the church to be seen to engage with issues in public life in Scotland.

It is my view that this year, we’ve started to see that bearing some fruit – [as you can see from some of the newspaper clips that will appear on the screen].

This year there have been significant stories reported on, amongst other things, the bedroom tax, Centrica, benefits changes, secularization. These are a far cry from the puppet shows and parrots in the pulpit that we were once known for. There’s also quite a geographical spread of coverage and a number of voices being heard.

It is worth noting that there are the same numbers of column inches to fill this year as there were last year and yet not all the Christian voices which were the dominant voices of last year are still around to provide the quotes that journalists love. There has been more space recently for Episcopal voices to join in the national conversation.

I bring this to the Synod’s attention both by way of noting the hard work of those who have stuck their heads above the parapet and also by way of encouraging people to engage creatively with the press where that is appropriate locally.

It is worth noting in passing that though it has been possible to get good stories into the press that are not about same-sex marriage that remains the dominant story through which many people in the media view the church. It is my personal view that this is because of a perceived disconnect between the morality of the majority of those whom the press regard as decent upstanding members of society and the morality expressed by the churches. Whilst that perception remains, same-sex marriage will remain the key story in the minds of those who put together our newspapers.

The second major thing that I wish to draw the Synod’s attention to today is the work that is underway towards renewing the online presence of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

Questions about the website have been raised for some time and the view of the Information and Communication Board is that the time has come to renew the online presence of the church. A sub-group of the I and C Board led by the Rev Chris Mayo has been consulting within the church to this end and has now begun the work towards the new website. My expectation is that this will be done within the year that is to come.

The Scottish Episcopal Church is a church which has done pretty well in informal engagement online. The lively conversation around blogging and social networks indicates a church which has people who are not merely passive members but who are engaged in a conversation about it. Up until now, that conversation has been through informal channels and I expect that to continue.
A few years ago, I raised the possibility at synod of a website through which we communicated with one another rather than simply one which was used to disseminate news items. That challenge remains in view and those responsible for this part of the Board’s work have been speaking much more of a web presence for the Scottish Episcopal Church than of a simple site on which articles are posted.

I am grateful to Chris Mayo for taking the lead on this work and involving other members of the Board in the process.
The composition of the Board has changed this year and the work on the website is indicative of the Board developing ways of working that are changing. To be blunt, ways of working which don’t all include me as the convener. That is a positive step and needs to be the first of many as my time as convener of this Board will come to an end in a year’s time. The fact that I took a sabbatical for three months to wander the highways and byways of the Anglican churches in Canada and the USA last autumn gave a taste of an I and C Board without me on it. I’m grateful of course to those who made it possible for me to take that time out for reflection and growth. Thanks particularly to Lorna but thanks to others too. To all those who work and think about the communications field in the church. To all those who write, edit, make decisions and challenge and cajole.

My thanks to everyone.

That concludes what I want to say today and I am happy to take questions.

General Synod, Information and Communication Board, LGBT, Same Sex Marriage, Scotland, Scottish Episcopal Church

7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”

Pausing Place

25/08/2010

I missed last night’s programme, but I thought your comments were interesting.

In a sense, perhaps it’s unsurprising if the SEC is inwardly more positive about itself than the CofS. My take is that in the recent past, at least, the SEC started from a lower common denominator, not being the “local” church in the same way as the Kirk, and so it doesn’t have to contend with others saying of it “look how the mighty have fallen” in quite the same way.

As to the health of the Kirk (and the SEC for that matter), I think we need to reflect on our self-perception and to consider carefully the points and places in which a dying church (congregation or denomination) should be allowed to die gracefully, and the ways in which we might see new life emerge from the rubble.

As a young(ish!), relatively new Christian I have seen examples of (both urban and rural) SEC and Kirk congregations where there are few signs of new growth, little to draw in younger (under 50 year olds, to pick a random-ish number) new folk, and much to sustain negative preconceptions of church as boring, irrelevant and so forth.

We as a faith community need to get much better at stepping up to the mark in our creativity and engagement with our society. The sad truth is that most young adults do not know and have not heard about Jesus Christ, and unless we engage with them in ways culturally relevant to them, and which do not presuppose previous knowledge (too often taken for granted) they never will.

It troubles me, but I do think it’s true to say that in the SEC and in the Kirk we have a church sustained by the traditions and cultural reference points taught to a previous generation. Culture has shifted radically, with the result that the same will not be able to be said in 20 years time.

Our challenge is clear. Whether the Kirk and the SEC can step up to the mark to address what it means to live out the Great Commission in the 21st century is less so.

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Cal

25/08/2010

I didn’t really understand who this programme was aimed at, or even what its aim was.

Yes, numbers have fallen, but perhaps the small number of people who remain are there because they actually want to be, not because it’s the done thing on a Sunday morning.

And personally, I rather like the idea of a church “sustained by traditions”. Clearly the church has to be relevant to modern society, but in abandoning the traditions of worship then you lose the centre of why the church exists in the first place.

There was something very Presbyterian about the programme with its “we’re doomed” mentality. I find the SEC generally more positive in outlook.

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John

25/08/2010

The only book the presenter seemed to have used in his research was ‘The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000’ By Callum G Brown – indeed Callum Brown was one of the speakers. The thesis of this well argued sociological study is that “quite suddenly in 1963 something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people sending organised Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significanceâ€. That something he identifies as new media, new gender roles and a moral revolution which has dramatically ended peopleâ€™s conception that they lived Christian lives.â€ It could be said to have happened as â€œsex beganâ€ between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP as the poet Philip Larkin so famously put it.”
To balance this statistical decline the programme flagged up some of the “church without walls ” iniatives in a lame sort of way. All in all a most unsatisfactory programme that only told half the story.

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Kenny

25/08/2010

Good crit Kelvin. My reflection at the end of the programme was, “Lord, we visited this stuff over 30 years ago, and have come out of it stronger and better Church in the SEC.” Hopefully, we stopped longing for ‘the good old days’ a long time ago!

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MartinRitchie

26/08/2010

I thinking “Pausing Place” makes a good point about needing to creatively engage with society. From my own experience of working with a CofS congregation, this creative engagement is a weak spot for many.

As a counterpoint to the programme, interesting to note in the latest “Life and Work” a very positive article about a growing CofS congregation in Stornoway – and I mean really growing! So not all doom and gloom, and I’m sure there are many more examples of bright spots, just as there are in the SEC!

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Graham Vahey

28/08/2010

If the C of S disappeared completely we would be at a loss. During the dark and bleak years of Thatcher’s reign she refused to visit Scotland for 5 years. When she did she expressed shock that we had Royal Regalia and ordered it to be removed immediately for safe-keeping to England. Her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ is now historical for its condescension to the Scots. She was none too pleased to be handed two reports on poverty in Scotland by the powerful Church and Nation Committee. Indeed, it was to this Committee that the population turned to for a moral lead during Thatcherism. When James VI (‘Jamie the Saxt’) became James I in England, the population turned to senior Scottish earls for a moral lead. Unfortunately, the Piskie Church does not give a moral lead in Scotland, apart from the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the recent past. The RC Church does pronounce on moral issues. Could it not be conceivable that all the major Churches could unite in a Committee to pronounce for Scotland on moral issues as the Church & Nation Committee once did?

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Aldous N. Gaiters

01/09/2010

Speaking as a Nonjuror myself I am sure the SEC has a right to a moral voice in Scotland. Taking the US daughter church of the SEC as a model you could see where the fissures would appear. There is room for a modern liberal Christian voice, but even I an old Liberal myself, would have to fear that such a voice might appeal to only a select few.

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