What is in Kelvin's Head?

Installation/Institution

06/09/2012

For the next three months, I’m on sabbatical from St Mary’s, enjoying the freedom that Bishop Gregor and the congregation have given me to think and reflect and grow.

The last formal thing that I did as Provost of St Mary’s before sabbatical time started was to go to the start of a new ministry – the installation of the Very Rev Nicola McNelly as the new Provost in the Cathedral in Oban.

It was a very splendid affair indeed. St John’s was as spruced up as St John’s can be and the place was nice and full to welcome Nicola. There was a good turn out from the Province too and Bishop Kevin preached an excellent sermon. The gist of it was that people treat the words ‘We’ve never done it this way’ as being somehow equivalent in their thinking to the seven last words of Jesus and then proceed to crucify the church over them. In passing, he made reference to the analogy between the way God loves us and the love that human beings have for one another. And yes, he was quite explicit that this means the love that men and women share, that men share with men and women share with women.Â (I hinted afterwards to him that one of our Scottish newspapers has a new devotional slot on its front page just crying out for a sermon like that and that he should send it in).

Jolly party afterwards at which old friendships were made and new one’s kindled. Always fun to meet people whom you have seen and hear about online but suddenly meet in the flesh. (Or indeed, fun to hear a twitter contact singing Calon LÃ¢n at the start of the liturgy – which happens to be one of my favourite tunes).

So then on to sabbatical time.

And the first thing I go to on sabbatical is…?

Yes, the start of a new ministry with an induction service for a new Rector. Different bishop (This time the Bishop of New Westminster) but so very much the same that it was uncanny. Same opening hymn, same joy, same sense of purpose and same kind of happy crowd of people enjoying being together and celebrating the hope and expectation that a new ministry can bring.

One of these services did have a handbell choir as well as a choir of voices and one did not though.

Interestingly, both services managed to make sense of the now ‘traditional’ giving of gifts (keys, bible, oil, bread and wine etc) to the new provost/rector. In each case, the giving of each gift was followed by a statement from the person concerned inviting the congregation to share with them the giving of the gifts for the sake of the world.

I can sometimes come away from such services depressed for it feels as though we have encumbered the incumbent with more than they should decently be expected to bear. In both these services though it felt as though purposeful, healthy leadership was being seen as part of a healthy collaborative endeavour of God’s people.

So, blessings to the new ministries I’ve seen commence this week. God bless them one and all.

induction services, installation, Nicola McNelly, Oban, St John’s Cathedral

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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