Very shortly the Scottish Government will launch their big tourist idea for 2009. Its called “The Homecoming”. They’re hoping for rich exiled Scots to return in their droves next year from all over the world.

It might prove to be a more challenging idea than first expected, now that the ecomomic down turn is almost certain to effect the jobs of many people. Personally I can’t see Americans making the trip when their stocks and shares portfolios have hit rock bottom.

CHURCH AGENDA STRENGTHENED

However I do think this is a wonderful opportunity for the churches to connect with their partners in the developing world and invite them to Scotland in 2009. We’re hoping to bring over some of our friends from India during 2009. It maybe that the Government doesn’t get the tourist trade, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if the churches got a spiritual boost from the shear enthusiasm of our Christian brothers and sisters from around the world.

Going home isn’t always an easy thing. For many there are too many sad memories. Using this theme as a mission statement for the churches may be more challenging that I first thought. However it may do us all the world of good to reflect on the idea of home.

At the end of the day I’m convinced that we all want a place, a person, a community, a hope, we can call home. Of course the idea still remains uncomfortable as we think of the hundreds of Scots marooned in cities all over the world, addicted to alcohol and drugs, for them there is no homecoming. Perhaps the churches should be challenging government about such a topic. How could we work together to bring the broken back home. If we can spend Billions on saving the banks maybe we need to be thinking about the cost of saving individuals.

GOING HOME ?

Going home?

He smiled,

I wish,

but, I’ve a shift to finish.

Going home?

I’d need to say sorry

I’d never be accepted.

There’s no room for me

I’ve burnt my bridges

Too much has been said

Too little done to mend the hurt.

Mention home

My stomach turns

I feel crowded

smothered

afraid.

Which home?

My mother’s home

My father’s home

I’ve had many homes.

The question unsettles me

makes me sad.

It reminds me of something

I’ve lost but never had.

Faith.

It could be easy to get depressed when you read about the current economic crisis. I must confessed I’m a bit of a current affairs junkie. It might be the Irish bit in me. I find it fascinating that Peter Mandelson is back in the Cabinet. It is reported that he and the Prime Minister have resolved their differences and are now going to work together for the good of the country. It is stories like this one that makes the old adage ” a week it a long time in politics” believable. Certainly in the political world Mandelson is seen as a shrewd operator only time will tell if this appointment has been a successful.

7651141.stm

Viewing all this from a theological perspective there is something either foolish or faithful about this story. There is a part of me that wants to believe in the full of faith bit. Its about friends who became enemies who have become colleagues again. Both men have taken a big risk, I wish them well if for nothing else, I like the principle of people making moves to be reconciled to each other.

I wrote about structures a few weeks ago. I think we need to realise that changing the structures alone, will not change the church. Tomorrow night at Kirk Session will be quite an important evening. The Kirk Session re-structing group will be reporting back. The plan is that they will give out the papers for the future structure and we will agree a date when we can meet in conference to discuss the implications. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to fire us up so that the structures we put in place support the mission and calling of the church rather than hamper it.

Its all very exciting. Kirk Session agreed that we look at how we manage our various projects and come back with a strategy as to how we manage them in the future. We’ll be looking for a decision in principle tomorrow night to go ahead and launch our new media company, as a not for profit trading company. This will deal with all the additional work that we have been carrying out of the past years. When Kirk Session have heard all the details and approved them we’ll give out more details.

Anyway these are exciting times here at St Andrew’s. Tonight was quite a special evening. It was great to have a joint praise night with our friends from the Apostolic Church. The next one will be 19 October when we hope to be welcoming Erica and lorna back home after their 15 month trip around the world.

This will be a great evening to hear new songs and to celebrate all that God has been doing in the lives of Soultouch. So pass the word around. It would be great if we could have the church full that evening.

Yesterday well over 1000 people walked the Forth Road Bridge to raise money for Christian Aid. I’m told if all the money is collected that has been promised from the sponsors,it will amount to £41,000. What I say is, not bad for an afternoon’s work.

It was also an opportunity for folk to reflect on Rev John Carrie who died earlier this year. John set up the whole project. It was good to see the Lord Provest of Edinburgh turn out to do the walk and also pay tribute to John. He reminded us that John not only walked the walk but talked the talk. (See my posting under 23 June 2007.) The fact that it has continued this year despite the fact that the Road Bridge was closed for repairs, shows that people are enthusiastic to keep the tradition going.

It was a walk down memory lane all day, as I got a chance to push Katie MacLennan in her push chair, it brought back memories of the Bogles pushing prams across the bridge some 25 years ago. One thing I did notice was the the push chairs today are a lot easier to handle. As for the children today - are they easier to handle? Well I think that’s a subject for another post.

I’ve been put on a committee at Presbytery level to look at how our Presbytery can work in a better way to promote and facilitate our congregations .Here’s an extract from the paper I’m writing. Any comments will be gratefully received. The above picture gives another meaning to cathedral.

Making Presbytery a place of inspiration…

This paper is not meant to be aimed at any one person in leadership within Falkirk Presbytery. It is my general thoughts about how any presbytery could become a place of inspiration. By nature presbyteries have become modelled on a law court. This means that it has functioned as a court dealing with legislation and business.

Inspiration means a change of mindset…
To make any presbytery a place of inspiration will require a complete change of mindset, indeed it may be that we cease from understanding presbytery as a monthly business meeting and embrace it as a dynamic exchange centre open and available on a daily basis as a networking hub placed in a building but also with a relevant interactive web presence and qualified personel.

Means a pro-active presbytery…
Its purpose to support and inspire the best practice with in congregations in order that each congregation becomes a centre of excellence in worship and mission. Every congregation must feel part of the same team. Presbytery has to encourage ways through which we can share and benefit from each others gifting and talents. Presbytery has a highly educated and skilled work force at its disposal. Are we using everyone’s skill to the maximum especially the paid staff that work out of our 40 odd congregations?

Action - Presbytery should become the facilitator that allows congregations to be collaborative.

Means making congregations feel interdependent on each other…
The ongoing mission and vision of a congregation should not be reduced to a report once every five years with a shortened five minute version read out at Presbytery to save time. This system has a built in feeling of being “dammed by faint praise” inevitably there is a silence, no questions are asked, and five years of service is consigned to the minute book. Many ministers and congregations feel under valued and have lost their focus.

Action Put in place a proper appraisal system to support and encourage congregations to develop and articulate their five year strategy plan. Such a plan should be done in collaboration with others to encourage and enhance opportunities of mission. This is in addition to the current Presbytery Plan

At the present presbyteries often act in a passive and reactive manner, because they are made up of congregational representatives who know very little about each others congregations yet have to make decisions that can affect the spiritual welfare of many people. Some Kirk Session send their representative elder to Presbytery as a reward for work done in the past. It is seen by some as a kind of House of Lords promotion. It is a function where not a lot is expected from those who attend. Presbytery has become the passive receptors of General Assembly remits rather than the initiators of reforming petitions. This means that all too often this group of strangers settle for the safe option unable to have the confidence to embrace change because they do not wish to be the implementers of change.
Action - We require the very best and talented of elders to become part of the presbytery team. In doing so they in turn will drive the strategy and vision of the church in their Presbyterial area.

Means inspirational structures and resources

We who are members of presbytery have much more power than we imagine and if we work creatively together we could harness ourselves into a successful coach for our congregations. Presbyteries have great potential and if used wisely, we could use the potential of 40 or 50 congregations working together to create an amazing central resource to support and encourage our work.

There are opportunities at a national level and a regional level to become important players in the area of mission and social care. Co-coordinating funding on the basis of a presbytery wide care programme in all sorts of areas could be a challenging and rewarding experience.

It might be a wonderfully affirming thing to set aside a different congregation each year to act as the Cathedral for Presbytery. This would mean the building would be used daily to grow and develop a series of workshops and seminars on various aspects of church life from finances to worship from mission to property to community outreach projects.

Means inspirational leadership
Modelling ministry is an important aspect of inspiration. Seeing how things work at first hand and sharing in each others ministries is how inspiration takes root.

Action - Presbytery should create pods or groupings of congregations and insist that the ministers and leaders meet regularly, say weekly to share and inspire each other in their ministries, These groups may not be geographical they could be centred around interests and passions. This should not be seen as an option but part of the expected workload of the minister. A team leader for each grouping should be appointed and be rotated every two years.

To inspire the leadership of congregations Presbytery will have to engage methods that make individual leaders and communities feel supported and that they are contributing to an over all missionary plan for the wider area as well as their local community. This will require ministers and congregations to be open to new ways of sharing and collaborating with each other. We need to stop thinking in soley congregational terms. Its time to become a Church and a Presbytery Without Walls.

it was good to see a whole new Alpha Group start tonight, at the Inchyra Hotel near Polmont. I think this is going to be a really good group. Everyone who came along seemed really interested. Its such a relaxing venue with everyone seated around the table. I’ve often likened it to Martin Luther’s table talk. Although we use the themes of Alpha we don’t use their material exclusively,and we certainly don’t use the video. It is over dinner that many people share with each other what they are discovering on their spiritual journey. There is still some space, so if your reading this and you think you’d like to come, give the church office a ring or 01506 825803. I’d love to hear what some of you who were at Alpha tonight thought of it . Just comment at the end of this blog.

 I was at an interesting meeting in the church offices in Edinburgh today. It was a conference where Town Planners, Property Developers and Church Leaders, in areas undergoing regeneration, were all invited to listen to each other and understand the whole process involved in regenerating a community.  It was interesting to hear this discussion in the light of the latest news regarding the regeneration of Bo’ness.  What was going to be a spectacular waterfront development starting with the harbour and shops and waterfront cafes, has been reduced to a couple of six storey tower block flats and a few three storey town houses.  Quite a disappointment for the town!  There is a promise though without  any guarantees that the harbour will eventually be tackled when the right financial package can be arranged.  The thing is Falkirk Council seem willing to promote this slimmed down revised plan as being acceptable in the present economic climate.  Breaking promises because they may cost more seems to go with the territory of making money.  Some of my colleagues today were impressed by one of the speakers who was a developer, because he spoke clearly and honestly reminding everyone that the role of the developer was simply to  make money.  The thing is, I wasn’t totally convinced.   You see, I think simply making money is not enough even for the most successful.   I’ve come to the conclusion that most people with wealth that I have known  want to make a difference in the world if they can, and it is the role of the Church and Christians like us to help them find ways to make their wealth bring about changes in the world for the better.  I couldn’t resist asking the young upwardly mobile developer as he left the room about his statement regarding the sole purpose of the developer to make money.  ”So tell me I said, after you’ve made the money what do you do with it.  Surely making money is not an end in itself.  You know I think the penny dropped, or the money dropped.  He looked at me as he went out the door, and said, “When I make my first million I’ll get in touch with  you right, I’ll help you make a difference. He was gone before I could make the reply, “You don’t need a million to start making the difference - you need a heart.” So I think what I’d like to say to ING and the Council  is this, it takes more than a pile of money to make a community.  You see you can’t regenerate a town without understanding the importance of community and you can’t create community where there is no trust.

Just watching Amazon Heartbeat on STV this evening. There is just so much that is never said and that frustrates me as the Chairman of the Trust. Television companies of course are looking for the cheapest and easiest way to make a programme  yet I don’t know why it is that they never get round to identifying our drivers.  People ask me and say what is it that makes the Trust so successful and I can only say prayer. If we didn’t have the prayer base we have all round the world then we would have packed up and gone home years ago.  Anyway enough of my rant about the Amazon Heartbeat. Its quite a challenge to begin to focus back on some of the local issues  here in Bo’ness after being involved with the National Gathering. This week I’ve been along at a meeting in the Town Hall hearing about the amended plans for the regeneration of Bo’ness. I must confess that I’m not convinced  by what I hear. the developers are now pulling out of completing the harbour before building houses. They now want to build a series of houses first. This of course makes you wonder if a harbour will ever be brought back into action. I think few people in the town are happy with the proposals, so I imagine the progress of the regeneration will come to a halt or slow down considerably. What will happen in the future is all up in the air, but I’m sure that  the majority of people have come to the conclusion that a harbour will be key in renewing the infra structure of our town. I think many believe that the Council has been duped by a very powerful and experienced financier who is more eager to make money than see the regeneration project to fruition. All this brings me back to our TV programme. At the heart of so much of what actually happens, be it making a TV series or seeking to renew a whole community, there are  faceless financiers who are calling the shots. I’ve come to the conclusion we need to be more constant in our prayer lives in order to connect more people to the Vine.   

Here I am again trying to get into the swing of making regular posts. Today was an interesting day. I was at an Emerging Church Conference at the ICC in Glasgow. I found it interesting and frustrating. The term “Emerging Church” is being used today in the Christian Community to describe worshipping communities that are seeking to engage with people who lost interest in what we might call traditional understandings of church. Or who may never have been there in the first place. There has been a whole host of books written on the subject. Indeed the term itself seems to be defined by so many in different ways.

I was surprised to discover that the Rupert Murdoch owns Zondervan one of the big Christian publishing Houses. I was further intrigued to discover that Zondervan have taken out the copyright on the term Emerging Church. I started to google this tonight and her is what I discovered” Media magnate Rupert Murdoch bought Zondervan for $56.7 million or $13.50 per share a few years ago. Zondervan’s stock jumped $4.25 per share on the announcement.Murdoch, an international world citizen who started in Australia, was building a media empire via his company, News Corp. The following month, the tycoon Murdoch gobbled up the nation’s largest circulation magazine, TV Guide, also Seventeen, and Good Food magazines plus the Daily Racing Form on a $3 billion cash binge which was the second largest media deal ever. The seller was Walter Annenberg, 80-year-old Jewish publishing partriarch, who privately owned Triangle Publications whose lucrative national magazine distribution business takes not only their magazines to newsstands but also many others including Reader’s Digest.”In recent years Murdoch has built a media empire worldwide with revenues over $10 billion (64 percent in U.S.A., 19 percent in United Kingdom and 17 percent in Australia and the Pacific Basin). Holdings include Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., Fox Broadcasting Co., Fox Television Stations, Inc., Harper-Collins, TV Guide, and FSI (multi-page free standing inserts each week in 390 local Sunday newspapers). Also owned in the United Kingdom are The Times, The Sunday Times, Today, Sun and News of the World. These account for one-third of all national newspapers sold in the U.K. market with the latter two having the largest daily and Sunday circulations respectively in the English-speaking world. Also 50 percent owned is British Sky Broadcasting Ltd., the leading U.K. direct-to-home satellite television broadcasting service. News Corp. is also the largest newspaper publisher in Australia.

The final piece of information which I found even more disturbing is the company that publishes so much soft porn also publishes the NIV Bible. So what is this Emerging Church all about is it no more than publicity brand name made up by a publisher to sell books. Have a look at Urban Expressions web page in Possilpark Glasgow. There is little doubt that those involved in this movement are are seriously committed to Christ. Nonetheless the other side of it via the Murdoch empire leaves me with serious questions.

I was sharing my frustration with Peter Neilson tonight on the phone, and he made an interesting comment. Suggesting that maybe we should be talking about the church that is seeking to engage with the emerging culture. I realise that is what I’ve been trying to do all my life. Hence in the 60s we had a rock band and a cafe style outreach church. I suppose the difference is that we saw this as outreach not church. When perhaps all along it was authentic church.

I like what John Drane was saying today about the importance of theology being rooted in the practice of daily life rather than being kept to the seclusion of the the ivory tower inhabited by the academic. In reality I’m not sure if real dynamic theology has ever been ivory tower bound. I remember my Professor of Systematic Theology John Zizziulas telling us that unless our doctrine was rooted in our every day practical acts of living and behaviour it wasn’t worth believing.

Well tomorrow I’ll be sharing my doctrine of the Kingdom with the MSP at the Scottish Parliament. I’m going to be centering my reflection around the idea of the lost child that is in all of us. Depending how it goes I might even post it on the blog tomorrow. One thing I’m sure of Murdoch will hold the copyright on the gospel or does he? Now there’s something you might like to comment on.

  I must confess that I was somewhat astonished to read about the Pope offering Indulgences to the faithful. I thought this aspect of the Roman Catholic Faith had somewhat disappeared. However it would appear not to be so. The following article outlines the Pope’s offer of reduced punishment in Purgatory if pilgrimages are made to Lourdes during a specific period in the year 2008. It sounds quite bizarre to me. Hear is the article . This got me thinking about Indulgences and how it was this very topic that brought about the Reformation. Tom Ascol writes an interesting article on the topic, its worth reading. The point I think the Pope has missed is that we are saved not by our own actions but by the Grace of God revealed to us in Christ. ( But I’m sure he must know this? ) Further, our acts of gratitude to God should they be pursued and promoted like some commercial deal? You know do this and you’ll get one free! How naive does the Pope think people are? What power does any human being have over the eternal destiny of a soul. For me this is the very topic that the much maligned film The Golden Compass is exploring . (The danger of power when it is concentrated within individuals and also Institutions, whether they be religious or atheistic.)I don’t wish to be seen as bashing the Roman Catholics, but the view I have expressed, I suppose is the reason that I am one who stands on this side of the Reformation. I’ll stick to Jesus alone and I’ll trust his death on the cross for my eternal salvation.