Worshippers at Cranhill Church's service on June 12 2022

The Green Shoots

Tuesday July 12 2022

The Rev Muriel Pearson reflects on the new life for 'the mustard seed Church' in a season of change.

On Sunday June 12 2022 I sat at my kitchen table here in Tiberias and watched on Facebook Live the last Sunday worship service from Cranhill Parish Church in Glasgow. There were tears, but I also felt very proud of the Kirk Session and congregation of Cranhill Church who over the years have always chosen to put God’s kin-dom first.

The Rev Dr Martin Johnstone led the service, picking up the theme of ‘the mustard seed church’ which has been a thread through recent years, not least because of the new stained glass ‘Mustard Seed Window’ commissioned in 2017. Cranhill Church’s strap line has been ‘a small community of faith with a big heart’. And it is still true.

I want to write in celebration of the saints of Cranhill past and present, but also because I think there is a hopefulness and a boldness in the decisions they are making which I hope can encourage others who are mourning loss without seeing opportunity.

There is no doubt that it was a hard decision made by the small group of elders who were tasked with good governance.

Having learned to share the church building with Cranhill Development Trust, and with the sale of the building to the Trust being almost completed, they knew that they had a secured place of welcome at the heart of the Cranhill community which will continue. There’s a café, a Post Office and a shop with low cost food to address food poverty. There is an employability and advice programme, a refugee and asylum programme, a family programme, a community garden and community meals and Friday activities for seniors (Young at Heart).

They thought about the congregational activities they value: the weekly Nearly New shop, the Girls’ Brigade, midweek worship. They can see ways all of these things can continue in Cranhill, if wanted. Neighbouring congregation Carntyne is becoming vacant on the retiral of the Rev Dr Joan Ross and Shettleston New minister the Rev Louis Reddick is keen to encourage the kind of community engagement Cranhill has been involved with over the years. So Cranhill hopes to unite with Carntyne and cluster with Shettleston. Already plans are afoot that the knowledge and experience of running a dementia café learned by Cranhill be shared with folks from Shettleston. The Nearly New and the Girls Brigade will continue in Cranhill.

Although there is a huge amount of work to do to bring the congregations together and deal with the formalities and house precious things in a new setting, there is also a wee bit of life and energy. These are resurrection people. They believe in Life, and they believe in the faithfulness of God.

They have orchestrated a good ending: The Very Rev Dr Iain Greenshields preached in what had been his first charge on the Sunday following the General Assembly, a baby was baptised the following Sunday, and over fifty people came to share in what was an uplifting and positive service on this last Sunday.

There are losses. The work done by the Family Worker, Eileen Usher, over many years is to be based elsewhere. The African families who made up half the congregation have been less involved recently and it will be hard to keep in touch with them. But the small band of faithful folk can continue to care for one another and for their neighbours.

During the service Martin recalled an anecdote he had told in Cranhill before, how when he was in Brazil in 1997 he had asked Milton Schwantes, a theologian, what he thought the church in Brazil had to teach the church in the West. Schwantes replied that he didn’t know, but he did know this: “The Kingdom of God is like grass,” he said, “but the problem is that the Church always wants to plant trees.”

Trees are the necessary lungs of the earth, but what Schwantes was celebrating was the grassroots stuff. That the grass, trampled underfoot, comes back. In the church we often yearn for permanence, whereas the kin-dom of God is about small and temporary and impermanent seeds of faith.

I hope that when folk hear the story of Cranhill Church they will not say: ‘What a shame that church is not there anymore.’ I hope that they will notice the green shoots as the grass continues to grow.

*Kin-dom is an inclusive alternative to kingdom

The Rev Muriel Pearson is Mission Partner in St Andrews Jerusalem and Tiberias, based in Tiberias. She was parish minister of Cranhill Church 2004-2021. Cranhill Parish Church worshipped in the church building in Cranhill from 1953- 2022, meeting before that in the primary school.