butterfly church

Thursdays are days I'm in at the school a lot.

But in between my trips back and forth to the school I met with a man whose work, in a way, is not all that dissimilar from what I'm doing at the school.

Athole Rennie was recently ordained as a church planter in the new, and farily sizeable harbour development along at Leith.

Although he's Scottish through and through, he serves now as a minister of the Associated Reformed Presbyterian Church in Americawho are promoting this work, and under the auspices of Reformission Scotland who are described as "a group of ministers and elders from the Church of Scotland, Free Church, and APC who are working to promote the planting of culturally relevant gospel churches with a reformed outlook."

It's a bold and expansive vision, and it's one that I certainly share.

One of those who's been closely involved in the project wrote this -

"Scotland is a mission field. Millions of people need the gospel. Many of them have rejected Church as they have previously encountered it. ... Church planting is an urgent necessity for Scotland in the 21st Century. We need this church plant and we need many more like it. It is wonderful to have the support of American Presbyterians with a Scottish heritage supporting this kind of work. Thank God that they care enough about Scotland to get involved. I hope their commitment to mission in Scotland will fire the rest of us with an even greater passion to see Scotland re-evangelised."

I was glad to meet the man. This is where the future lies.

We spoke about the work he's just begun and what it now involves. It's early days, of course. There's him and his wife, and now their little baby son as well. And already he's started to gather around himself the start of a core of people to share this work.

Much of his time is spent in the local community. Getting to meet and to know the different people.

Knocking the doors of the folk in the block of flats where they stay and spending some time with these folk. Neighbours.

I offered him coffee. But he spends so much of his time, I think, in the cafes of Leith, that the guy is simply full to the brim with caffeine. And so he declined.

It was a bit more than coffee that Athole is keen to secure from the likes of myself. He's seeking our help.

Prayer, for a start. Earnest, committed, 'give-me-Scotland-or-I-die' sort of prayer, to see once more the church of Jesus Christ being planted in the cities of our land, to see his truth being sounded out once more transforming countless lives.

Finance as well, I suppose, though he didn't make reference to that himself. But the work will require that financial support - and it's something that we could be giving: an investment we could be making - and investment in the future of God's work.

And people. He's looking for people who'll be hearing God's call to engage in this church-planting work down at Leith. He's already learned of two young, soon-to-be-married couples who have heard that call and have chosen to move into Leith, to share in the work with him.

They have the vision to see what it is that God's doing. And they have the heart to be giving themselves to the challenges this work involves.

This is where the futurue lies. At least in part.

We live in days when the slow and cumbersome caterpillar shell of denominational church is slowly giving way, I sense, to a much more lovely, much more mobile, 'butterfly' sort of church.

The fabric of the 'caterpillar' church may well be showing signs, these days, of slowly falling apart. But underneath - and maybe it's still largely out of sight - underneath, behind the scenes, the foretaste of the future for our land, underneath another church, the 'butterfly', is growing.

And this new work that Athole and his merry men (and women) are now growing down in Leith is one more little evidence of that.

This is a part of the future that God has for years now been growing. And it's this that I want to invest in. God's future, and not our own past.

Church-planting like this has a long and a notable pedigree. Here is a quote that you'll find on their website (from Sinclair Ferguson) -

“From the days when the apostles ventured forth to the massive scale church-planting movement envisaged by Calvin for France and by Knox in Scotland... church planting has been essential to the spread of the gospel.”

It's not something all that very much different that I'm doing here. Not least in the school.

By and large I don't get so much of the coffee that Athole gets. But I'm there in the school a lot. I 'hang out' there, and get to know the people. Pupils, teachers, secretaries. Kitchen staff, lollipop ladies, cleaners, assistants. All of them. People.

'Safety' has been the theme for the month. And at the assemblies today the Head asked them all a question - 'Who keeps you safe?'

I smiled when I saw the question going up on the screen. It's a question which lies at the heart of the gospel, of course.

"I to the hills will lift mine eyes.

From whence doth come mine aid?

My safety cometh from the Lord,

Who heaven and earth hath made."

My safety cometh from the Lord. There's the bottom-line answer to our fundamental question.

"Keep me safe, O God," as the psalmist pleads.

Not that that was the answer the Head Teacher gave, of course.

He got all sorts of responses from all of the children there when he asked who keeps you safe? Parents, teachers, brothers, sisters, family, friends, police ... the lot.

Including, and much to the Head's delight, yourself! Yes, he declared, you're the one who most of all is going to keep yourself safe.

He was kind enough, too, to mention me. Mr Middleton will keep you safe.

But he missed out the heart of it all. Salvation belongs to the Lord. He's the one in whom alone our truest safety's found. It's a truth that our nation has to learn once again.

So I'm in among the children, the growing generation of our land today, to teach this truth again.

That's why I see the SU group at lunch-time as being such a crucial time. It's the chance to be sharing the gospel, a chance to be shaping these children, and rooting their lives in the Lord.

There were well over 20 again today. Eager and noisy and full of their youthful excitement.

We don't get long. By the time that they've finished their lunches there's maybe merely 15 minutes max. We take the time to teach them who this Jesus is and what he does and why he's so important.

It's the future I'm investing in. I'm fired with a passion to see our land being once again evangelised.

The butterfly is forming!