What is in Kelvin's Head?

Yesterday

11/03/2013

When I came to St Mary’s (yes, nearly 7 years ago) I was installed at a splendid service at which my former bishop, the Rt Rev David Chillingworth (now our Primus) preached. In his sermon, he referred to my time at Bridge of Allan and how the people there described my ministry when he went to meet them after I had left.

The thing that he commented on in that sermon was that people had said, “Oh, the thing about Kelvin is that he knows how to throw a good party”. One or two people got the wrong end of the stick at that comment (yes, choir members, that’s you I’m talking about) and thought that my life in Glasgow was going to be all about parties in Praepostorial Towers.

What they didn’t realise at the time was that Bishop David, and indeed my former congregation, were referring to the liturgy. For various reasons, St Mary’s wasn’t a terribly celebratory church when I came here and I’m guessing that folk just couldn’t imagine that Bishop David was talking about What Goes On In Church. My installation service was a burst of great joy that people still sometimes talk to me about and I hope it was a great sign of things to come. That was the intention anyway. The truth is, I think that we’ve got something worth celebrating in church and I get no greater delight than being around when the people of God are enjoying what they’ve got to celebrate.

Thus, though I love the greater feasts of the church and try to wind everyone as far up the candlestick of joy as I dare, it is often the lesser feasts that give me the greatest kick. Generally speaking, I think that if all is well in a congregation, it is the duty and the joy of the clergy simply to let the joy out of the box and not keep it stuffed inside. Sometimes you don’t need to do much either – just let it happen. We’ve a God who says “yes”, after all.

It was only really on Thursday evening that I realised that this weekend was going to be as special as it was. Saying yes to people gets you a long way.

We had a visiting choir, from Groton School in Massachusetts. It wasn’t just that though as it is a choir run by someone who was on the musical staff here at St Mary’s when I came here – Chris Hampson. So there were friendships to be renewed and new friendships to be made. Frikki Walker, our musical maestro put them all through their paces in his own bubbly style and we were all set for a great Sunday.

But then somehow, Sunday – Refreshment Sunday, took wings. Our choir sang with the American choir and so the congregation was treated to a procession of 70 odd singers, most of whom were under twenty. I don’t know whether it was because word had got out, but we soon started to have to ask people to share service sheets and by the time we got to communion we realised we hadn’t allowed for enough communion hosts. The God of surprises had turned Refreshment Sunday into a foretaste of the Great Feast that will come to us. Well, will come to us, if He rises.

We had the Return of the Prodigal as the gospel reading and a cracking sermon from Cedric Blakey the Vice Provost. (You can watch it again online here:Â http://thecathedral.org.uk/2013/03/10/sermon-preached-by-the-rev-cedric-blakey/) Then we had visitors from Malawi to welcome who were here to talk about subsistence farming. (They are the people directly connected with the rice we sell on the Fair Trade stall every week). And there was the God Factor going great guns with a session on the Bible and the news of people being confirmed and baptised at Easter.

It was a Sunday which was more than the sum of its parts though. The snow was blowing around outside the church yesterday. Inside, I think it was angels.

Dear Lord.
When I get cynical about the church,
help me to remember Sundays like this one.
Amen

Groton School, Refreshment Sunday, St Mary’s

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.

Reply
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.

Reply
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.

Reply
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!

Reply
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!

Reply
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?

Reply
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.

Reply