dying

There was the chance today to chat again with a friend who pastors another congregation. He was talking about their accounts.

Times are hard. We're all aware of that. The recession and all that that entails.

This friend was saying they'd really been pleasantly surprised that they'd actually broken even. Albeit, he quickly qualified, it was due to a healthy legacy that some member had kindly left them in her will.

That, he said, was how it's generally been these last few years.

He didn't quite put it in just so many words, but the drift of what he was saying amounted to this -

We depend on people dying.

(Especially if they leave the church a legacy)..

An interesting line of thought. Because, of course, as a long-term financial strategy it's got one major flaw. Sooner or later the donors have all died off.

My friend was pointing to what is now true for us all. We're living, to some very large extent, on the capital 'borrowed' from former generations. And because this 'borrowed' capital is unlikely to be repaid, we're really 'borrowing' it too from the future generations of God's church.

We're living, in other words, on our reserves.

And that simply can't go on for ever.

I was at a meeting, early afternoon, up town, where this, in effect, was the burden of what was being said. (This was entirely independent of the friend I was speaking about).

We can't go on like this.

I'm no financial expert, but I can do some basic maths. And the 'maths', so far as I can understand the way things are, is essentially this. We got these sort of sums to do at school.

If the Ministries Council (the body which pays us ministers) is drawing each year on the church's reserves to the tune of some £5m;

and if the reserves on which they're drawing amount to, at most, some £60m;

then in how many years will the church's reserves run out?

It doesn't require any so-called rocket science. It's basic schoolboy maths. Even I can do the sums.

The church is running at a fairly considerable deficit.

One of those present this afternoon remarked that the combination of this particular deficit (the payment of her ministers), coupled with the pensions crisis, coupled with the recession, (and who knows what all else) was building towards, perhaps some years down the line, what we now call the 'perfect storm'.

Which is anything but perfect if you find yourself caught in the midst of the thing.

The response at the meeting was muted. To say the least. In amongst the bits I didn't understand, it seemed to me that what the folk were saying in response was basically this - we've been here before; these things come in cycles; don't worry, everything will be all right.

Everything will be all right.

On my way to the meeting I passed the gallery of Modern Art. It's got a sign on the front which says just that. Everything will be all right.

On the other side of the road, though, there's the Dean Gallery, which houses at present a different work of art in its grounds. A large sign that's made up entirely of lights, which roundly declares - there will be no miracles here.

Blind optimism on the one side. Stark realism on the other.

And in between?

Well, in between I guess I'm back to where my friend began.

We depend on people dying.

Not in terms of legacies, though. But in terms of the living of their lives.

Dying to sin. Dying to the world. Dying to self. Dying to a life of self-seeking pleasure.

Dying with Christ.

You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.

That sort of dying.

We depend on people dying. And maybe that's what's missing in much of the church today.

There's too little dying.

And if we won't die, then maybe the life of the church of Christ in the land that we love will slowly simply wither away.

If we won't die, his church here in Scotland will.