MISSION PLANNING

 

Kirk Session Meeting

There will be a Kirk Session meeting after morning service on Sunday 22 October to hear an update on Mission Planning.

I am not promising that this will be as dramatic as the last Presbytery Meeting on the subject but can assure you that it will be a lot shorter ! (Alistair)

 

Presbytery Meeting re Mission Planning, 7pm, 26th September

The meeting on Tuesday 26th was broadcast live. The Presbytery page is - https://www.fvandc.org.uk/  or just  Click Here

For the  Motion sheet, please  Click Here

Result of the meeting:

The outcome of tonight’s special Presbytery meeting was unexpected and as a result any decisions have been deferred yet again.

A number of motions and one counter-motion had been submitted for debate. After the first two amendments had been debated and decided Presbytery turned to the single counter-motion. The thrust of this counter-motion was to replace Sections of the Draft Plan with a quite different Section to defer consideration of the Draft Plan to a future meeting. The rationale for this being to give the Mission Planning Team time to provide congregations with more details behind the proposals it had made. There were complaints from some congregations that really significant recommendations, such as dissolution, had not been communicated to, or discussed with, incumbent Ministers who were finding that they and their families faced being uprooted and with personal challenges on re-location, housing, schooling and so on without any notice. While there were only about two such instances referred to there appeared to be considerable support for the counter-motion on the basis of the absence of concern apparently shown by the Mission Planning Team.

The contrary position that, even though there were imperfections, the Draft Plan provided something for congregations to work from and develop, was put strongly but lacked the emotional impact of other speakers.

After debate this counter-motion was carried by a narrow majority.

The Presbytery is already over 9 months overdue in submission of a Mission Plan so this decision will now extend this by several months. The Convenor of the Mission Planning Team has resigned and this too will create further delay. The Presbytery Clerk has acknowledged that this now takes Presbytery into uncharted territory as it is not clear how the position might move forward. The Clerk was instructed to seek advice and support from the General Trustees. The decision also had the effect of nullifying any further debate on all the remaining motions before tonight’s meeting and also of cancelling the two further special Presbytery meetings later this week and next week where congregations from other areas within the Presbytery had been cited to attend to discuss the Draft Plan insofar as it affected their congregations. The Draft Mission Plan is now no more than a set of options for discussion.

Our Kirk Session will now have to decide what we might do in the weeks ahead. It seems unlikely that very much will emerge from Presbytery by way of guidance in the near future. There are grounds for believing that West Kirk and Stewartfield might be amenable to discussions with the Old Parish on progress towards union. Moving in that direction might help keep some momentum going and begin the process of planning how integration of the congregations and assets might be brought about and what might be realistic timescales for implementation. Members of Session might wish to give this some thought before we meet formally to decide on a course of action. (AW)

September 12th: Draft Presbytery Mission Plan 

As expected, the Draft Presbytery Mission Plan (all 158 pages of it) arrived this morning. 

The Plan proposes that initially, Old Parish, West Kirk and Stewartfield come together as a united congregation. The Plan also proposes that following union of these three churches that the new united congregation works with Moncrieff church, initially as a Parish Grouping, but then towards full union thus bringing all the churches in the North-West area of the town together as a single congregation.

All the churches will need to give careful consideration of the detail of these proposals. There will undoubtedly be challenges and difficult decisions along this road. Some buildings are likely to be closed. Some others may change the way in which they are used. The Plan itself acknowledges “the process will change all of us; some will be relieved, some will be angry, and some will be speechless.”

Our Kirk Session will discuss the Plan at a Session meeting next Wednesday, then the following Tuesday, 26th September, a small group from the Session will attend a full Presbytery meeting when the Plan will be put forward for consideration and approval.

This church will celebrate its 250th anniversary next year, and now that we are nearly at the end of this long and difficult process of Mission Planning, perhaps we can put difficult debates and meetings behind us and start to look forward with confidence to the years ahead. 

Click Here to view the  Draft Mission Plan

September Update

The Presbytery Planning Group continues to work on creating a draft Presbytery Mission Plan which will set out the proposed arrangements for all 120 congregations in the Presbytery. These will be presented to the whole Presbytery at the end of September. It is intended to issue a draft to Kirk Sessions by 12 September so that there will be at least a fortnight for consideration. In anticipation of receiving the draft plan by that date we have scheduled a Kirk Session meeting for 20th September to consider Presbytery’s proposals. It should therefore be possible to bring the congregation up to date some time in October.

 

Kirk Session Position, 10th July

The Kirk Session of the Old Parish recorded a failure to agree a Mission Plan with Westwood and Greenhills churches on 30^th March for the reasons set out in detail in my email to the Presbytery Clerk of that date. There were no further discussions with Westwood and Greenhills and the Old Parish Kirk Session concluded that there were no prospects of agreement within that “cluster”.

We understood that the “cluster” of Moncreiff, Stewartfield and West Kirk had similarly reached an impasse.

Following a meeting convened by Presbytery on 22^nd June and subsequent local discussions, the Old Parish resumed discussions with West Kirk; these having commenced in advance of the publication of the original Mission Planning team proposals which, to our surprise, recommended these two churches for inclusion within separate groupings. Like West Kirk we then directed our energies in the direction indicated by the MP proposals with, in both cases, the unsuccessful outcomes described above.

Within the past two weeks discussions between the Old Parish and West Kirk have resumed and happily these have been constructive and conducted in a spirit of openness and purpose. These discussions have been reported to the Kirk Session and a “direction of travel” has been endorsed by Session.

The preferred outcome of Mission Planning adjustments is –

• Development of a Basis of Union with West Kirk;
• The current Old Parish sanctuary to be the principal place of worship and the West Kirk sanctuary to cease such use;
• The Glebe Street Hall, currently an Old Parish property, to be disposed of and resultant funds to be available for adaptation of the West Kirk sanctuary for incorporation into the present West Kirk halls complex
• Development of a Parish Grouping, either after or in advance of union, comprising other local churches i.e. Moncreiff, Stewartfield, West Kirk & Old Parish and covering the North side of the town

We understand that these outcomes are similarly favoured by the West Kirk, and that Moncreiff and Stewartfield are also supportive of development of a Parish Grouping. (Alistair Walker, Session Clerk)

 

Early July Update

From the Session Clerk:

Over the past couple of weeks there have been several meetings on the matter of Mission Planning for the churches in the Old Parish/Westwood/Greenhills and the Moncreiff/West/Stewartfield clusters.

These have included a meeting for all the parties under the auspices of Presbytery, and smaller meetings between different groupings of congregations.

The emergence of difficulties and reservations within these two clusters mean that it has not been possible for either cluster to agree on a Mission Plan acceptable to all parties.

The course now being followed is for three separate groupings –

> Old Parish & West Kirk

> Moncreiff & Stewartfield

> Westwood & Greenhills

to work individually towards development of their own Mission Plan.

In the case of the Old Parish this means that we will not continue our previous discussions with Westwood and Greenhills but will instead return to discussions of many months ago and develop a Mission Plan jointly with the West Kirk.

The timescales for submission of Mission Plans to Presbytery are extremely tight as they are required by 14^th July.

For that reason, there will be a meeting of the Kirk Session after morning service this Sunday (9th) when there will be an opportunity for elders to seek clarification and to discuss this revised position.

18th June Short Meeting of Kirk Session

Elders were updated on the latest understanding of the current position with other EK churches, as well as hearing a report of 3 recent dissolutions announced at Presbytery. After some discussion, our church  representatives were given authority to take Kirk Session's stance and views to the meeting on Thursday 22nd and there make proposals, decisions, etc as appear appropriate after hearing the views and stance of others present.

June Update

In regard to some progress with the engagement of Presbytery in the Mission Planning process, representatives of EKOPC have been invited to a meeting at the Presbytery offices on Thursday 22nd June to meet members of the Presbytery Mission Planning Action Group and possibly other churches to consider the way forward.

Since the last update to Session and the congregation, the positions of Westwood and Greenhills have become clearer, leaving little room for continued dialogue in the cluster. Anne and Alistair will say more about this at the post-Sunday service meeting on 18th June and Kirk Session will be invited to agree on the suggested next step - that we depart from the current cluster and seek opportunities for working collaboratively with other churches. 

May Update

16th April Session Clerk Announcement in Church

This morning (16th April) Alistair updated the congregation on the current position with Mission Planning:

"I need to say a few words this morning about where we are in the Mission Planning process. When I last updated the congregation a few weeks ago I reported that there had been very encouraging discussions about uniting the congregations of  the Old Parish, Westwood and Greenhills churches and that we were working together on a Mission Plan which we would submit to Presbytery in good time to meet the deadline of 31 March.

Well, as someone once said “The best-laid scheme of mice and men…” you know the rest.

We were taken by surprise just a few days before the deadline, when both Westwood and Greenhills churches indicated that they would not support the Plan that we had all agreed and instead, proposed a quite different Plan. This was without any discussion with the Old Parish, and was quite unacceptable to our Kirk Session. It then became impossible to present an agreed Plan to Presbytery before the deadline.

In circumstances such as this the procedure is for Presbytery to be notified of a failure to agree and to move towards appointment of an independent mediator to resolve the situation. We have notified Presbytery as required, and we await details of the next steps on how we can move forward from this difficult position.

We really don’t know now how matters will work out but I hope to be able to give the congregation another update within the next few weeks."

29th March - Where are we at with the plan?

We have been promised an update soon from the Kirk Session on 29th March, when Mission Planning was the focus of the agenda, but things were not straightforward..... hence the delay.

10th March Meeting Update

There has been a further meeting of representatives from the three congregations in our “cluster” in order to make progress with development of a joint Mission Plan. 

Draft Mission Plans had previously been developed by the Session Clerks from EKOPC and Westwood and circulated throughout the cluster. While the meeting quickly agreed the majority of the statements and details in the draft Mission Plan, there remained an issue relating to buildings to be resolved with Greenhills.

Having discussed the matter, the meeting agreed to give the Greenhills Kirk Session, with support from the other two churches, the opportunity to develop a business case for the continuing use of the buildings as a free-standing and self-funding charity at arms length from the new congregation. A timescale of 18-24 months was suggested for production of the business plan. It was further agreed that, should the business plan fail to support the continuing use of the buildings, the buildings would close thereafter.

The meeting was conducted in a warm, collegiate manner and the outcomes were agreed unanimously.

Over the next few days the Session Clerk from Westwood and the Old Parish will work together to refine the latest draft into a Mission Plan incorporating last night’s agreements. This will be circulated to elders within the next week and should, one would hope, then win the support of all three churches. The three Kirk Sessions have scheduled meetings before the end of this month enabling a final, agreed, Mission Plan to be submitted to Presbytery by the deadline of 31 March.

From March EKO

Update (February EKO)

As members will know from previous articles in this magazine, the Church of Scotland has embarked on a programme of major change throughout the country with the aim being to make the use of church resources more effective and to strengthen the focus on Mission within our communities. Following widespread consultation, a plan to implement radical change was published in September last year and sent to Presbyteries and Kirk Sessions for discussion.

The proposals did indeed generate much discussion, and, while like many others, our Kirk Session was content with the proposals, many congregations were strongly opposed with the effect that the team which had developed these proposals was replaced by a fresh Mission Planning Team. The revised proposals from the new team delegated much of the responsibility for developing appropriate arrangements to local churches which were encouraged to create local “clusters” of two, three or four congregations agreeing to meet together to form a local Mission Plan.

For our part the Kirk Session has identified that we have areas of commonality and a strong interest in moving forward cooperatively with both Westwood and Greenhills congregations. In discussions with representatives of these churches there has been enthusiasm and excitement at the prospect of creating a united congregation and at the opportunities for mission that such a partnership would offer. The Old Parish Church is now engaged in discussions with Westwood and Greenhills churches, and have formally confirmed to Presbytery the agreement of all three congregations to work together to produce a Mission Plan leading, ultimately, to full union of the churches.

As there are major issues involved, including ministry, buildings, finances, the name of the new congregation and composition of a new Kirk Session, the discussions will take some time to work through. The Kirk Sessions of all three churches are fully behind this union, and will be making their best efforts to ensure that the final outcome respects the needs and aspirations of each congregation. Our aim is to build a strong, united church which is well-prepared to further our commitment to mission in the enlarged parish.

Alistair Walker - Session Clerk