Mission in Contemporary Scotland

Liam Jerrold Fraser

Description

Mission in Contemporary Scotland is the first book to fully examine the challenges and opportunities of Christian mission in contemporary Scotland. It covers all of the most important topics and questions engaging the church today, such as the reality of decline, the changing nature of domestic mission, the response of the Church to change, and the different models of mission that are being used today. Describing and analysing a wealth of concrete examples from a Scottish context, this study gives practical guidance to church leaders engaged in Fresh Expressions and church planting in a Scottish context.
A major contribution of the book is to envisage ways in which the institutional Church can respond imaginatively to its secular and pluralist context. This is the first work of its kind and fills a significant gap in the market.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Missions
• Christian Ministry
• Philosophie et théologie
• Escocia
• Mission (Christianity)
• Scotland

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 30 septembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800830226
• Langue: English

Extrait

Mission in Contemporary Scotland
Liam Jerrold Fraser






First published in 2021 by
SAINT ANDREW PRESS
121 George Street
Edinburgh EH2 4YN
Copyright © Liam Jerrold Fraser 2021
ISBN 978 1 80083 020 2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent.
The right of Liam Jerrold Fraser to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
The views expressed in this volume are the author’s own and are not necessarily endorsed by the Church of Scotland.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
It is the publisher’s policy to use only papers that are natural and recyclable and that have been manufactured from timber grown in renewable, properly managed forests. All of the manufacturing processes of the papers are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
Typeset by Regent Typesetting
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by CPI Group (UK) Ltd




To the Scottish Church

‘As we believe in one God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, so we firmly believe that from the beginning there has been, now is, and to the end of the world shall be, one Church …’
Scots Confession , Chapter XVI




Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1: Background
1. A Missional Theology
2. The World That Was
3. The Secularisation of Scotland
Part 2: Context
4. Social Context
5. Political Context
6. Spiritual Context
Part 3: Practice
7. Service
8. Evangelism
9. Public Witness

Conclusion: A Contextual Missiology for Scotland
Appendix: What Next?
Bibliography




Acknowledgements
The writing of my first book was a rather solitary affair, with few friends or colleagues to act as dialogue partners. Thankfully, that is not the case with the present work, which has benefitted from discussion with friends and acquaintances over many years.
I would like to thank John McPake, Russel Moffat, Christopher and Hanna Rankine and Joseph Ritchie for their friendship and conversation over the years. I would also like to thank Ally Collins, Josep Martí Bouis, Adam Frisk, Rachel Frost, Benjamin Hodozso, Nathan Hood, Jamie Lockhart, Craig Meek, Kayla Robbins, JoAnn Sproule and Simeon Wilton for their work with Edinburgh University Campus Ministry (EUCAM), and their willingness to explore new ways of being Church. Thanks must also go to various members of the Forge Scotland team for their wisdom and support, and to Jock Stein and David McCarthy for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this book.
I am most grateful to Christine Smith at Saint Andrew Press for being willing to take on this project, and for her patience in its completion. I also wish to thank Mary Matthews for her assistance in finalising the manuscript for publication.
As ever, my final thanks are to my family, and in particular to my wife Samantha. Perhaps when her husband prophesies ‘no more books after this one’ the Lord will one day fulfil his words.
Liam Jerrold Fraser
Feast of Thomas Becket 2020



Introduction
The summer is over, and we have not been saved. For though we are still standing, we stand at the end of an age, one that will never rise again. The bowl lies broken, the golden cord is snapped, and the aged Church peers through its blinds into a world grown dark, and strange and forbidding.
For in the blink of an eye, the Scottish Church has been undone. Since the 1950s, Scotland has moved from being a Christian to a post-Christian society, with the rate of change accelerating in recent decades. Over the past thirty years, the number of Scots who make their way to worship on the Lord’s day has halved, so that 93% of Scots do not attend Church. 1 This is not only the Church’s tragedy, but has consequences for all Scots. Community is in decline and mental illness on the rise, with a growing number of Scots no longer knowing who they are or what they are for. The decline is unprecedented, precipitous and real.
This is the reality that we, the last Scottish Christians, must reckon with. Yet reality is hard, and the common responses to it are despair and delusion. The despairing person asks: Why bother doing anything? Why set ourselves up for failure when success is impossible? Isn’t it enough that my church will be there to ‘see me out’? The delusional person, meanwhile, carves idols of hope for themselves. The statistics aren’t that bad, are they? Didn’t a Cabinet Minister address our conference? Doesn’t the Queen send a representative to the General Assembly each year? Doesn’t my daily devotional, or my pastor’s teaching, or the latest book on church growth prove that we will soon see exponential growth?
Despair and delusion are powerful, but we must not settle for either. We must learn to see not with the eyes of the cynic, or of the optimist, or even of the realist, but to see ourselves, our Church and our nation with the eyes of Christ. He alone knows the way, for he is the Way.
This book is an attempt to do that, to present the Scottish Church with the depths of our predicament and yet to hope in Christ. It does so by offering a comprehensive introduction to the background, context and practice of mission in contemporary Scotland. It provides church members and leaders with a single point of reference, the kind that any missionary might use to familiarise themselves with the new land that they are travelling to. It presents the latest academic research on missional theology, the causes of secularisation, the social, political and spiritual contexts of Scotland and best practice in relation to Christian service, evangelism and public witness. It is not a ‘how to’ book in the sense of giving the Church a step-by-step guide to engaging in mission, but, like a map and compass, will keep church members and leaders from wandering off track, and point them in the direction they should be travelling.
A work of this kind, however, faces three serious objections: the relevance of a book focused only on Scotland, its multi-disciplinary approach and its utility for the Church.
The first issue is that of relevance. Do we not already have books about the theology and practice of church planting, fresh expressions and community development? Do we not live in a global Western culture that makes national characteristics irrelevant? What is the difference between Glasgow and Gateshead, Dunblane and Detroit?
As we shall see, Scotland is indeed heavily influenced by the general forces of Western culture. Yet Scotland has a unique history, sociology and political complexion that requires its own study. Scottish sociologist David McCrone recounts that when he studied sociology at Edinburgh in the 1960s, he learned about London, Chicago and a host of other Western cities, but came away knowing nothing about what was happening down the road from him. He was studying sociology in Scotland, yet few had made any effort to find out what the sociology of Scotland actually was. 2 It is much the same with mission. We learn from detailed case studies of church plants in Amsterdam or Sydney, of experiments in fresh expressions in Sheffield and pub churches in Dallas, but know little to nothing about Aberdeen, or Inverness, or Stornoway, or Dundee. One could count the number of works dealing with mission in contemporary Scotland on almost one hand, versus many hundreds from England and thousands from America. With so little knowledge of our nation, we in the Scottish Church are in danger of doing ministry and mission in the dark.
To remedy this, I will seek to develop a contextual missiology for Scotland. Over three decades ago, Will Storrar recognised that if the Church is to reach Scotland it must first understand Scotland. 3 Yet we can only truly understand Scotland by identifying with Scotland – with its history, its culture and its hopes for the future – just as Jesus did with the law, culture and aspirations of Israel. Participation in, and commitment to, a nebulous Western Protestant culture of mission is not enough. We must enter fully into the identity and culture of Scotland if we are to redeem it from within.
In order to do that, however, we must employ every lens and tool at our disposal, thus necessitating a multi-disciplinary approach. In addition to Scripture and theology, we must employ history, economics, sociology, religious studies, philosophy and political theory if we are to understand how we arrived at this point, and how we, by God’s grace, might turn a corner.
It is at this point that we must consider a prominent objection to multi-disciplinary studies of this kind. In Theology and Social Theory , John Milbank argues that social sciences like sociology are compromised by anti-Christian assumptions due to the beliefs and prejudices of those who first developed them. By ignoring Scripture and the tradition of the Church, sociology – so it is claimed – describes society as if God does no