Here we are talking about structures again. However the right structures can give to everyone a sense of freedom as well as security. I just wish the way we ordered Church in the Church of Scotland released us into freedom and community. Too much of our structures are centred around business meetings rather than the love feast. we celebrate business more than we celebrate the eucharist. It is this image of a business structure that has shaped the identity of the church of Scotland for the past few hundred years. Now there is definately nothing wrong with being business like and well structured but often in the midst of all this we have forgotton what our business is. Remember Jesus reminded his parents that his first priority was to be about his Father’s business. When we think about it the Father’s business is that we should make disciples.

We need to ask ourselves why we have allowed the structures of business to become the main focus of our identity rather than the vision to make disciples. I have often thought that perhaps it is because we have lost confidence as a Church and and as indiiduals in the truth of the Gospel. this in turn makes us less willing to share with others something we might doubt. However we are not short on our loyality to the structures of an organisation that at one time had put in place to ensure the pastoral support required for discipleship. Could it be that we maintain the structures out of loyality, going through the motions of faith without the conviction of faith.

We even name our church through our structure. We call ourselves Presbyterians. Wil Storrar, draws our attention to the fact that the church has orientated towards this business effeciency model because of the influence of Weber’s “rational bureaucratic” type modern organisation.