One of the sad things in the Christian church is that sometimes we define ourselves by what we are not and what we do not do, rather than by what we are and what we do do. We see this especially in groups which have broken away from larger groups and seek to justify their own existence by continually demonstrating why the parent body is corrupt etc. In that sense those of us in the Free Church of Scotland have to be careful that we do not define ourselves by the fact that we are not the Church of Scotland. And we have to be careful that we do not regard its current decline and troubles with anything other than regret and sorrow. So I thought it was about time that we considered the current state of the Church of Scotland. I do so not out of a desire to criticise, nor to justify my own existence outwith that august body. I do so because I have a great interest in the Church of Scotland. I want to belong to the Church of Scotland and I think the Church of Scotland is vital for the spiritual well being of Scotland. So how are things in Mother Kirk?

At first glance they do not appear to be good. The curve of decline is steep, membership is almost in freefall – with 20,000 members leaving per year, churches closing left right and centre, a ministerial shortfall of over 200, and Callum Brown’s prophecy that there would be no Sunday schools left by 2011 not likely to be seen as too pessimistic! Only the wilfully blind would allow the exceptions of local successes to obscure the wider picture of a decline that appears terminal. Now of course it will not be terminal – because the Church will be able to survive on the assets of the past for well beyond our life time and the politicians and bureaucrats within it will be able to write their reports, appear on their committees and play the game that somehow the church is of significance in Scottish life. But in reality, in this worse case scenario, any idea of the Church of Scotland as a living and dynamic part of the body of Christ will be long gone.

Of course that is not the whole story. There is another side. In the post 1940’s there were, outside the Highlands, a handful of Church of Scotland ministers who could be described as Reformed Evangelical. Then came Eric Alexander, Willie Still, James and George Phillip and who can calculate the positive effect they have had upon the situation? Literally hundreds of men have gone into the ministry because of these men and as a result at least one third of the Church of Scotland ministers would today profess to be evangelical (400 out of 1200). Furthermore at least one hundred of those would be Reformed and Calvinistic. Although these older leaders have now gone their legacy remains. Is there a finer preacher in Scotland than Martin Allen (Glasgow)? A better intellectual apologist than Dominic Smart (Aberdeen)? Who would not want Philip Hare (Edinburgh) as their pastor? In my own city it is a joy to work with men such has David Scott and David Clark, both having effective and important city centre ministries. Which is to say nothing of the many unsung heroes scattered throughout Scotland who week in and week out preach faithfully the Word of God and the Good News of Jesus. The Crieff Fellowship (of which I am part) continues as strong as ever and there are some more encouraging signs in the wind – Andy McGowan (principal of the Highland Theological College and a Church of Scotland minister) now has a regular column in Life and Work where he ably presents the biblical position. In fact it is clear that in many areas of the Kirk the establishment are making room for the evangelicals at the table.

However that also is not the whole story. Whilst room is being made at the table there are conditions attached and my fear is that the establishment has decided that since they cannot knock out the evangelicals they will neutralise them by absorbing them- whether this is a deliberate policy or an accidental one does not really matter, the result is the same. I have evangelical friends who are delighted that they now have a ‘seat at the table’. But what table? And at what cost? Is it on condition that the status quo is not challenged? Just before the Disruption McCheyne commented on a similar situation – “It is confessed that many of our ministers to not preach the gospel – alas! Because they know it not. Yet they have complete control over their pulpits, and may never suffer the truth to be heard there during their whole incumbency. And yet our church consigns these parishes to their tender mercies for perhaps fifty years, without a sigh! Should not certain men be ordained as evangelists, with full power to preach in every pulpit of their district – faithful, judicious, lively preachers, who may go from parish to parish, and thus carry life into many a dead corner?” Sometimes the Lord’s people in the Church of Scotland are being left to starve as they are either fed meager rations, or worse still poison from the pulpit. No Christian should ever acquiesce in such an arrangement.

When one looks deeper into the overall picture amongst evangelicals in the Church of Scotland the picture is not a universally healthy one. Firstly whilst there may be 400 evangelical ministers there is no where near that number of evangelical congregations - in fact outwith the Highlands the numbers may be counted on two limbs! Scotland desperately needs more congregations like Newmilns, the Tron and Hollyrood Abbey – but where are they? I suspect that one of the major reasons for the increasing number of evangelical ministries not resulting in more evangelical congregations is that ministers move on so quickly. It can take decades to transform and reform a church. Secondly the evangelicals have sold the pass on the question of women’s ordination. This is more serious than it sounds because it is a lot more than a question of ecclesiology – it is a question of scripture and its sufficiency and authority. Whereas the original act of the General Assembly re the ordination of women was permissive – allowing congregations to have women ministers and elders – now, by fiat of the Assembly Clerk, it has been declared that it is declarative - in other words it is the law of the Church of Scotland that in order to be an office bearer within it you must agree to women being ordained. A significant number of evangelicals were prepared to go along with this. Others thought that it would not affect them and that they would be left alone – the Tron, Hollyrood Abbey and the whole Lewis Presbytery for example do not have women elders. However the number of such churches is getting smaller and smaller and they are being worn away by a war of attrition. Now that Sinclair Ferguson is gone would the Tron be able or willing to resist an insistence from the Glasgow presbytery that they obey the law of the Church and ordain women?

Of course there are evangelicals who will say this is not the issue on which to make a stand. Which leaves me wondering just what exactly that issue might be? Women’s ordination is not the problem – the church overruling scripture is. Having sold the pass on this the evangelicals do not have a leg to stand on (unless it is a homophobic one) when it comes, as it will do, to the question of homosexuality and the church. And this is rapidly turning into the crux issue. Not because the evangelicals want to make it such. In fact the running on this issue is being made by the ‘liberals’ or pseudo evangelicals’ . The Christmas address of the moderator – in which the Rev. Prof Iain Torrance attacked the church’s stance on the issue - was indicative of what is wrong with the Church. The Press and Journal, amongst others, praised him for his ‘honesty and courage’ in tackling the subject. But it was neither honest nor courageous. There was no courage involved. Torrance’s remarks did not involve any risk to himself – he was bound to be praised by the press and could dismiss any criticism as unloving fundamentalist bigotry. And it was dishonest. He managed to convey the idea that the reason that gay men were far more likely to have sexual disease was because of the bigotry of the Church of Scotland – or at least some within it. He arrived at this conclusion by a marvellous twist of logic whereby he argued that because the church is homophobic it is frightening gay men so that they did not go to health clinics for help. The fact that the prevalence of sexual disease amongst gay men has more to do with sexual promiscuity, than it does with evangelicals oppressing gays, seems to have conveniently escaped his notice and his speech. He also performed the quite disgraceful verbal trick of raising the issue and then complaining that the church was obsessed about it! As far as I am aware there has not been a rush by evangelicals to go into print or to the media trying to explain the Bibles position on homosexuality. But we keep getting pushed. We are asked for our opinions and then we are condemned for stating them. So the Moderator of the Church of Scotland goes to the secular press and explicitly tells them that the Church of Scotland evangelicals are obsessed with homosexuality and that the intolerance of the Kirk is harming gays. It sounds very humble of the Moderator to confess the sins of his own Church, but of course he is not doing so. He is confessing the ‘sins’ of the evangelicals – or at least of those who will have the real courage and honesty to stand up for what scripture says and refused to be bullied by accusations of homophobia, intolerance and to go along with the agenda of the culture around. The irony here is that Torrance comes from a dynasty which is supposed to be sympathetic to evangelicals. With friends like that……

So where does that leave the Church of Scotland? It is certainly in decline. The evangelicals are not as strong as we might sometimes like to think. And it can ill afford to lose the likes of Sinclair Ferguson (returning to the US) or Ian Hamilton (now in England). There does appear to be a lack of leadership and one wonders where the men to replace the Phillips, Willie Still and Eric Alexander are to come from. There is the additional danger of evangelicalism being seen as acceptable in the establishment – as long as it is an evangelicalism which recognises that there is room for liberalism etc within the Church. Loyalty to the Kirk will be the only prerequisite.

Now of course all the above is hopelessly generalised and even worse – it is the hopeless generalisations of an outsider. I do hope that my friends in the C of S will forgive me for any inaccuracies or misconceptions in my comments. But I am truly concerned for the Kirk. I wonder if it has a future? As I do about the Free Church. Which brings me on to the next question.

What about the Free Church and the Church of Scotland?

The Free Church must never lose its desire to return to the national church. We quit a vitiated establishment and we will gladly return to a pure one. And by pure we do not mean perfect – but we do mean one where biblical church discipline is practiced and where the doctrine of the Bible is upheld and proclaimed. There is no question that Scotland needs the evangelicals in the Church of Scotland and the Free Church to work together. How we do that is another matter. The first problem is that there are many evangelicals within the C of S who regard the Free Church with little more than bemused patronage – to them we are an irrelevance that has little to do with modern Scotland – a quaint Highland reminder of a dim and distant past. To others we are a threat. We are taking away people from their church and we ourselves come across as purist and hypercritical. On the Free Church side there are those of us who do not share the vision of a national church which is part of our raison d’etre, and we too can often allow petty jealousies and personality issues to get in the way. The first step towards working together then is surely mutual repentance and mutual recognition.

After that there are various options. The first is that the evangelicals will realise the game is up and leave the Church of Scotland to form a new denomination together with the Free Church. We would have to give up our insistence that they should sing unaccompanied scripture only, but that would be a small price to pay for unity. Of course such a vision is very unlikely. There are those in the Free Church who have so lost sight of our tradition and foundations that they think that psalm singing is the be all and end all of what we are. They like being a small purist denomination and they do not particularly care about the decline in the national Kirk. By far the bigger problem however is the fact that there are very few evangelicals within the C of S who would leave – over any issue. Even if they were prepared to do so it is highly unlikely they would be able to take their congregations.

The second option is that the evangelicals will grow so strong that they will be able to take over the church. Whilst this is not impossible, and indeed we have seen similar things occurring in Australia and Northern Ireland, it does appear to me to be highly unlikely. Many evangelicals have already bought into the line that they are just a part of the church. Many have accepted the concept of ‘fishing within the boat’ rather than fishing from it. And many just do not have radical taught congregations who will support them in this struggle. We will wait a long time for the Reformation and Renewal of the Church of Scotland. We pray for it and we must seek to help our brothers who are working for it. But we cannot put all our eggs in that basket.

The third option is the most likely. It is that a renewed and revitalised Free Church would work together with the evangelicals within the Church of Scotland to establish and provide good evangelical, reformed churches throughout Scotland. In other words we need to work in partnership and not competition. What would this mean? We must have a better distribution of resources. I can think for example of one parish of 1,000 people. The Free Church has a congregation of 100 plus and the majority of the people would profess to be Free Church. The Church of Scotland a congregation of some 30. Both ministers are solid, good evangelical Reformed men. Why do we have two men in such a situation? Given that this is the age of the motor car and that there are several C of S’s within 15 miles of this community – why not just have one church in the parish? Would the C of S men be willing to give up the outdated notion that they must have a minister in every parish – even when that minister may not be a Christian? And would the Free Church be prepared to trust our like minded brothers in the C of S to provide in parishes where we could not? There are many Highland communities where the Free Church and the Church of Scotland could alternate. Of course we would want to ensure that the Gospel was being proclaimed and practiced and I would suspect that they would want to ensure that the Free Church was open enough to include people of other persuasions. Likewise in church planting – we should have a programme of church planting throughout Scotland where we should support and help one another. Internal Church politics has meant that there has been a de facto ban on evangelicals in St Andrews – so let the C of S evangelicals support the Free Church plant there. And likewise the Free Church should encourage the work of people like Martin Allen in Glasgow and others of like mind. Not only should we not compete but we should actively support good men who are seeking to do a biblical work in areas that we do not touch. Let me say this to my Free Church brethren, if we are not prepared to work with our like minded brothers in the Church of Scotland, then what are we going to do to reach the hundreds of thousands in Scotland’s sprawling urban housing estates? Perhaps one day we will be able to put a church into every mega housing estate in the land – but given the furore whenever it is suggested that we plant even one church, that seems highly unlikely. Therefore we need to support our evangelical brothers and sisters who are working in these situations.

It may be that the Church of Scotland will collapse. That is not something we should rejoice in. It is something we should mourn over. Meanwhile we need to do what we can to help strengthen what remains. Remember Knox’s great battle cry – ‘give me Scotland or I die!’? Are we really wanting to exchange that for the petty parochialism which seems to be determinate for so much of our strategy and thinking? As Chalmers famously put it – ‘who cares for the Free Church compared with the Christian good of Scotland?’ – and who cares for the C of S compared with the Christian good of Scotland? For a moment let us forget our respective denominations and dare to ask – what would be best for the spread of the Gospel in Scotland?

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