The Presbyter

The newsletter of the Presbytery of Hamilton

No 11 - June 2003

Editor: Rev Les Thorne, Hatherleigh, 9 Chatton Walk, Coatbridge ML5 4FH (01236 432 241)

e-mail: les.thorne@presbyteryofhamilton.co.uk to whom all contributions should be sent two weeks before presbytery next meets

All contributions for future issues should be sent c/o the presbytery office meantime.

FROM THE EDITOR

This is our last issue as Editor. Our thanks to all who have actively supported ‘The Presbyter’ since its inception, not least the Editorial Board and all who have contributed and offered their encouragement. We wish our successor all the best for the future.

MODERATOR OF PRESBYTERY

This month our Moderator, Rev Margaret F Currie, BEd, BD finishes her term of office. As our first woman Moderator (although we might wonder why her gender should be an issue) she has served Presbytery during a time of controversy and change. Many will recall her leading of Presbytery worship, the illuminating passages with which she has introduced them, and her perceptive prayers. It is perhaps fitting that, as Presbytery procedures change, the Communion Service at the beginning of the 2003-04 session should be in her church, Airdrie: St Columba’s.

We have another ‘first’ in Presbytery ( surely, change is coming thick and fast now that it has begun!), in the person of Mr David Alexander, MA(Hons), MLitt, Additional Elder, and Session Clerk, Uddingston: Viewpark. David has been nominated to serve as Moderator of Presbytery for the coming year. Again, he has plenty of experience in Presbytery behind him. Presbytery is becoming more lively, and we feel sure that he will have many opportunities to exercise his considerable talents.

PRESBYTERY CLERK

Rev James Wilson retires as Presbytery Clerk after many years of service to Presbytery. We will all miss him, his encouragement and advice, and the experience he has built up over the years. Anyone who has had occasion to contact the office will know that he has always been helpful and able to assist even in the most obscure matters. We have been fortunate to have had his hand on the tiller, so to speak, and he will be missed. Those of you who would like to express your thanks and appreciation in a tangible way are asked to send all contributions to the Presbytery Treasurer, Mr David Forrester, ‘Belmont’, Lefroy St, Coatbridge ML5 1PN. At the same time, it is with pleasure we are able to record the nomination of Rev Shaw J Paterson, BSc BD of Strathaven Rankin l/w Chapelton to be his successor. Shaw comes to the task at a time of great change in the Kirk as well as Presbytery, but we know from his term as Convener of the Board of Ministry, among other activities, that he will soon have the affairs of Presbytery at his fingertips. We all wish him well.

WHERE TO NOW? by Rev Les Thorne

As this is my last issue, I am taking the opportunity to express my own opinions at some length. Some of you may disagree violently, some may agree, and others may be completely indifferent to what I have to say. At least you know that you will not have to put up with my views in the future! Since the last issue, the General Assembly has met, the SCIFU proposals have been rejected, and Presbytery has set its own reorganisation in train. The big issue at the General Assembly was finance. Not just the radical reorganisation of the Stipend structure, but the crisis, and I don’t use that word lightly, in the Social Work Department, threatening its very existence. Church membership is declining, the average age of members in rising, and financial reserves are falling at a frightening rate. On top of that, as if it wasn’t enough, there is a shortage in the Ministry (we know that well in Hamilton Presbytery), and the problem of greater demands on those who remain, again an ageing group, many of whom will retire within the next five years, with no replacements in sight. Can the Church of Scotland survive in its present form? Can it survive at all beyond, say, the next ten years? Many people will have their doubts, and I am one of them. What has gone wrong, in a country (Scotland) which once had one of the highest levels of church attendance; which reached its peak membership of all time, only fifty years ago? The world, or at least the population in Scotland, is no longer interested in what the church has to say (and not just the Church of Scotland, either). I believe the reason is simple: it no longer says anything which impinges on the lives or concerns of ordinary people, or at least, that is what ordinary people believe. It appears out of touch, irrelevant, and at odds with prevailing values. In many respects it is. One of the failings which I see is that it doesn’t speak in language which people understand. ‘Religious speak’ is, to them, obscure, and in pre-scientific terms and concepts which are demonstrably contradicted by facts evident to any secondary school pupil. All too often, it talks of life after death as the primary concern, when the real, pressing concerns of ordinary people are with life before death. In the early years of the Christian faith, people pinned their hopes on the afterlife, because they had no hopes in this life. Today, we do have hopes, because our world is one of progress; one where we can reasonable expect things to get better, simply because that is the way it is. The peoples of the New Testament could not imagine a world where people enjoyed progressively better health and welfare and rising standards of living. Today, our hopes can be realised in this world, and when the end approaches, more and more people are simply content to end it with the least suffering. And that applies in the underdeveloped areas of the world, too. They see what we have, and believe they can have it too. And, if we are not careful, they may come and take it from us; but that’s another matter.

Again, many moral issues and strictures in the Bible belong to an age when women were the possessions of men; when the only possible outcome of sexual activity was the production of either necessary, or unwanted, children. As a result, contraception, termination of pregnancies, anything other than man-woman relationships to produce children were inevitably wrong in all circumstances. Again, euthanasia was unacceptable before life-support equipment was available to keep people alive when their bodily functions failed; now it is effectively practised every time such equipment is switched off. Yet the churches still issue sweeping condemnations on sex outside marriage, same sex relationships, euthanasia and, in some quarters, contraception and abortion. I am not saying that the church should adopt a moral and intellectual free for all; far from it. But at least let our teaching and our values fit the world as it is, not the world as it used to be a thousand or two thousand years ago. But let me get back to something very basic - what is the church for? What is its purpose? The Catechism tells us that ‘man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever’. The church exists, surely, to witness to the saving life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, and to worship God in his name. Everything else is subsidiary, or flows from that simple purpose: worship is at the centre of what the church is. That is a very Orthodox view; the Eastern Churches believe that the church exists when it is at worship, and I think they are right. That being so, what of our worship? It must be very hard for people coming into a church for the first time (there are thousands of them in Scotland, never mind Africa or Asia) to understand what it is all about. The language is obscure, because the concepts are obscure, often even to church members. Worship should surely be an uplifting, inspiring experience; too often, in an attempt to be ‘relevant’, all it means is a Sunday morning concert party, with guitars, drums, and perhaps a measure of self-hypnosis. And by the way, I’ve been there, playing my guitar until, mercifully, I chopped the tip off my middle finger - not with a guitar! - and can no longer play.

Looking to the eastern church again, it was said that the Russian Tsar attended an Orthodox service for the first time and believed he had had a vision of heaven; how often is our worship like that today? How often can we leave a service truly ennobled in our hearts by contact with a loving God who seeks only good for his creation, and who wants us to enjoy the noblest of emotions and actions? I can’t say that all the services I have conducted have been like that, but I have tried to help people rise above their own weaknesses and limitations, and offer them both a glimpse of a better, more loving, way of living and, for a time, the experience of some kind of communion with God through Christ Jesus. Our worship should be our response to God’s love, and should result in a practical outpouring of love for His creation and creatures; not as an end in itself, but as the result of our worship and what we receive through it.

Will the church survive in a form which is recognisable today? I can only answer that question with another: does it resemble the church of, say, the year 70 AD? If not, why not? Because the world, and the church, have both changed.

I believe the church will change, must change, if it is to survive and witness and contribute to the good of mankind. How that will come about, God knows. It won’t happen because of administrative re- organisation; that can only be a means to an end. It won’t happen through revivalism, or traditional methods of mission or outreach; they don’t work these days. It won’t come about if we carry on talking about corpses recovering physical life, or being transferred to outer space without the benefit of a Saturn rocket. It won’t happen if we continually obstruct progress simply because it doesn’t fit in with a pre-Darwinian world view. It won’t happen at all if we curse the darkness but fail to bring light. But it will come about if we recover what we seem to have lost: Jesus died for love of humanity and calls on us to do what is loving, above all else, in our work, our attitudes, and our dealings with others. And if that contradicts established religious dogmas, then we may have come closer to the real Jesus than we imagine.

‘NEVER DESPISE WHAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND’ These words were written by William Penn.

It is a sad fact that when we don’t understand something we react fearfully. Many of the conflicts in life are not caused by differences of opinion, but by lack of understanding. If we could reduce the misunderstandings we would reduce much of the unpleasantness that invades our lives, both on a personal and corporate level. The trouble is that often we compare what we don’t understand with what we think we do. Of course, to understand another person’s point of view, one has to listen to what they have to say; this is something we are not very good at. The story is told about the 89 year old woman with hearing problems. Her doctor said “We have a procedure that can correct your hearing. When would you like me to schedule it?” (obviously not the NHS - Editor). She replied “Forget it. I’m 89 years old and I’ve already heard enough.” A funny story but perhaps, like the woman, many of us need our hearing corrected. It has been said that you can make more friends in two hours by being a good listener than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Listen as you would wish to be listened to. It is said that we can speak 180 words a minute, but we can hear 500 words a minute, so we tend to daydream in the communication gap. Most of us are better talkers than listeners. Edgar Watson Howell once remarked “No man would listen to you talking if he didn’t know that it was his turn next. ”Listening can at times be an exhausting business, but it is the glue that holds relationships together. Yet often it’s not that we don’t listen, it's that we listen to the wrong things, much of it promoted by the mass media outlets. Jesus took time to listen to what others had to say and encouraged others to do the same. “If you have ears, listen”, he told his followers. The message he delivered two thousand years ago is every bit as relevant today as it was then, not only for our life in the here and now, important as it is, but also for the fate of our immortal souls. Much of what he had, and has, to say is drowned out by the cacophony of conflicting and subversive ideas that pervade our society today. If we do have ears perhaps it is in our best interest that we listen to what Jesus has to tell us. If we take the time to listen we may well hear something to our advantage.
(From ‘Give it a thought’ by Alex Ross, Dalziel St Andrew's)(By way of a corollary to the above article, there is a saying that since we have two ears to hear, and one mouth to speak, we should listen twice as much as we speak. - Editor)

THE FUTURE OF ‘The Presbyter’

As we go to press, a successor as Editor has not been appointed. However, I would very much appreciate it if you would continue to send in material for the next edition, which ought to coincide with the September meeting of Presbytery. You can either send your contributions to me, and I will pass them on to my successor, or send them to the Presbytery Office, clearly marked for the Editor of ‘The Presbyter’. But please send them in good time, to arrive two weeks before Presbytery meets.