New Church in the Highlands part two

Emerging groups

Local focussed activity will bring a closer fellowship that should be promoting the positiveness of the Gospel and Church as a body of Christ. Many denominations need to be in dialogue with their office bearers and members to persuade them to be active in their locality, trying out new ways and activities to accommodate the church in their area and culture. It will surely be different, for the Church in Caithness, Glasgow, Stornoway or Dunbar.

There is a need to lay down prejudices from the pastors, ministers and leaders to show brotherly concern among the churches for the sake of the kingdom. Perth Christian Centre's, Monthly leaders meetings in Inverness is a step in the right direction.

The aspects of “Renovare”, focus prayerfully and intelligently on supporting the Church. Their encompassing work has a contemplative form of which will be mentioned later. In the meantime it is encouraging to see work in the Americas and now in Europe (Renovare Britain and Ireland) that embraces a wide spectrum of practises in a spiritual manner. “The Spiritual Formation” is at the heart of the work. This work will grow in the following years.

The way forward is spirit filled work across Churches and communities engaging both Christians and those with no present faith. The church has not learned the lessons of the 19th century that Christians need to be involved in community life.

In Scotland and the rest of the UK there is a gap, which has arisen during the past two generations, of no real involvement in the community (there are some exceptions) plus the change in culture. The culture change is one that needs address.

We have less and less social/nominal Christians going to church which clears the way for a genuine work of the spirit. People are less interested in turning out to be seen as a community figure head. Added to this we have a culture quite different from America. In the UK the post-modern era requires a different form of Evangelism!

For church to work in this new age its not simply a lesson of four laws, a template, a plan. In fact internationally the emerging church is looking at how to be the community first rather then look at plans.

The tee shirts in America that say “Don't go to church” and on the back say “Be the church” says something very profound - its not just going to meetings its giving over to God.

There is a danger here that meetings, agendas, time allocated work, compartmentalised church life, in turn this creates a church and non-church divide, this so called secular and non-secular arena. Again rather than a subculture that acknowledges the God spots in the week and all else is “worldly”,how about a culture that has input from practising Christians in the community. Elizabeth Fry's influence on community came from her community life driven by her personal faith.

There were times of revival to touch Caithness in the Church’s history. Perhaps most notably was that of the 1920s when the ministry in singing and preaching of Jock Troupe, of the Salvation Army, saw churches, including Wick Baptist Church, and places like the Braehead and Market Square in Wick, packed out. It cannot be denied that the Church as a whole in this country has declined in numbers since those days but many believe there are signs of change.[Wick Baptist ]

Going back to the 1830's, and the Ten Year Conflict, this maybe a large concluding step, the result of underlying movement from the Irving, Erskine, Campbell revisit of Scriptures and the New Testament church? In these years in question there was a change in Society, a moving away from old style thinking and doctrine. This gave a fresh opportunity for Godly things that may have been curtailed in the Calvinistic straight-jacket.