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'We Are the Hands and Ears of Christ Today'

Wednesday May 24 2017

General Assembly Day 4

New Ministry support service launched
Concern over minister shortage
Addresses by dementia expert and Jordanian prince
Tribute to Dame Sheilagh Kesting

The convener of the Ministries Council today paid tribute to all who exercise ministry in the Church of Scotland.

The Rev Neil Glover said that “They bear witness to the most remarkable truth – that the angels do not change a world of hurt and pain into a world of love. It is we – our frail human selves – who are the hands and ears of Christ today.”

Ministries today launched Ascend, its new support and development service for everyone involved in ministry and pastoral support through the Church of Scotland. Mr Glover said: “Ascend is a central location to find the core services provided by the Ministries Council for support and development for those in ministry.

“The start point is the Ministries Development Conversation which has just finished a very successful pilot.

“This leads to a range of other services each with a proven record in supporting the wellbeing of ministers, which absolutely essential to the overall Ministry of the Church.”

Discussions again focussed on approaches to dealing with the ever-growing vacancy rate, particularly in remote rural areas where several presbyteries are at 50% vacancy or worse. The Very Rev John Christie pointed out that very few of the Commissioners to this year’s General Assembly were interim moderators, and called on those who are there to remember ‘those congregations where there is no minister, and no prospect of one’.

Mr Christie introduced a motion, accepted by the convener, which asked the Council and other bodies to review vacancy procedure ‘with a view to creating a process more appropriate to this time’.

However, a proposal that the Council establish a strategy for supporting areas of rural deprivation was defeated after the convener argued that there is already support in place through the existing presbytery planning process and that the Council is involved in the Mission and Discipleship Council’s rural working group.

Elsewhere in the report, new sections were added to the deliverance urging the council to investigate what more it could do to promote excellence in preaching, to develop resilience in ministry; to support parishes which are not priority areas but still suffer significant deprivation; and to consider how to mark the 50^th anniversary of the approval of the ordination of female ministers.

The Council agreed to consider the possibility of paying visa fees for ministers who have come in to the UK from outside the European Union and European Economic Area. The Rev Dr William Stalder told the Assembly that visa fees for himself and his family had amounted to over £19,000 over six years.

The Assembly today also took the reports of the Ecumenical Relations and Safeguarding Committees. Linking the two, there was praise and thanks from the United Reformed Church (URC) for a new arrangement between the two churches by which the URC will take on the safeguarding procedures of the Church of Scotland.

The Safeguarding report included an address from the international dementia expert Professor June Andrews, who urged churches to do all they could to maintain older people’s access to their church, as essential to maintaining the highest possible level of independence: “If you can't think of a way to get someone out of a care home into a church you're not trying hard enough"

During Ecumenical Relations, there was a warm tribute to the Very Rev Dr Sheilagh Kesting, the now-retired ecumenical relations officer, who was last year made a Dame of the Order of St Gregory by the Roman Catholic Church. The Moderator said to her: “As Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote, ‘There’s Nothing Like a Dame’. Well we know there’s nothing, and no-one, like Dame Sheilagh Kesting.”

Earlier, the Assembly heard from Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad of Jordan, only the second Muslim to ever address the gathering. He condemned Monday night’s terrorist attack ‘in the strongest possible terms’. “We are appalled to see them pretend to represent our own religion. Obviously, they do not.”

In his speech, Prince Ghazi outlined a bleak future for the next 25 years across the world, based on current technological, social, religious, political and environmental trends. However, he said that the solution to many of our problems could lie in everybody coming off the internet for an hour each day and engaging in 'solemn, solitary, systematic reading'.

"The only prayer for 'more' in the Qu'ran is for an increase in knowledge," he added.

Thanking him, the Moderator told the Prince that his country 'puts our country to shame' in its willingness to take in refugees.

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'We Are the Hands and Ears of Christ Today'

General Assembly Day 4

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