Wednesday at General Assembly 2025

GA2025 Wednesday highlights (using the term “highlights” very loosely)

·      Chaplains to the Forces day! 10,000 forces personnel on 60 operations around the world, chaplains go with them. 4 new candidates for chaplaincy approved, 5 more inquiring. Good news for the Forces, maybe not so good news for vacant charges in the future? There is now the almost compulsory little speech during deliverance from an ex-Moderator with a little funny story about chaplaincy. There happens to be a General here at Assembly if Assembly wishes to hear from him? Of course we agreed! “Peace is war held at bay” – peace takes great effort!

·      Guild and Social Care Reports – great work! Bless them and support them when you can folks! (Yes, you guessed it, at this point in the day I had a coffee break and meeting about our next Presbytery Business Committee meeting. It’s called multi-tasking!)

·      Church of Scotland Trust…thank goodness there are folks who know what they’re doing here!

·      Iona Community: aiming to make the world a little more loving, a little more peaceful, and a lot more just. Assembly affirmed the consistent position of the Church of Scotland in condemning the existence and threat of nuclear weapons as sinful and an offence to God’s created order and urged the Church to recommit to work and pray for peace and disarmament. What can we do in our small corners? And in a world of turmoil, we need to highlight our environmental concerns!

·      At the afternoon restart we had a conference session with FAPLT. In the one-hour slot, Commissioners found their voice in small groups after 25 minutes of presentation. Feedback was then shared around the various questions asked. We were asked to write down one thing we would do when we went home to further the Vivid Vision and what that may look like in our local Church setting. Reformers may now expect a little cynicism from me, however I refuse to be so predictable! Some may say cynicism comes easy, let me tell you it doesn’t, it takes a lot of hard work!

·      On to Ecumenical Relations. Council of Nicaea (325AD) 1700th Anniversary, don’t even try to arrange the candles on the cake!

·      General Trustees: The GT are sitting on congregational funds of £808million, and GT funds of £857million. And still they want to put up the levy on redundant building sales from 10% to 15% - that’s a 50% increase, easy to increase funds for buildings, but not for ministers’ stipends! Just saying! Yes, those figures are correct and eye-watering! When all else declines in the Kirk, we are going to have some fine buildings for historians to visit. I wanted to move a motion to “instruct” the GTs, however I was advised by the top table that Assembly could only “urge” the GTs to do something, not instruct, as civil law would not allow this because the GTs are a separate legal entity. Every day is a school day! The GTs are answerable to the Assembly but cannot be told what to do, work that one out! Isn’t it amazing that Trustees are sitting on MILLIONS of Church money and the highest court in our system cannot tell them what to do?

·      I moved that we have meaningful conversations with Inland Revenue to determine any possibility of a minister choosing to live in their own house and have it designated as a manse. The motion was defeated 155-93. A few raised the point that this matter has been dealt with by last year’s Assembly and that should be the end of the matter. The Principal Clerk rightly pointed out that previous Assemblies do not bind future ones. And everyone has the right and precious freedom, including me, of bringing matters to our highest court. If you care to look at last year’s GT Report you will witness some ridiculous arguments against going down this mixed manse provision route – for example, living in a manse relieves ministers of the burden of looking after property! Wonder if the Convener wants to move out his house and rent somewhere to relieve him of the burden of looking after his house? This mixed provision is allowed in other denominations. Those who don’t want the Church to depart from traditional manse provision have once again conspired to keep the status quo, including the Assembly Trustees Convener who earlier encouraged Assembly to “have courage to leave old ways” – seems that only applies when it suits. For the whole story on Manses, visit: https://www.reformthechurchofscotland.org/manses

Last day beckons which is mainly a morning of mopping up the final Reports and a traditional afternoon ending, so I won’t be reporting on the day’s events, however for interested Reformers I will be blogging some reflections.

Bless you and thanks for reading! Mon the Reformers!