Crisis Or Opportunity
Rev David J Randall
Issues arising from the 2009 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
It has been said often that the Chinese alphabet has one character which can stand for both crisis and opportunity. Perhaps that character might be placed alongside the burning bush as a symbol of the situation facing the Church of Scotland at present. We have Christ’s own promise and that cannot fail – the promise that His Church, founded on the rock of faith in Him as Saviour and Lord, will not fail; the question is – in the present crisis has our denomination placed itself outside that true Church, and does the situation present an opportunity for something new, something better for the Christian good of Scotland?
Liberals probably have a complacent expectation that we evangelicals will all settle down after a while and accept the present situation – as we had to do, for example, with the unwelcome decision to allow congregations to apply for lottery funding. We didn’t like it, but we had to accept that that decision had been made. It needs to be made clear to the church at large – the liberals as well as our own members – that the present situation is of a different order and that, notwithstanding any attempt to gag people, we are not prepared to simply roll over and accept what is biblically unacceptable. Are we? It seems that some evangelicals may be prepared to acquiesce (with all reluctance, of course), and this paper challenges such a view and urges that we must make a stand on this issue; we must not just allow things to settle down.
This is a personal reflection on issues facing us as a result of the terrible events of this last Assembly and the ensuing induction by Aberdeen Presbytery.
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It will make some assertions
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seek to answer some points that have arisen
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pose some questions
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and consider some options before us.
The issue has crystallised around one particular induction and we will refer to the outrageous nature of that action, but it is also true that this issue has brought to a head much that has been smouldering under the surface of this “broad church” for a long long time. I recall the story of multi-storey office building in America where a disturbing crack appeared in a wall on the 42nd floor. The managing director of the company that owned the building sent for an architect to come and investigate. When the managing director was informed that the architect had arrived, he took the elevator to the 42nd floor to meet him. However, the architect couldn’t be found – until eventually he was discovered down in the basement of the building. The managing director was angry and said to the architect, ‘What are you doing down here? We have a serious crack on the 42nd floor that needs attention’. The architect replied, ‘Sir, you may have a crack on the 42nd floor, but your problem is not on the 42nd floor. Your problem is here in the basement’. It later transpired that a security guard employed in the building wanted to build a garage beside his house, but he was short on materials and money. So every evening, when he left work, he took the elevator to the basement and chiselled one brick from the wall, put it in his bag and took it home. After several years of this, a crack appeared on the 42nd floor!
This illustrates our position. the issue of the induction of a practising homosexual man to a pastoral charge is the crack on the 42nd floor, but it is the outcome of a more serious problem. For years, people have been stealing bricks from the basement, so to speak, and it is becoming increasingly obvious that the building (the Church of Scotland) is in great danger.
A speaker at this year’s Keswick Convention illustrated the matter in a different way. he spoke of a basketball stand at a friend’s house. It was made of some kind of conti-board with a whitened face to which the hoop was attached. The conti-board had, over the years, rotted away behind the white facade, until one day, when a friend threw the ball at it, suddenly the whole thing collapsed. The final collapse happened in a moment, but the rot had set in long before then. We are now seeing all too clearly just how rotten the fabric of the church has become.