General Assembly 2025 Reflections

General Assembly 2025 Final reflections

·      Disappointment that the Report of the Radical Reform Group was once again shunted to the Friday when everyone has gone home. The Convener, RevRabRants, has graciously agreed to continue to blog in the interim period until GA2026.

·      Given that we were remaindering reports until the last day because we didn’t have enough time to fit them in, and given that most days we were struggling to finish by 6-7pm, and given that we will still have important decisions to make next year for a Kirk in critical care, I wonder how on earth we are going to fit all the business into four days in 2026. Sleeping bags and midnight feasts will be allowed as expenses next year.

·      Following on from the above point, we only arrived at Monday lunchtime and the Business Committee cut down the length of speeches from Commissioners from 5 to 3 minutes. Conveniently, Conveners speeches remained at 10 minutes, and they were still granted the privilege of closing the debates. With only a couple of weeks to digest all the Reports, squeezing in comments, being rushed because of time constraints, the odds are really stacked against Commissioners making a difference to the complex Reports presented by Committees who have had months to prepare. Fait accomplis is a wonderful phrase.

·      Highlight of the week: the train home.

·      Second best highlight of the week: the view from our third-floor flat overlooking Edinburgh towards the Firth of Forth.

·      Uncomfortable truth of the week: nobody in the outside world cared what the General Assembly of the Church decided.

·      Second uncomfortable truth of the week: very very very few in the pews in the Kirk cared anything about what the GA decided.

·      The Vivid Vision of the Kirk paints a picture of what the Church will look like in 2027, where cynicism gives way to positivity. This is welcome news, it means that Reformers have two further years of cynicism left in the bank.

·      The elephant in the room: whilst it is wonderful to have a Roman Catholic Lord High Commissioner, it would bring our two Christian traditions even closer if we were able to share communion with each other in our local contexts when working ecumenically. I’ll have a word with the new Pope, Robert to Robert.

·      Going forward we will soon have no Kirk communications apart from our not-so-wonderful website and social media that will not say boo to a goose.

·      More and more is being decentralised, apart from the things that central want to control.

·      Words do not match actions. Ministers are heroes, key resources to the mission of the Church, treasured foot soldiers on the front line. But their stipends have gone down in real terms over the last decade and particularly in the last few years. Manses are still in need of attention. Plates are being spun out there as parishes grow larger and larger with unions, and ministers act as Interim Moderators in other large parishes. Meanwhile the top 20 central employees earn between £60,000-£100,000. We need to pay our ministers stipends akin to the teaching profession in Scotland and work out how many we can afford when we look at our overall income. Jesus, on the other hand, definitely loves us, for the Bible tells us so.

·      Watch out for the Jesus-centred fruitful digital ministry coming to a town near you! I have no idea what that means and I suspect 99% of Commissioners don’t know either.

·      A typical Church has 173 members, 10 adherents, 4 children associated with the congregation, none of whom receive communion, 45 people worshipping in the church, 8 people worshipping online, 0 professions of faith, 6 funerals, 0 baptisms, and 0 weddings, a leadership of 16 elders. If that’s you, you need to look after two Churches at least, probably more.

·      Growth Fund £342.4 million; Income Fund £85.5million; Deposit Fund £141.3 million; General Trustees sitting on £857 million; yet we’re running out of money. Who tied the money up? Who’s storing up riches on earth? And still we proclaim a bias to the poor!

·      We need to reduce Giving to Grow payments in self-supporting congregations to allow them to invest and grow which will in turn ensure that ministry in deprived areas may continue. Simple truth is we will not be able to do what we want to do and we will not be able to cover the whole of Scotland, except in our dreams! Declaratory Article 3 and the King’s promise to uphold Presbyterian Church government will keep us warm around the old campfires, with marshmallows on sticks!

·      We need to let ministers live in their own homes if they choose to do so. People keep asking about the problems that may cause, but folk conveniently forget that the manse system has a load of problems of its own already!

·      For those who think I’m raining on the parade, let me say I was baptised and raised in the Kirk, served 34 years as a minister in the Kirk so far, and I desperately want to see the Good News of Jesus Christ shared in our beautiful land and further afield. The Kirk should get the sack cloth and ashes on and lament the fact that we ignored decline for the last 60 years to our shame and that’s why we’re facing such momentous change in the present. We need to let common sense in the door, take radical action that seeks to serve God rather than the institution, and move into the 21st century. The institution may yet die, but the Church will continue, for the Church is wherever God’s people are praising, knowing their wanted and loved by their Lord; the Church is wherever Christ’s followers are trying to live and to share out the good news of God!

Mon the Reformers!