Journals

This was a lecture given to the Church Service Society at its Annual Meeting in May 2017. It takes a fresh look at how worship was understood in Renaissance Scotland, and in the process disturbs some of the assumptions about the nature of the Scottish Protestant Reformation, including its timetable and uneven development in different parts of the country. One aspect is how far change in Catholic worship had progressed and was continuing to progress even beyond the traditional date of the Reformation. An emphasis is the matter of how liturgy was interpreted and taught to the people before and after the Reformation.

There is discussion of the different expectations ministers face today, not least the lack of experience of the church and of Christian formulations. One noticeable change is that now a funeral is seen as a celebration of a life (illustrated by the large number of humanist-led funerals) and that ‘tributes’ to the deceased are required, which is difficult to fit properly into a traditional liturgy, and ways of approaching that are discussed.

This is a selection and some observations, with an introduction. His nickname came from his position as Professor of Hebrew in (the Free Church) New College. These sayings come from walks and conversations between him and one who was then a student but who became Professor of Moral Philosophy at St Andrews and who published his notes and reminisces. They are remarkable as coming from a Free Church divine and cover a wide range of topic, including the need to be ‘more liturgical’, a desire for more hymns, the Te Deum, the Scottish Paraphrases (‘born in Hellas, and never visited Judea’).

An address given at the Annual Meeeting of the Church Service Society about one who was a former President and a well-known and much-loved professor of practical theology and Christian ethics at New College, and writer of many books. His ministry in South India is also remembered.

This is the address given to the Annual Meeting of the Church Service Society in May 2019 by the Revd Dr Doug Gay, Principal of Trinity College, University of Glasgow.

Gay is addressing one of the four great challenges he had identified in a Chalmers Lecture as facing the current Kirk: liturgical renewal. After a resumé of worship since the Reformation, he finds three broad streams that have characterised worship since 1940: Church Service Society, Evangelical, middle-of-the-road. He identifies a number of challenges to the way we worship developing from the 1960s, and adds three modes of technological development. The remainder of his paper roundly challenges several aspects of the practice and the practioners of worship today: a deficit in understanding, an inability to praise convincingly, the absence of genuine feeling, the poverty of preaching, the lack of physical/spoken participation, the inhibitory nature of pews, the lack of appetite for Communion, a need to place baptism more at the centre, the need for better songs especially in the area of praise and worship song, the need to rediscover silence, the need for more genuine intercessory prayer, and the development of worship that is strong enough to change/convert those to whom church going is unfamiliar. He calls finally for better education and training, both for ministerial leadership and congregations.

The Rt Revd Ian Paton, Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane, one of four speakers at the Study Day of 2019 to respond to a recent report to the General Assembly exploring the possibility of a new form of ministry of Word and Sacrament to support fresh expressions of being the church or where the scarcity of ordained ministers in scattered parishes reduced opportunities for Communion,  approached the matter from the perspective of the Canons of the Scottish Episcopal Church, where the local church is the diocese and all Eucharists are presided over by the bishop or, in his absence, by presbyters. The Eucharist forms the church but it also is a sign of the Kingdom and justice for the poor and the oppressed. It is the norm for worship and has come to be celebrated every Sunday. However, his Church too suffers from a lack of presbyters. The paper discusses three possible solutions being posited in different parts of the Anglican Communion: 1. extended Communion where the consecrated elements are taken to a place to be distributed by an authorised lay person – which is reception of Communion rather than the celebration of the Eucharist; 2. lay presidency, arising from a belief in the ‘priesthood of all believers’; 3. more ordinands, including Local Collaborative Ministries; 4. seeing the Eucharist as an action of the whole church, with the people of God as celebrants, with a priest but also others with roles in the leadership. The paper discusses these and concludes with some observations about modes of mutual acceptance between the Church of Scotland and the Scottish Episcopal Church.

The Revd Dr John McPake gave the fourth paper at the Study Day of 2019 which took place as contributory to the discussion which followed a report to the General Assembly of 2019 exploring the possibility of a new form of ministry of Word and Sacrament to support fresh expressions of being the church or where the scarcity of ordained ministers in scattered parishes reduced opportunities for Communion. The paper he gave was derived from this report, of which he was the principal author, and, being already in the public domain, was not printed in the Record with the other three. However, it may be found in the Report Book of that Assembly, at page 17 and a summary is given here. The report arose from discussion between the Panel on Review and Reform, the Theological Forum, the Committee on Ecumenical Relations. and the Legal Questions Committee. The report addresses the needs of new worshipping communities, arguing that Baptism and Holy Communion are no less necessary for their growth but that current patterns of the formation of ministers are not always appropriate for leading those communities. The report defined the place and importance of the Sacraments in the New Testament, the Early Church, at the Reformation, as well as in the present day, when they possessed a missional, pastoral and spiritual value; through them the grace of God is signified and the Word of God revealed. The report then restates the place of the ordained ministry, emphasising that it takes place within the ministry of the people of God and is not a possession of those ordained. This church is called into being by the Word in order that it might share in the new creation made possible by the Spirit. The relationship of Word and Sacrament is explored as is the nature of ordination, i.e. consisting of lawful election, fasting, prayer, and the imposition of hands by the ‘elderschippe’. The five marks of mission as outlined in the Church of England’s Mission-Shaped Church (2004) are summarised, commenting that it may be unreasonable to expect leaders of new worshipping communities to commit to the intensive training required of parish ministers. A possible new form of ministry of Word and Sacrament, shaped by the context of the emerging church, should be explored, faithful to the historic theology of the church in relation to the inseparability of Word and Sacrament.