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What we're about - January 2008
The brief history of Stockethill NCD is that following the dissolution of the existing congregation in the parish in June 1999, I was ordained as the minister of the NCD on the 28th October that year. From the beginning I understood my ministry to be part of a team comprising my wife Sarah, Gail Field and Catriona. Sadly Catriona left the team around 11 months later.
We came with the understanding that we were to make a fresh start with a clean sheet of paper, though there were members of the old congregation still very much attached to the ‘church’. Some were extremely helpful in practical ways, though happy to let us get on with our own thing. Others had hoped that the ‘church would re-open’ soon after our arrival. In reality the team did little high profile public ministry for the first few months. Along with my conducting funerals and getting involved as chaplain in the local primary school, we focused on getting to know our community through relationship building and prayer walking, as well as listening to the Lord in worship and an in-depth study of the gospels. Our aim was to both find a vision for the new church and lay the foundations in prayer and presence in the community.
During the first few months we were joined by one or two others for short periods of time and started a monthly ‘traditional service’ primarily for the sake of members of the old congregation. The ‘new’ church was properly launched in January 2001, however, with an Alpha course, and then, following a second course, began meeting regularly on a Sunday morning in Cairncry Community Centre from January 2002. At present that service continues (known as Sunday @ the Centre) with around 60 adults and 12 children regularly attending. We also have 2 short traditional services with a combined figure of around 50 adults attending regularly. Thirty two of the adults from Sunday @ the Centre are attending a cell group (known as Community Groups), though this number is substantially lower than it has been in the recent past.
Over the eight years the number of people in fellowship with the church has risen continually until this last year (for which there may be a number of factors and which we are hoping is a blip in the trend!). Of those currently attending Sunday @ the Centre, 9 have a commitment to Stockethill Church going back before the NCD, 24 have moved from other churches, 8 have found their way back to church after having been away from any fellowship for some time, often for difficult reasons, and 15 have given their lives to Jesus (there may be up to 10 others who have done so and moved on – some to other churches, some to no church and at least one to Glory!). Many of those who have been church members and Christians for a long number of years have also spoken of their faith ‘coming alive’ in new ways.
At the heart of our philosophy of ministry is the desire to help people become better followers of Jesus. One of the keys to that is that we try to be a community which helps each other love our neighbours (one of many catch phrases and buzz words I’m prone to use - for better or worse). Our calling is to see lives changed to the glory of God; both our own lives and those to whom he has called us to minister. When those two things are put together we come up with a third catch phrase which is that we are trying to be a Simple Church.
Within the concept of Simple Church are the ideas of keeping church life light and flexible with a priority on Christ centred community. This means that our organisational structure should cause as little burden to as few people as possible; that we do not focus on being an organisation that ‘does things for its community’ (though that has its place) but rather try to be a community that enables people to fulfil their own calling and ministry in Christ; and, therefore, that the enabling of opportunities for transformative relationship building is central to all that we do. These ideas should, and hopefully do, inform the way that we worship, meet together, organise our time, use our money etc. It is also partly what lies behind our decision not to have a building of our own
The church is the community of God’s people that is called to love God, know his love and reveal it to a lost world. The primary way that we love, or worship, God is in the way that we live together. Because the Holy Spirit is given to and indwells the church, it is in fellowship and community that the Spirit works in each one of us to minister to each other so that we might mature in Christ. Finally it is in the way that we live together in radical, Spirit-given, forgiveness and acceptance, that we reveal God’s love to the world and enable one another to minister to the lost and broken.
In reality this means that ‘small’ is important but also that a ‘one size fits all’ church structure will exclude many people. The combination of these two factors probably means that we will need to become a ‘church planting church’ or have some form of ‘multi-congregational’ set up (evidenced already in our ‘traditional services’ and variety of Community Groups, but yet to be properly worked out). In practise it has also meant that a large burden of responsibility has fallen on a few shoulders (e.g. many of the same people are doing a combination of running small groups, teaching on a Sunday, training to be elders, visiting, doing a lot of the practical ‘stuff’ etc). To what extent this is just a season to be got through, a problem to be addressed or a perception to be changed, I am not sure. It is often asserted that churches need to get as many people as possible involved in what it does, whereas I wonder if only a few people are called to minister in the church so that the church can be a community where God is worshiped and which essentially equips, releases and enables followers of Christ to love their neighbours.
Eight years in, we are at the stage where there is a need for the ‘church planting leadership team’ to hand over to a locally identified leadership and we are in the process of doing that with the likelihood that we will ordain elders and form a Kirk Session around May of this year. My own perception is that in the last year the church has taken on a life of its own in a way that it hasn’t before, but that that shift and the more internal focus we have had recently, may have caused us to lose an ‘evangelistic edge’ (it may be, however, that the focus on internal things has been a catalyst for the church ‘taking on a life of its own’). On the other-hand, many of the folks who have been with us for a while are finding a confidence in their faith and personal ministry. Because of the nature of our church a good number of those with us struggle in particular ways with life and faith (I don’t know if we have more of that than other churches, but it is an issue with us) which perhaps means that progress can seem slow, though it is in reality dramatic. It is also true that we have often failed to effectively reach, disciple and/or minister to those whose lives are particularly fragmented (including drug addicts, homeless people and those who, as they grow older, become particularly dependent).
The challenges that face us include the need to keep that sense of deep community and fellowship, with Christ and each other, which seems to allow the Spirit to minister to people in astonishing ways with the resultant changed lives to the glory of God, whilst at the same time continuing to welcome new people and to grow. The new leadership team have to face the challenge of becoming the vision carriers for the church, whilst at the same time ‘managing’ the church (a balance which will be harder for them than it was for the church planting team).
Two years ago the Lord gave us a prayer. Come Lord Jesus, fill us with your love. Open up our eyes to see you and our ears to hear you. Show us how to love others in your name. That prayer keeps our focus on Christ and on our dependence on his love. It reminds us of our need to grow in him by knowing him more. It tells us that the reason we are here is to reveal his love to others. And finally, in praying it together, it reminds us that we are a fellowship of God’s people who are called together by him.
This is, I believe, a hugely significant time for the church in Stockethill, seen most clearly, though by no means exclusively, in the change in leadership and particularly with the break up of the original church planting team as Gail finds herself having to leave. The new elders will need to guide the church into the next phase of our history, and the support, advice and prayers of the Commission will play a crucial role in their ability to do that.
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