The Church of Scotland Is Changing Fast. Can the Churches of Christ Follow Suit?
Did you know that Churches of Christ were deeply influenced in their founding by the Church of Scotland? The details rest with historians, but the basics are simple enough to cover. Churches of Christ began in the 1820s as part of the Stone-Campbell Movement, or the American Restoration Movement. Thomas and Alexander Campbell, two of our leading founders, were both Scots-Irish immigrants to the United States who were educated at Scotland’s University of Glasgow.
The Church of Scotland had massive divisions back in those days. The Campbells came from the Old Light, Anti-Burgher, Seceder branch of the Scottish Church. They hoped to find freedom in Pennsylvania from such schismatic thinking but soon discovered that those divisions were just as strong among Pennsylvania Presbyterians. Thomas Campbell, father of Alexander, quit that church to find new ways of doing Christian community. The lessons of those experiences led to the eventual formation of Churches of Christ.
Last summer, I had the opportunity to spend time in Scotland visiting with church leaders about their crisis of declining church attendance. I was deeply touched by the Church of Scotland’s plight. They have long since healed the divisions rampant in the early 1800s. While not all Scottish Presbyterians think alike, and not all congregations have the same ideas about female clergy or admitting LGBTQ members, they are one church today.
Like most Western churches including Churches of Christ, the Church of Scotland is experiencing rapid decline. The Scottish Church Census of 2022 showed that 6.2% of Scots attend church on a given Sunday, down from 16.9% in 1986 and 12.3% in 2000. The Church of Scotland claims about a third of those numbers. On the whole, Churches of Christ are following the same trajectory.
While these developments have created anxiety and hand-wringing throughout Scotland, some folks see opportunities to reinject something important into their work. It’s an element that has been roped off in the Western church, devoted to experts who travel to foreign countries and speak strange languages. What important aspect is being reintroduced to the Church of Scotland? It’s mission. The general assembly of the Scottish church is encouraging local presbyteries to view their communities and neighborhoods as mission fields. They’re training folks in missionary methods for their own backyards.
I met with former Scottish missionaries who had worked in places like Nepal and the Democratic Republic of the Congo but who have since been tasked with equipping Scottish church leaders for local mission. The General Assembly has received proposals and adopted plans for what they call pioneering work or launching “fresh expressions” of the church.
The goals of this new impulse are simple yet profound. They’re trying to create cultures of innovation that don’t merely tinker with the traditional worship gathering. Rather than focusing their attention on improving worship, the sermon, or their meeting hall, the Church of Scotland hopes to train members to start new forms of Christian communities in their backyards, on hiking trails, or in their garages.
Church leaders in Scotland aren’t the only ones with such ideas. Innovative thinkers across the Christian world have expressed this impulse. Pope Francis, when still Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, attempted to address church decline in his hometown of Buenos Aires. He wrote:
Our sociologists of religion tell us that the influence of a parish [church] has a radius of six hundred meters. In Buenos Aires there are about two thousand meters between one parish and the next. So I then told the priests, ‘If you can, rent a garage and, if you find some willing layman, let him go there! Let him be with those people a bit, do a little catechesis and even give communion if they ask him.’ A parish priest answered me, ‘But Father, if we do this, the people won’t then come to church.’ I replied, ‘But why [does it matter]? Do they come to mass now?’ ‘No,’ he answered truthfully. And so! Coming out of [the church as we know it] is also moving from the fenced garden of one’s own convictions.1
Emboldened by the crisis of decline, the Church of Scotland is following a worldwide shift in the Western church. This shift moves away from a dependency on waiting for people to show up at church compounds. Instead, Christians are to take new forms of Christian community outside the “fenced garden” of what is known, by going into places where unchurched people gather.
Churches of Christ are at a similar crossroads. Perhaps due to the strong autonomy of our churches, I sense no good strategy for how to address the crisis of our decline. Many churches are merely doubling down on methods designed to improve existing gatherings and structures. It is my belief that Churches of Christ would do well to invest in building new forms of Christian communities alongside the ones they currently have.
The Church of Scotland has had a crucial role, albeit a negative one, in the history of Churches of Christ. I would be pleased if we now took their lead in a positive sense and injected mission into the very fabric of our DNA. If our churches fail to follow suit, I fear we will have no meaningful means of combatting our movement’s decline.
1 "What I Would Have Said at the Consistory," An Interview with Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, https://www.30giorni.it/articoli_id_16457_l3.htm, accessed Jan. 16, 2023.
