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Compassionate and generous people expect no less from their government. Across our church and beyond, there is growing concern about the refugee crisis and anger about the government’s response.

This is our letter to the Prime Minister:

10 September 2015

The Rt Hon David Cameron MP
Prime Minister 10 Downing Street LONDON SW1A 2AA

Dear Prime Minister

RESPONDING TO THE MIGRANT AND REFUGEE CRISIS

I write on behalf of the community of the Scottish Episcopal Church. We wish to express to you our distress at the continuing plight of the large numbers of refugees and migrants who are attempting to make their way into and across Europe in search of safety, new homes and a better life.

We welcome your announcement that the UK will take in 20,000 people over the next five years. But we would venture to suggest that this response is less generous than the situation demands. Indeed it seems paltry in the context of the possibility that Germany may be prepared to take in 500,000 each year for the next few years.

We are aware that issues of migration and immigration are complex and emotive. However, in our Church communities, we find that attitudes to these same issues are characterised by a humanitarian generosity. Indeed members of our congregations are telling their clergy that they are prepared personally to offer sanctuary and shelter to those in need.

You have said that Britain is a country with a moral conscience. We welcome that statement. But we see our faith as challenging us to go further. We believe that we should express friendship and welcome to the stranger. In recent history – particularly following the two world wars of the twentieth century – very large numbers of people migrated to find new lives in new places. Few would now venture to suggest that such movements were unnecessary or that they did not enrich the lives of the receiving communities. We believe that this is another such moment.

We call on you and your government to find a response of warmth and generosity to the plight of these vulnerable and helpless people.
Yours sincerely

The Most Revd David Chillingworth
Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church
Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane

I spent some time yesterday with the Church Army Board who were meeting in Edinburgh. The picture is with Chief Executive, Mark Russell, and Chairman, Bishop Stephen Cottrell. Church Army are pioneering Centres of Mission across the British Isles – at present there are 29 of them including one at St Luke’s in Dundee. We are in discussion about another based in our Central Fife Group.

We talked about Scotland today and the Scottish Episcopal Church. I think that encounters of this kind are a recognition on our part that we need partnerships – we have limited resources and partners help to ‘lift us to the next level’ But this is also a sign that people and groups see us as viable partners – that we share long term aims and that we will deliver what we undertake.

It was a remarkable expression of the diversity of Scotland – an invitation from the First Minister to the leaders of Scotland’s faith communities to sit around the Cabinet Table at Bute House and have a conversation with her.

It’s easy to dismiss this kind of gathering as a ‘nodding and smiling’ event.  The reality is very different.  Relationships among the faith group leaders are strong and there is well-established infrastructure such as Interfaith Scotland and Scottish Inter-faith Week.   We aren’t starting from the beginning.

The First Minister was remarkable.  I think her commitment to this meeting stems from a recent visit to a synagogue in Edinburgh.   She successfully called everybody by their first – let’s not say Christian name – and people talked about things which were important to them

What did I take away from the meeting?

One was a shared concern.  It’s easy to say that faith communities represent significant social capital – but it is the common experience of all of us that it is very difficult for faith communities to access external funding – particularly statutory funding,   There are many examples of this.  But the most obvious example is the fact that the Sikh community are stretched by their commitment to feed the community.  That’s a huge commitment – particularly in the west of Scotland in a time of austerity.  Some funding support would be a life line for them

The other is the way in which the diversity of faith communities actually makes visible the diversity of life in Scotland.  This isn’t in the first instance about religion.  It’s about how faith communities – which in a sectarian culture can be a marker of division – can in a more healthy society be a marker of creative diversity

If you want to know what the First Minister thought about it, you’ll find it here

  

I have just written this statement for use on social media and elsewhere:

http://churchgrowthmodelling.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/anglican-church-decline-in-west-data.html
http://churchgrowthmodelling.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/anglican-church-decline-in-west.html

The statistics make sobering reading. I think I understand why they reach the conclusion they do. I don’t believe that the church will be extinct in 2043. But it will almost certainly look very different

Most of our clergy and people recognise the challenge we face. There are important things to say about both the nature of the church and the nature of Scottish society. But at its simplest there are too many congregations which either have an age profile uncomfortably tipped towards the older end or which are just too few. There comes a point beyond which it is simply very difficult to grow back because the existing congregation doesn’t have enough contact across the spectrum of age in its own community.

As I say, most of our clergy and people understand the reality of that challenge. That’s why a commitment to mission and growth – call it Casting the Net or whatever you like – is becoming normative in most of our congregations. We have a far better understanding these days of what it takes to make disciples and to build congregations.

Of which more another day

I spent this morning with the three congregations of the Central Fife Group – St Finnian’s Lochgelly, St Luke’s Glenrothes and St Margaret’s Leven.

These congregations are going through a time of uncertainty since the loss of their Rector, Revd Thomas Brauer, who has become our Diocesan Missioner. But we have been moving to the point where each congregation has a person in ministry – Revd Margaret Dineley in Lochgelly, Revd Gerry Dillon in Glenrothes and soon-to-be-licensed Lay Reader Ian Scott in Leven. Along with the support of retired and other clergy, that provides consistent ministry and stability.

At the moment we exploring the possibility of a mission partnership with the Church Army as a way of helping the congregations into a new level of engagement with the local community.

This is what I said to them today

It’s good to be back. We always say that ‘if you were worried by bad weather you wouldn’t go on holiday to Donegal’. But I have to say that the first two weeks we were there were as bad as I have ever seen. The last week was much better – which was fortunate because it allowed more space for inter-generational sandcastle digging.

I’ve been working through the backlog – and it’s been a busy week as well with a major and very positive gathering for our clergy and the Institution of Revd David Cameron as Rector of St John’s, Forfar, this evening. I should be through all that just in time to spend next week in London with the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion.

One of the interesting things which arrived while I was away was this material:

http://churchgrowthmodelling.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/anglican-church-decline-in-west-data.html
http://churchgrowthmodelling.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/anglican-church-decline-in-west.html

I have to say that I don’t think that the SEC will be extinct in 2043 but it may look rather different from its present shape. I need to re-read the material and then I’ll have something to say about it

Happy Birthday to Poppy – twenty years old today. A much-travelled cat, she has settled into Dunfanaghy for her holidays. Her Facebook page gives the full story. There will be readings from her pedigree throughout the day. The Brown Burmese is described as actually being sable with golden eyes.

She has had a varied life. Her years in Portadown were shared with Rollo, our Red Burmese. He wasn’t streetwise so they were both indoor cats for that period. The countryside of Perthshire has suited her. She was almost entirely silent for the first part of her life. Deafness now makes here somewhat noisy. Her greatest achievement – with the assistance of her personal physician Harvey from Tay Valley Vets – was to give up being diabetic after some four years and over 4000 insulin injections.

She expects to have a quiet day today – receiving some friends and admirers. Perhaps a trip to the beach later on …

We had a day out across the border yesterday.  It is still an extraordinary place.  Particularly at this time of year, the visual impact of the flags is everywhere.  Whatever else they symbolise, they are a sign of deep levels of conflict unresolved.  But that seems to have no impact whatsoever on the underlying kindness and warmth of the people.  Aspects of it seem almost brash – but there is a strong sense of a community where people still connect with one another in ways which have been lost elsewhere.  The constant use of ‘wee’ – as in ‘could I take your wee supermarket trolley, dear?’ and ‘just put in your wee PIN’ all helps to humanise.

We visited Belfast City Council’s Amenity Site on Kennedy Way in West Belfast – being still Belfast ratepayers.  That’s an area which would have seen more than its share of the conflict in times past.  I could have spent much more time there – delightful and friendly people telling me where to put the mattress and the carpet underlay.  Their post-conflict world now seems to be an ordered place focused on recycling.

We passed by Seagoe and called in to the churchyard.  It’s a society where cremation is probably the exception rather than the rule.  So I had a brief wander remembering people – wonderful people.  They are well-remembered in the community but I hope their story is written down as well.  It was sad to see Harry our former organist recently laid to rest – and Aubrey our former Sexton close by.  We shared some remarkable experiences like the day Daniel O’Donnell came to Sarah’s funeral with a red rose up his sleeve.

By now we were getting into the patois.  So we found ourselves in B&Q looking for a number of things – including of course a doofer for hoaking stuff out from between the paving slabs.  No problem at all.  And would we just go on the website to say that we hope the store won’t close ….

You know it’s a different climate out here in the Atlantic.  It’s been raining ‘quite a bit’.  We scan the forecast intently – knowing that we have already had the weather forecast for others tomorrow.  And then there is the fuschia which grows wild in our hedge here but shrivels up and dies in the Blogstead weather,   We are letting it bloom fairly chaotically even though I have periodic yearnings to get it into order.  The other thing which happens here is that people respond to the rain by going visiting.   People turn up and there’s talk …

Meanwhile, as my grandfather used to say, the reading rooms are open.

I’m enjoying a re-read  of Garrison Keillor’s ‘Lake Woebegon Days’.  His religious upbringing was with the Sanctified Brethren – ‘a sect so small that only us and God knew about it’

I’ve also got to his explanation of the FAA’s Coleman Course Correction – a result of the Coleman Survey of 1866 which omitted 50 square miles of central Minnesota.  The correction is experienced as a sudden lurch felt by airline passengers as flights descend into Minnesota airspace.

I’m also reading Lanark.  One of the reviews said that it is a challenging a read as James Joyce’s Ulysses.  I’ve never persevered long enough with Ulysses to know how challenging that might be.  But I’m keeping going for now