AP

Principles for Church Revitalisation

The Presbyterian Church in Australia has a new minister – yours truly!  I have signed the formula and have officially become the minister of Scots Kirk in Hamilton, Newcastle.   I am deeply grateful for this opportunity and wrote a letter reflecting on the journey that has taken us to this place – https://theweeflea.com/2024/10/10/letter-from-australia-122-a-return-to-my-radical-roots/

Some people felt that the basic principles for church revitalisation I listed in that letter might be worth sharing in a wider context so I have added to them a little and hope that they will indeed prove helpful. 

I have no great plans.  I have dreams and visions – for without that I would perish.   But I also have this certainty  that God’s word will not return to him empty and will accomplish the purpose for which he sent it.   I don’t know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future.    I do have some basic principles/aims/ideas which are as follows:

1. Preach the Word and see what happens – hopefully people renewed, regenerated and restored.  Every evangelical church will see that as a truism.  But I don’t agree.   Too many churches talk about ‘ministry of the Word’ when we mean only one particular way of doing it and we have already predetermined how it will work – who we will reach and what our growth strategy is.   For some of us it is a methodology.  A virtue to be signalled.  A badge to be worn.  As a result, we end up with lectures, memes, cliches, and the ‘one size fits all’ style of teaching…. safe, comfortable, short and generally useless.    But real ministry of the word is something profoundly deep, Spirit-filled and powerful.

Incidentally, that does not just mean Sunday sermons.  It means in the public square as well as the temple.  And it means to the wider church as well.  I have been sorely tempted to adopt a position of just speaking in Scots Kirk and not saying anything in the wider church.  But it is a temptation that has to be resisted.  We have to listen to one another – and be encouraged and rebuked by each other.

2. Reintroduce the Psalms – Just as I worked to introduce hymns and spiritual songs to the Free Church, I want to reintroduce psalms to the Presbyterians here!  I love City Alight, the Gettys, traditional hymns and even Hillsong!   But I have been astonished that so few churches use the Psalms.  This is after all the prayer/songbook that Jesus used, and that the church has used from the beginning.  Why have we, with some exceptions,  stopped using it in the 21^st Century?

3. Recover the concept and practice of the Lord’s Day. I’m not talking about Sabbatarianism, but more the idea that we set aside one day in seven for rest and public worship.  I think that it is has been overall detrimental to Sydney Anglicanism (and because of its influence, to NSW Presbyterianism) to have church reduced to an ‘o’clock’!   People belong to the 8 o’clock, to the 11 o’clock, or the pm!  The trouble is that having moved from attending church twice on a Sunday, we now have a situation where people are attending sometimes just twice a month (due to lifestyle, holidays, emergencies etc).  It is impossible to build a radical community on that.  No amount of staffing, programmes, media and training courses will compensate for losing the Lord’s Day.     Recovering the Lord’s Day will I think help us in building that radical community – not least because paradoxically it will free up time in the rest of the week for people to live, work and share within their local communities.

4, Establish a truly radical local church and by implication the national church. We need biblical elders and deacons.   We need a community that welcomes, challenges, disciplines and loves all.  I read a paper recently from a Presbyterian minister which was making a policy suggestion on the basis that we really didn’t have New Testament elders.  It may have been the right analysis – but it was the wrong solution.   If we don’t have a biblical church government, we need to get one!   And quickly!

5. Encourage wholistic mercy ministries – the poor were a priority in the Bible and in the early church. They should not a be a side show in ours. The question is how to do that in a way which is not tokenistic or virtue signalling.  And how to do it in such a way that it does not drain or divert the church from its primary task of proclaiming the Gospel.  Again, I think that biblical diaconal ministry is the key. 

6. Develop the creatives – God the Creator has made us in his image. We are mini-creators and that should be reflected in every area of the church’s life.  Anyone who thinks that being Reformed de facto means that the church is opposed to art clearly knows nothing about the Dutch Masters. 

7. Work with other churches. It’s not our church.  It’s His.  It may be that the Lord will not primarily build up Scot’s Kirk, but instead use us to build up and encourage others.  So be it.  I long to see our small building (150 would fill it) full at every meeting.  But we live in a city of 500,000 and a state of 8 million.   150 is a drop in the bucket.    We should be prepared to give up what is not ours anyway to bless others and build the kingdom.

8. Reach out to the lost. I don’t believe in reaching out to particular groups or targeting people. We reach out to the lost. This means everyone without Christ, whatever social class, skin colour, religion, sexuality or any other means by which people identify.   We are all made in the image of God, we are all sinners, and we all need Christ.  He is the One we offer.    God has many people yet in this city.  He knows who they are.  We don’t.  Let’s go find out!

9. Be a hospital for the Lord’s people who have been wounded, broken and damaged.   I have far more sympathy and empathy now with those who describe themselves as ‘churchless Christians’.    It is not a good condition.  It’s like being a homeless human.  You may be without a home, but you are still human.  You need a home.   In the same way churchless Christians need a church.

10. Care for the lambs of the flock – the fact that we have only a tiny number of children is irrelevant. We need to prepare for those who in the providence of God will come.  For many years St Peter’s Dundee had only the ministers’ children!  When we left the Sunday school was packed.   In my view, we need to care for the children through the old trinity of family, church and school.   Christian education, pastoral care of the young, and support for families are essential.

11. Missions – Encourage mission both at home and abroad. Use media, money and people.  This includes a focus on mission in prayer.  Which brings me on to the last point.

12. Prayer – I leave this to last because it is the most important.  The disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, because they needed to learn how to pray.   Pastors of the Word need to teach about prayer, and be examples of prayer.  For me this has been the most challenging part of ministry.    We can be too busy to pray.   In recent years I have found that the simple and biblical practice of meditation through memorising Scripture has been a great aid.  So have collective prayer meetings, and the old pastoral habit of elders and ministers visiting congregants in their own homes and praying with them. 

In that respect can I end by making the simple request that if you want to encourage the work here in Scots Kirk, do the most important thing you can.  Pray for us.   I have started putting out a monthly prayer letter – if you would like to receive it contact me at theweeflea@gmail.com

– David Robertson, Scots Kirk, Newcastle