self-examination

More and more people express an interest in (and sometimes their confusion about) the way we do things here. Let me try and explain it a bit.

About a year or so ago we re-structured the way that we organise our life as a congregation here.

I needn't bore you with the details of how things used to be and why and how we changed. Suffice it to say we now have a single, small 'leadership team' (called, within our denomination, the Kirk Session).

It's a small team, as I say (comprised of some 16 people) where the weight of the responsibility of leadership falls on relatively few shoulders. Their task is essentially strategic, discerning direction as God moves his purposes forward among us here.

Alongside this leadership team, and as the valleys down which the streams of God's purposes flow, we have a spectrum of what we call Ministry Areas. Six in all.

The names by which we call them are deliberately mnemonic: and the acronym is deliberately suggestive of the essence of our life. NEW DAY.

Nurture (the way we look after each other and help each other grow):

Evangelism (the way we become a people who bring, are, and declare good news):

Worship (the way we direct our living in praise to God our Creator and Saviour):

Discipleship (the way we ensure we are, all of us, learning to live the new life):

Administration (the way we organise all aspects of our life to God's glory):

Youth (the way we help the next generations grow to know this life in Jesus).

It's not perfect. Nor is it fool-proof. And it's certainly not a blue-print for anywhere else.

But it works OK in the main, and it helps keep our eyes on the ball.

These Ministry Areas are, in some respects, largely autonomous. The Kirk Session sets out parameters, certainly, in terms of the vision God gives: but after that, each Ministry Area is pretty much left to itself. We trust each other to get on with it all and follow the vision through.

Each Ministry Area has a leader, ideally with some sort of supportive leadership team around them: and within each Ministry Area there are a range of different 'teams' all working away, each one of them with a designated leader.

It's a pattern intended to bring some sort of cohesion to what we do, and at the same time to encourage a high degree of involvement and ownership on the part of the whole congregation. Some of the Ministry Areas have up to a hundred and more folk involved (and there's always room for more!)

Which is great. Because we're keen to see the God-given gifts that people have being exercised in ways that are appropriate. And we're keen to see God stretching us as well, by taking us out of our so-called 'comfort zones' and using us all as 'ministers' of his grace.

And although, as I say, it's far from perfect, it works not too badly.

But the trust which we seek to have in one another requires, for all of our sakes, to be balanced by an element of accountability.

The Ministry Areas are not free-agents. They don't ever have a completely blank canvas.

The last thing we need is a set of loose canons rolling randomly over the deck.

There are checks, in other words. And one of the checks which we've set in place sees the Kirk Session taking a look on a regular basis at the whole of a Ministry Area.

Worship is the first one up: the first of the Ministry Areas we'll be looking at. Next week.

So today I've been trying to complete my report on that (I head up this particular Ministry Area).

It's a sort of appraisal the Kirk Session will be engaging in, a careful and honest review conducted against the backdrop of the vision that we have.

Is the vision God gives us being furthered by how things in Worship are presently done?

Is the way that our worship has grown and developed still true to the vision God gives?

And if we're to grow it still further, what are the issues we'll have to address and how is that best to be done?

That sort of thing. Not a mere formality, by any means. But a fairly rigorous exercise in self-examination. Warm, generous and constructive (I hope), but anything but a simple 'rubber-stamping' kind of thing.

This is the first time we've done this, of course. It's still all new. And we're still very much just finding our feet. The 'new day' hasn't long dawned, as it were.

So in some ways my preparing this paper is very much blazing a trail. There isn't a well-worn path for me to follow. I'm feeling my way.

It feels like we've headed right out to the wilds, exploring terrain that, for us, is entirely new. It's not always all that comfortable. It's not always all that easy.

But we're seeking to follow the Lord, we're seeking to exercise faith, we're seeking to be the people God calls us to be, wherever that's going to lead.

And, on good days at least, we know we wouldn't be giving ourselves to anything else at all!