Told you so!
Sometimes we just can’t help ourselves, can we? When someone does something wrong and it all ends up a mess, when we had specifically given good alternative advice beforehand, we are tempted to say, “I told you so!” And many of us give in to temptation and actually utter those words that bring a warmish satisfaction to our wisdom pot!
In this call for reform and change within the Church of Scotland I am fully prepared for someone in ten to fifteen years to tell me I was wrong and with the wonderful benefit of hindsight to glow in the Church that never changed and still flourished! I have absolutely no desire to see the Church continue its decline as it evidently has declined in the last 60 years in Scotland. Why would I? I have given my life over the last 27 years to ministry within the Church and so I work and pray for it to flourish in sharing the Good News of Jesus in Scotland and beyond! It’s just that I feel this annoying itch that needs scratching!
If we are to be positive, then we need to deal with the causes of negativity, not ignore them! If we are to give ourselves the best possible chance to flourish in the years ahead as a Church then we need to get rid of the old baggage that hinders our journey! We cannot just hope a new kind of Church grows whilst running ministers and volunteers into the ground living up to old expectations of a system that is no longer working in its present form.
The problem – as I see it – is that no one in “authority” is recognising this situation. And if they are, we hear little, if anything of it, and we see little, if anything, of a grand plan to change. We need a co-ordinated radical plan for change within the Church of Scotland. We’ve had outside verdicts, inside verdicts, Church Without Walls, and lately we’ve had the much heralded Chalmers lectures by Doug Gay, challenging our structures – the Church of Scotland website even advertised these and can still be found on its website – as they indeed can be accessed through mine – so where’s the change? At a snail’s pace or never? Scratch the itch folks! Scratch it now! New life is possible, happy Easter!!
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