MINISTER'S LETTER >

February 2012

The Minister’s Letter
Dear Friends,
What’s my thinking about Gilcomston? About Gilc, mind, not just me. The two might not, in God’s mysterious providence, be the same thing. There’s always God’s No. 20 (which is rarely a bus.)
Here are a few pieces to assemble …

• We have a commission from the King to be a mission-shaped church with an understanding that God has put us here to take part in his mission.
• Mission always moves in an outward direction. Going, sending, reaching. It pulls in only in order to send out. Remember that Jesus caught fishermen so that they could become fishers of men. He called followers who would then call people to follow him too.
• We have stated, and tried to act on, a ‘kingdom before congregation’ principle.
• We are not withdrawing from the CofS simply to become a congregation that withdrew. This is not so much protest as progress. We are not a one-issue congregation.
• It would be tragic to assume that successfully withdrawing from the CofS means merely that we carry on as before with only an institutional change reflected on the letterhead. What is God doing in this ‘moment’? What is this a time for, in the sense of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8?
• This is a God-given opportunity to re-examine why we do what we do and to ask ‘What are we called to become?’ What will God’s mission cause us to be in five or ten years’ time that we aren’t now?
• We are a gathered congregation. But that’s actually only a small part of the story. The far larger part is that we are also a scattered congregation. In fact God scatters us throughout Aberdeen seven days a week. We are actually a sent congregation.
• We believe in the gospel being taken to all people but we drive past or through wildernesses of gospel ministry in order to enjoy – or not – the very teaching that tells us that the gospel is to be taken to all people. 
• Aberdeen needs more ministry of the kind of gospel that we read in the Bible, not less. More churches, not fewer. This city does not need a larger and larger congregation in the middle; it needs more and more congregations all over. Being freed from the territorialism of a parish system means that we can plant and can easily work with others to do so.
• We try and try to work around the problems that have come with numerical growth: the difficulties of getting beyond the margins of the fellowship, the appearance that it’s the same few who do everything (be careful with that one: ‘everything’ is a lot of activity. If you take the time to think through all the activities you’ll see that those involved practically in some way is way higher than our original estimate), the Minister not getting round everyone, the complexities and patchiness of pastoral care, the constant problem of cliques, the superficiality of relationships. We are criticised for these problems and we feel the frustrations ourselves even though they are the unavoidable and common-place problems that size creates. Meanwhile our hearts crave authentic fellowship – family, grace, belonging, love.
• We can easily pander to a sense of ‘success’ that is, however much we dislike this truth, too easily satisfied by numbers and stroked by the sight and buzz of a crowd.
• We have assumed that ‘growth’ (which, if we’re talking about more and more souls being saved, is a good and godly ambition) is growth on-site, here on Union Street. More numbers sitting under this pulpit ministry, contributing to this work, coming to these events etc… Pulling more in to the centre and keeping them here, not sending more out.

What’s the emerging picture?

• A smaller Gilc – half the size of congregation that we have on Sunday morning, perhaps a third – 100 is enough. Compared to any individual church in the New Testament we are a ‘mega-church’ and mega-rich in Bible-believing people of many years standing in the faith. Just how big does a congregation need to be?
• The remaining two thirds of the fellowship in church plants of differing types all over Aberdeen. (There are at least half a dozen ways of ‘planting’.)
• Therefore a repeated cycle of numerical increase here then decrease as we plant and then re-increase here on Union Street, where we continue with the city centre outreach, gathering in order to send.
• Church plants that from the word ‘go’ plan to plant another church. Each church becomes a sending hub, rather than all new plants coming from one centre. This is a movement, not a fixed form.
• Cooperation in this movement with other churches. This is not a Gilcomston thing, it’s a church thing: Christians planting churches that plant, rather than Gilcomston franchising itself. Two other church leaders have spoken to me recently about cooperating to reach unreached areas of town. Over the years I’ve had several requests for the long-term loan or free transfer of Gilc folk to other ‘clubs in the league’ that have been struggling to field a team.
• Aberdeen increasingly saturated with churches that are not trying to become big but are trying to multiply the ministry of God’s word.
• A process of training and patient planning that prepares leadership and equips people for going out as well as preparing the ground to receive the word. This replaces the model of attendance from large distances and involvement that concentrates everything in one location with the pattern of church growth through disciple-making in both core and those parts of the periphery where the gospel is not being heard. Disperse don’t gather. Isn’t that what plants do with seeds in order to colonise an area?

This thinking rises out of growing convictions about the ‘de-institutionalising’ of the church and of the Christian life. It means the enacting of many principles about church that are part of our reformed and Presbyterian background: the role of the elders, for instance, and the priesthood of all believers. It involves working out afresh what it means to be a Christian rather than merely a church-goer. It asks ‘what does it look like for a church to love Jesus and walk by faith in the power of the Spirit? It is a vision of the church, not me; but it stirs me out of a rut of lukewarm-ness.
What do you think? If this is from the Father he will guide us and convince us together in his good time. If he doesn’t, we carry on as we are.
Your Minister and friend,
Dominic Smart