Presbytery of Annandale and Eskdale
Here follows the full text of the address delivered by the Very Rev. Dr. Sheilagh Kesting at the
Presbytery of Annandale and Eskdale held in St. Andrew's Parish Church, Gretna
on Tuesday, 1st May, 2012.
1. We are living through a time when it is very hard to give an upbeat picture of ecumenical relations.
When churches are feeling the pinch financially and there are fewer ministers to tend congregations
that are themselves getting smaller and older, it is inevitable that there is less energy to work
ecumenically. Often it’s the first thing to be set aside. It is at such a time as this that we need to go back
to basics and that is what is happening all over the place. Virtually all the ecumenical bodies to which
we belong as the Church of Scotland are going through some kind off review, or re-envisioning process.
2. The vision in the 20th century, when the Ecumenical Movement was at its height, was clear. The
churches in a given nation or region would reunite, healing the divisions from the past through careful
doctrinal agreement. There were a number of churches that blazoned a trail - the churches of South and
North India and later Pakistan and Bangladesh and Zambia - united churches that set out to counter the
divisions that were seen to be the legacy of colonial western influence. In the West too, there were
church unions leading to united and uniting churches - in the States, in Canada, in Australia, the UK and
more recently in this century, in the Netherlands. But the pace of such unions has slowed to a trickle.
Some of the smaller non-Lutheran churches in Sweden are working towards a union but there are few if
any involving larger churches now. Again this suggests a need to go back to basics. What do we mean
now by Christian Unity if it does not bring structural union?
3. For the Church of Scotland, the General Assembly made it clear in 2003 that it wanted the emphasis
to be put on local initiatives and not on grand schemes of union. And much does happen at local level,
most of which I never hear about. It is now almost routine that there should be ecumenical activity
around the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, perhaps a study programme throughout Lent. There is
often joint worship during Holy Week, at least up to the Wednesday and sometimes on Easter Sunday
and Pentecost. Joint activities may be planned during Christian Aid Week in May, One World Week in
October and during Advent. There is no shortage of opportunities for those willing to seek them.
Following the tradition in the Orthodox Church, and with the encouragement of the Ecumenical
Patriarch, a keen advocate of Christian responsibility in relation to climate change and the environment,
the World Council of Churches promotes 'Time for Creation', a period of five weeks from 1st September
to 4th October each year. It's always worth looking at the WCC website for thought-provoking resources
for reflection around the environment and water - stories that keep our horizons wide open to our place
in the global web of relatedness. Likewise the website of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland has
worship resources for a number of ecumenical occasions. And yet in some places, I hear that
ecumenical events on the calendar have become so routine they have lost their excitement and support
is beginning to dwindle. They no longer speak to people they way they used to. That is a signal too of
the need to return to basics. Why do we pray for Christian Unity? Why do we seek occasions to worship
and study together?
4. It was one of the selling points of the 'churches together' model in the 1990s that doing things
together was about saving scarce resources. It was about cutting out duplication of effort and
resources, both material and human. It made economic sense. That is one way of looking at things but it
is hardly the key to ecumenical engagement. It is certainly good stewardship to share resources, but
there is a more fundamental driver to ecumenical engagement. A recent consultation held in Lebanon
under the auspices of the World Council of Churches focused on conciliarity. The report says that
Conciliarity belongs to the essence of the Church.
In our church that conciliarity is expressed in Presbyterianism. We are the church together as
worshipping congregations connected to one another, bound to one another and to Christ and to the
saints in all ages through our baptism. We take council in Presbytery and General Assembly. In
ecumenism that thinking is simply extended to those from other traditions of the Church who share that
bondedness in Christ through baptism and are therefore bound to us and we to them in the fellowship
of Christ. The church is described as a fellowship of churches and the word translated as 'fellowship' can
also be translated as 'communion'. The WCC report describes this fellowship as something that occurs
when:
local churches in all their human diversity meet for deliberation, service, formation, and shared
celebration in council.
Through seeking this kind of fellowship with other churches, we are responding to God's invitation to
participate in the reconciliation which Christ offers us through his cross and resurrection.
The divisions of the Church need to be healed - because they are a wound in the Body of Christ and a
hindrance to the witness of the church as a reconciled community to a world so desperately in need of
reconciliation. So when ecumenists speak of the goal of visible unity, they are recognising that this is
both a divine calling and a human task and challenge. It is the quest for common fellowship in witness to
the Gospel, the proclamation of the Word, the sharing of the sacraments and the healing of the nations.
The church is a household of faith. It encompasses the rich diversity of humanity - so it is never about
uniformity. It celebrates what the Chief Rabbi has called 'the dignity of difference'.
The measures we apply to ourselves as the Church of Scotland are by and large those that also apply
within the wider ecumenical context. So the councils of the ecumenical movement are places where
relationships of accountability are developed. There is need of trust and respect because there will be
sharp differences of opinion. The ecumenical bodies we set up to enable us to relate to one another
open up space where we can listen to each other and learn how to respect different points of view. It is
also space where we learn again that we need each other and are incomplete without each other. It is a
space to support one another in times of difficulty.
I have deliberately spoken in broad terms because I think we need to see local ecumenism in the context
of what lies beyond us: beyond our congregation or Presbytery, our nation or our continent. In these
days of internet technology, it is no time to be insular. The Learning Agreement signed here this evening
will help prepare Christian disciples in this corner of Scotland to take their place in a network of relations
which is both local and global.
Your Presbytery already has an example in Canonbie of how a local church community has been and
continues to be enriched and enlivened by acknowledging that the wounds of the past need no longer
be a carried into the future. What happened in Canonbie has shown the potential offered now by the
Covenant at national level with the United Free Church. It is an example to others. There are examples
too of the enriching effects of twinnings. There are other examples within the Church of Scotland where
relations have developed between groups of congregations of different denominations here with
congregations or projects overseas - sometimes with mission partners in Africa or Asia or through
Christian Aid. There are also partnerships developing with churches closer to home. A group of
churches in the centre of Falkirk are developing a relationship with a church in Westphalia. The fact that
the Roman Catholic church in Falkirk is fully committed to this relationship is challenging the church in
Schüren, a Lutheran Church, to have a look at its relationship to the Roman Catholic Church there. And
the Presbytery of Falkirk as a whole is twinned with a deanery in Dortmund. In every example, exchange
visits keep the initiatives alive and in all cases churches remark on the effect that these international
relationships have on their local relations as churches together. There would certainly be the
opportunity to set up other initiatives, not least between one rural area and another. We are also very
interested in seeing whether it is possible to set up three way relationships - where congregations here
are linked to a congregation or group of congregations elsewhere in Europe and a congregation in Africa
or Asia. This might be done within the context of the World Communion of Reformed Churches where
we would be exploring what it means to belong to such a fellowship.
These are just a few things that seem to speak to our times and which keep alive the commitment we
have as a church to work ecumenically, whenever possible.
5. May I thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this evening. I am always happy to respond to
requests for advice in taking forward ecumenical initiatives. I want to say to you not to fight shy of
formal agreements, like the one signed tonight. It can sometimes seem easier just to get on and do
things 'under the radar' as it were. But if I can end where I began. The church is by nature conciliar. By
seeking more formal agreements you enter into a relationship of mutual support and accountability, you
hold before the rest of the Presbytery its calling to recognise the need to work together with others to
demonstrate within our own relations the reconciled community we wish for the whole of society, and
you put yourself in the position of being able to tell your story more widely, thus both feeding into the
building up of stronger relations between the churches in Scotland and beyond and opening up your
own context to the enriching experience of others.
I commend the ecumenical work in which you are already engaged and encourage you to seek every
opportunity to do more, not for your own sake, but for the sake of him who by the power at work within
us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to whom be glory in the
church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.
To see this address in the context of the meeting please visit
http://www.presbyteryofannandaleandeskdale.com/documents.html