On the move

My blog is now posted on the Union website. www.scottishbaptist.org.uk

Just updated earlier today.

Yes First Minister

On Wednesday 23 February 2011 I was given the opportunity, along with 9 other denominational leaders, to meet First Minister Alex Salmond to discuss areas of national concern. These included issues relating to alcohol abuse, restorative justice, reflections on a socially-just economy, and Churches, communities and volunteering.

The conversation was open and cordial, addressing difficult issues and sharing examples of good practice from across the country. The First Minister greatly extended the time available to us to meet with him and we enjoyed the warmth of welcome received in the Parliament.

This annual meeting illustrates the increasingly active engagement between Churches and Civic Society in Scotland, both nationally and locally.

First Minister Alex Salmond said:

"The Scottish Government greatly values the contribution that churches and all of our faith communities make to the social, economic and cultural life of Scotland and their important work supporting communities across the nation. Today’s meeting was open and constructive and I welcome the Scottish Government’s ongoing dialogue with our churches."

As Baptists we are indebted to Action of Churches Together in Scotland for negotiating this meeting each year, and for the warm and gracious welcome I received as a leader of a denomination that does not participate in ACTS.

This meeting reminded me that although the church in Scotland has been in decline for many years, we are still a large voice that others are willing to give time to listen to when we speak in unity and from a perspective of helping others and society as a whole.

Welcome to Stranraer

The latest church to join the Baptist Union of Scotland is Stranraer Baptist Church. This past Sunday they celebrated their 26th anniversary and my visit with them was a huge encouragement to me and, I pray, also to them.

Stranraer as a town is about to face a huge change in its economy and infrastructure when the last boat to Belfast sails later this year. Encouragingly the Baptist church seems well placed to help the town face this new challenge and is eager to engage with the community.

It's hard to capture in words the sense of God's presence, the expectation that God is doing something new amongst them and their desire to see Christ's Kingdom come all over their isolated town.

On arrival in the church building you find a beautifully simple multi-purpose room set out for worship but capable of so much more and used all week. The sound, lighting and projection facilities are what you would expect in a theatre and speak of their desire to do all that they do with excellence.

30 seconds into the opening worship and I knew that I was in for a time of refreshing as the children of the Sunday School sang with all their might, with smiles radiating from their faces and feet dancing to the rhythm of the music.

After the service people mingled. Different generations talking to one another, hugging one another, sharing life together.

They have just registered with Prayer Rooms and are delighted to see people coming in off the street to pray. The congregation are having their 2nd 24hour prayer gathering soon

and they are thrilled at the new lease of life it has brought to them. The kids' club has seen 6 non-church kids choose to follow Jesus in the last few months and they're engaging with all the other Ayrshire churches through their networker Noel McCullins, to dream new dreams of what they can do now that they belong to a wider family and how they can engage with the changing face of Stranraer.

If ever you are in Stranraer, why not look them up. You can find them in the street opposite Morrisons. I'm sure they will warm your heart as much as they did mine.

If there is one book

"If there is one book that you should buy at this year's assembly it should be 'Deep Church'," so said Rev Norman Graham of Denny Baptist Church, and so I did. I left assembly with this one new book under my arm and today I finished reading it. It is a great book, really thought provoking, extremely challenging; for anyone looking to ask questions about why our church does things they way they do them and how they can do them differently, it is a gem.

A few highlights would be comments on the Christian's view of the arts and culture. No one taught me a theology of that in church or at college but now with a daughter whose life is filled with the beauty of music and plans a career as a performer, some simple reflection on common grace, beauty, creation and creativity I pray will help her and the church around her to understand how her life might be meaningful beyond simply being an asset to a worship group.

Yet for me the challenges came most deeply in the chapter entitled Deep Ecclesiology. I am aware and experience the frustration of many that our structures can inhibit the move of the Spirit and a speed of response to a fast changing world. I also believe that we live in a time where institutions are not trusted, particularly by a younger generation and that to throw off the shackles that build up over time and to start afresh is very attractive.

Jim Belcher however stands by his Presbyterian institution whilst seeking to release a movement of God's people into Orange County. I found his understanding of deep ecclesiology extremely helpful. The idea of an institution that releases a movement of God's people scattered throughout Scotland seems to me something of what I long to see happen in the Baptist Union of Scotland and in each of the churches.

For such a turn around to occur it will take a change from control to reliance, from independence to interdependence, from institutional relationship to personal relationship, from security to adventure and maybe most of all from timidity to confidence in what the Lord can still do. As I read this morning in Psalm 127 "unless the Lord builds a house the work of the builder is wasted."

It's worth a read. It would also make a great book to study with friends.

Please pray for the BUS as we go into a couple of weeks of key meetings, charting paths, sharing hopes and praying for the Spirit of God to work in us, revealing the rule of Christ for our lives at this time.

Forward in Hope

Tonight I will be preaching at the watchnight service in Glasgow Cathedral. It marks the beginning to a New Year of work for me. On January 1st I will travel north to Fort William where on the 2nd I will lead the first anniversary service of the new developing Baptist Church there. On the 3rd I travel south to Birmingham to meet with the group known as the Fellowship of British Baptists, before holding our Assembly Planning meeting on the 5th. Then it is a quick return to Scotland for a staff meeting on the 6th to launch into a year which will see many changes.

However, let me say before I get caught up in these changes, that I am really looking forward to these next 6 days. Each of these events give me great encouragement and hope for the coming year.

The fact that hundreds of Christians will gather in Glasgow Cathederal tonight, from all sorts of denominations, is a reason for hope. "How good it is when God's people dwell together in unity." So often we have allowed theological difference to be the basis of disunity, rather than uniting around the fact that we all believe those ancient creeds that declare Jesus Christ as the Son of God. (I could go on but you get the point)

I receive great hope from Fort William Baptist Church who have had Sunday attendances this past year where their building struggled to contain the amount of people who chose to worship with them, and who saw 5 people baptised by immersion: new signs of life in a small highland church.

The Fellowship of British Baptists is another area of great hope for me. This group has taken on a new sense of importance. Is it possible that the Baptist Union of Great Britain, Scotland and Wales and the community of the BMS World Mission could not only get on but could come to love and support one another in real ways? There is a new depth to relationship amongst us, a new desire to support one another, a new dawn of joined up thinking and acting that says we are better when we work together.

More hope comes as I think of planning the next assembly. As the creative team of Scottish Baptists and BMS staff join together, encouraged by the assembly in October we dream about the coming year. What message does God want to bring to us? Who will He speak to as we gather? What new challenges will people take up? What will He say to us corporately? Our God is a God who communicates with us in planning and at the event and that gives me great hope.

And then I'll get back to the team at Aytoun Road. A team which gives me hope. People called, gifted and experienced. A team that will go through several major changes in the coming year, changes that will make us quite vulnerable at times through the process of change. There will be days when we feel that things are out of our control. There may even be desperate days when the plans that we have made fail. These prospects fill me with hope because it is in these times we tend to turn to the Lord. It is in vulnerable, desperate, challenging times that we seek his strength, wisdom and support. It is so easy to do the stuff that we are able to do on our own. However there is more hope when the stuff that we do is enabled by Him who alone can give us strength.

Thanks for following the blog. I pray that your New Year has many indicators of hope and that if you find yourself in times of weakness, challenge or vulnerability that you will know the strength of our Lord and Saviour.

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

Shepherding Season

It was a rare day for me yesterday. I had planned and managed to follow through on a whole day in my home church, Kirkintilloch Baptist. The morning was given over to the Sunday School crew with shepherds complete with foam crooks which are a lot less dangerous than the cane and coathanger crooks I used to beat people up with as a child. None the less the young shepherds complete with the obligatory T towels discovered that T towels could be used as a great weapon to strangle the donkeys.
The evening service took the form of a classical Christmas with young musicians including my own children. I had the privilege of leading the service and speaking briefly at the end. Again the shepherd became the focus of the evening. As the evening drew to an end the string quartet played Corelli's Christams Concerto which finishes with the movement entitled "Pastorale". It is a beautiful movement and I hope you enjoy listening to the live performance I have included on the blog. The inspiration for the movement is not directly the shepherds on Bethlehem's hillside but rather the shepherds on Italian hillsides who, imitating those earlier shepherds, entered the towns and villages every Christmas Eve to play their pipes by the nativity scenes.
I have come to love the significance of the shepherds to the Christmas story. They speak to me of the all embracing love of our Father God who invited them as his special guests. Shepherds would never be invited into the average person's home. Shepherds were not acceptable company to the religious or even to those who did not see themselves as religious. They were the outcasts of their time and yet invited as honoured guests by our Father God to welcome his Son into the world.
When I think about what is Christian about the way we celebrate Christmas, surely something of this welcome and warmth of invitation for the stranger, the outcast, for those that others reject (I'm not talking about the in-laws!) is key to our celebrations.
What are you doing to celebrate this Christmas that relates to the spirit of the first Christmas? If this is the shepherding season, what are you doing to gather people in? Why not listen to Corelli and contemplate these questions.
Have a wonderful Christmas.
If video does not work try this link!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=696438926&v=app_2392950137#!/video/video.php?v=478344308926

A place for everyone

I can't believe its been two months since I put something on the blog. My apologies to those who were hoping for something more regularly. Since writing the last entry I have been on the go with some great experiences in great churches, attending the BUGB council, our own Assembly and just yesterday the Scottish Baptist Council meeting. But I want to reflect back on my weekend's visit to Abbeyhill Baptist Church, just off Easter Road in Edinburgh.

If you judge a book by it's cover then you might simply walk past this place and not even notice that it is a church. It's building appears to sit on the corner of a street as part of a tenement block.

But if you get inside, a whole new world opens up, a counter-cultural, unique world that is the local church. All that excites me about the local church as the hope of the world is on view in this eclectic group of Jesus followers.

The first thing that I saw on entering the building was the age range of the congregation. This was a congregation that welcomed all ages and the way the service was conducted proved that they were all welcome. Accessible worship for children without being childish. Kids were alert, involved, senior members of the congregation were fully supporting their involvement and engaging with them. The way worship was led and entered into allowed all people, without discrimination, to express their praise and thanksgiving.

Then there was the diversity in education. I spoke with adults with no qualifications, those who were hoping to achieve new academic targets of standard grades and at the same time to Phd students, all delighted to engage with the living word of God together.

Within this church family was a wide range of ethnic diversity. It looked just like the streets of Edinburgh. A variety of languages spoken, a variety accents, skin colours, and integrated into the worship a compassion for the peoples of this world.

As I left this church on Sunday evening I was rejoicing in what I had seen. There is no other place on earth where this diverese group of people would gather. There is a sense of love, welcome and belonging experienced and expressed by all, it is what the local church is all about.

In Christ, there is a place of welcome for everyone: when His body the church demonstrates it so clearly and it is experienced by so many it can only serve to strengthen the faithful witness of the Church to the transforming power of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.