David Robertson provides an expanded version of his editorial from the Free Church of Scotland ‘Records’ magazine.
In it he provides insightful commentary on significant issues which will be considered by the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland and the Free (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland at their upcoming Assemblies. (Denominational annual meetings.)
Robertson writes in a polemical fashion, he’s not just providing information, he seeks to shape opinion and while this article reveals his ongoing dismay with the decline on many levels of the larger Church of Scotland, it also articulates his frustration at the smaller Free Church’s reticence to abandon its historial position of not using hymns or musical instruments in its worship:
Can we really say that our [the Free Church’s] allegiance is to the Gospel when it seems that we care more about the mechanics of public worship, than we do over the state of our nation and the fate of the lost? How we conduct the current debate on public worship, and in particular the basis on which we make a decision, as well as the decision we make, is far more about whether we are a Gospel, Christ and Bible-centred church, than it is about outward forms of worship.
In that refusal of his own church to change Robertson perceives a similarity with the larger, more liberal church:
If the problem for our brothers and sisters in the Church of Scotland is that the establishment is too compromised with the culture, what then of those of us in the Free Church? The danger is that we end tasteless and ineffective because we go to the opposite extreme. We have our own culture – narrow, traditional, ethnic, more concerned about preserving a particular ecclesiastical identity, rather than being salt and light within the culture.
The larger church is subject to an unthinking subjection to the outside culture, while the smaller one seems subject to its own internal culture.
Read David Robertson’s full post, Yoghurt Christians, for yourself, and get some informed insight into these two Assemblies as both these churches prepare to deal with some watershed situations in the near future.
mgpcpastor's blog 