Perspective
The first episcopal congregation in Selkirk was formed in 1851 at the initiative of the Duke of Buccleuch’s domestic chaplain and the Rector of St Cuthbert’s, Hawick. The present church of St John the Evangelist was opened in 1869, the last episcopal church to be erected in the Borders. For many years it was a typical charge (parish) of the Scottish Episcopal Church, with a succession of Rectors, who shaped its life supported by the Vestry (for English readers this is equivalent to the parochial church council). In the 1960s and 70s it had a Sunday School, Youth Group, Choir and all the other organisations characteristic of a flourishing Anglican congregation of the time.
By then the traditional textile-based industrial life of the Borders had begun to decline. In the 1970s it was largely replaced by electronics, but in the recession of the early 1990s, the largest electronics companies closed, and around a thousand workers in the Selkirk area were made redundant. Some of this loss was reflected in the church as members moved away. In the late 1980s our average Sunday attendance was around 80 but today it is less than half that figure.
Finances in the ’90s
In 1995 Bill Elliot, our Rector at the time, encouraged us to undertake a study course entitled Mission 21: Making Your Church More Inviting. As we evaluated our strengths and weaknesses we found our sense of identity as a community becoming stronger despite our falling rolls. Eventually we came to see that, with our small numbers, even though our per capita giving is amongst the highest in the Diocese of Edinburgh, the days of funding a full-time Rector were coming to an end. But as our communal spirit continued to grow members were increasingly contributing to our common life.
This was particularly evident in our worship. By the end of the twentieth century lay people were reading the lessons and leading the intercessions each week, three lay preachers were each preaching up to five sermons a year, and we were holding a monthly Eucharist of Healing at which a team of lay ministers offered prayer and the laying-on of hands for anyone who wished. Nevertheless, keeping a Rector was costing us over 60% of our income, and each year we were eating into our capital by between £1000 and £5000.
Bold decisions
We knew that when Bill retired in 2006 a decision would have to be made about how to sustain our leadership. So, in 2004, a working party was set up to investigate different models of ministry and church organisation. It visited other Episcopal churches in Scotland; it invited people to come and share their experiences with us; it studied articles and books on patterns of ministry; it met twice with the Bishop of Edinburgh, who provided a receptive ear and much support.
The working party reported in 2005, and when Bill retired the Vestry took the bold decision to use our remaining financial reserves to appoint a full time priest-in-charge for an agreed term of four years with the specific task of leading us into a self-sustaining model of ministry that would not be dependent upon paid clergy. Bishop Brian enthusiastically agreed to these plans.
It all becomes very real
The profile we drew up for this appointment included the following:
The congregation and Vestry will be looking for a priest-in-charge who will enable members to deepen their own faith and spirituality so that they in turn can benefit others through their ministry. Encouraging and training members to increase their participation in church life would be essential, so the successful candidate would be an enabler and guide, and someone who can discern and encourage the gifts that individuals have. By the end of the four-year appointment we would hope to have formed a working Lay and Ordained Team Ministry within St John’s to take us into our future.
Prebendary David Sceats had long been involved in local ministry development in England, as well as in ministerial training and the teaching of theology. He and his wife had a holiday home in the Ettrick Valley, and had worshipped with us in the summer for many years. We were truly delighted when he applied and was accepted by Bishop Brian. He started his work here in April 2007.
Down to work
There was soon a further increase in lay participation at Sunday worship: church members began to lead the first part of the service, with David presiding at the Eucharist and preaching on most Sundays.
Over the next few months the Vestry, with David’s support, identified the ministries our church needed, and set up a process through which the congregation could identify its leaders. This enabled the Vestry to invite appropriate people to form a Ministry Leadership Team (MLT), so called because it would lead and enable the ministry of all the members of the church, rather than ‘doing’ all the ministry itself. The MLT would serve for five years until the spring of 2013, when its members’ term of office would end and the calling-out procedure would be repeated. In October 2008 the Bishop commissioned the team.
Encouraged by David, the MLT gradually shared more and more of his leadership role, until, by his retirement in 2011, it was collaboratively ready to undertake most of the work that had traditionally been the Rector’s.
Moving on
When David retired in November 2011 he moved to his home ‘up Ettrick’ and became just another member of the congregation (though he continued to be part of the MLT as well, and was commissioned (later warranted) by the Bishop as ‘non-stipendiary priest at St John’s’). Meanwhile, we continued to flourish. Many of our services were now conducted with the Reserved Sacrament, and we had five lay people authorized for this ministry (not all of whom belong to the MLT). Our authorized lay preachers increased in numbers, taking their turn at nourishing our faith with the ministry of the Word. As gifts were recognized, more and more people became involved in new initiatives and in building on established pastoral support networks. A strong educational emphasis continued.
It was always our vision that the members of St John’s would serve the world in their baptismal ministry as Christian disciples; the MLT enables, supports and organizes that ministry, and sets a vision for the life and mission of St John’s. Since 2012 this has been crystallized in a vision statement and accompanying five-year rolling mission plan for St John’s, which is reviewed and updated by the MLT every 6 months.
We already had a ministry to the retirement homes in Selkirk and a pattern of pastoral care in response to need has been established. A funeral ministry team has come into being, and its members have met with great acceptance as they have conducted recent funerals. Our new pattern of leadership enabled church members to engage actively with ecumenical projects such as Fresh Start Borders, the Selkirk Holiday Club, the Selkirk Fair Trade Town initiative, the Selkirk Churches Food Bank, School Chaplaincies and the Jesus and Me group at our local state primary school.
Our first MLT reached the end of its 5-year term of office on Palm Sunday 2013. By then we had called out a new team to succeed it. We recognized that members of the first team could be reappointed, but that, equally, others could be asked to become members of the new team. We used the same process as before, because it worked so well the first time, and the Vestry eventually approached a number of members of the congregation with an invitation to form our second MLT. Seven responded positively, and the new team was inaugurated on Easter Sunday 2013 and commissioned by Bishop John, our current Bishop of Edinburgh, at our Harvest service in October 2013, which was also our annual Gift Day – an appropriate occasion on which to give official authorization to the second MLT at St John’s. That team’s term of office ended in 2018, by when we had ‘called out’ a third team; and a fourth MLT, with some continuing members and some new ones, was ‘called out’ early in 2023 for inauguration on Easter Sunday. David, our former priest-in-charge, now in his mid-seventies, who had been a member of each of the first three teams, felt the time had come to step down from MLT membership, while continuing to play an active role in the life of the congregation, not least in our sacramental worship.
Being a collaborative ministry church has ceased to be a novelty for us, and has simply become part of who we are. We have been able to move on from preoccupation with questions about structures, leadership, roles and authorization and to refocus our attention on the much more substantive issues of what it means to be an effective community of God’s kingdom in the twenty-first century. It has been our experience that being a collaborative ministry church has helped us in this. We have discovered in practice what we had been told in theory – that the organizing principle of God’s kingdom is not a hierarchy of power but a participation in service, and that the mission to which the Church is called is to be a sign of God’s kingdom in the world. As the Affirmation of Baptism of the Scottish Episcopal Church puts it, ‘this is our task, to live and work for the Kingdom of God’. Demonstrating a reality as revolutionary and transformative as the reign of God cannot simply be a matter of describing or announcing it. It has to be done – both in terms of what we are in our structures of life and order, and in what our members are in their own life, discipleship and ministry.
Whatever next?
Life in God’s church, however, never stands still! Back in 2015 we were already beginning to come to terms with the fact that David, our officially-commissioned non-stipendiary priest, would be 70 in 2016, at which point the rules of the Scottish Episcopal Church meant that he would have to resign his Commission as the ordained minister with whom the Bishop shared the ‘cure of souls’ at St John’s. As a member of the congregation he could continue as part of the MLT, and have permission to officiate at services, but his change of canonical status would leave us without anyone to exercise the Bishop’s oversight at St John’s.
Meanwhile, our neighbouring episcopal church, St Peter’s, at Galashiels, had also set out on the journey of collaborative ministry, and, with the guidance of its former Rector, had called out a Shared Leadership Team. Its Rector had also reached retirement, and had moved away from the parish (he now lives in Selkirk, and worships at St John’s), leaving St Peter’s, too, without anyone with whom the Bishop could share the ‘cure of souls’. At the same time, the episcopal church in Hawick, St Cuthbert’s, had been without a Rector for a number of years, and under the care of various interim pastors.
More than one way ahead in this situation had been proposed, involving the linking of some or all of the three churches in some way. An initial step was to make St John’s and St Peter’s a ‘Linked Charge’, with the intention of jointly appointing a half-time ‘Area Rector’ to support the Leadership Team in each congregation and to continue the development of collaborative ministry and mission. The formalities were completed early in 2016, but the plan came to nothing when no-one applied for the post. An attempt to link the post of Area Rector with the Scottish Episcopal Institute also came to nothing when the governing body of St Mellitus’ College in London decided not to join the proposed partnership.
The Borders Centre of Mission
An arrangement was eventually made to establish a ‘Centre of Mission’ involving all three of the so-called ‘A7 Churches’ (Galashiels, Selkirk and Hawick are all towns on the A7 trunk road from Edinburgh to Carlisle). The Centre of Mission, jointly sponsored by the Diocese of Edinburgh and the Church Army, was led by a ‘Lead Evangelist’ who was also priest-in-charge of the three episcopal churches, assisted by a lay ‘Pioneer Evangelist’. The intention was that the activities of the Centre of Mission would focus on outreach to people who had no contact with any church, while the life of the three congregations would continue with the support of the priest-in-charge. A Church Army captain took up the post of Lead Evangelist in 2019 and early in 2020 he was joined by a Pioneer Evangelist. Soon after that, all the churches were closed as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown, and church activity had to be radically changed as a result.
This new arrangement was not successful. The closing of churches, followed by the stringent rules for their re-opening and for the conduct of worship in the ’new normal’ meant that a project that was still exploring its new direction was further delayed in discovering the way ahead. Besides, the pandemic hit as St John’s was on the cusp of completing a substantial re-ordering of the interior of the church. (This has now been completed and has led to its use in a much wider variety of ways, including a twice-monthly Memory Café for people with dementia and their carers). More problematic were health and well-being issues affecting the priest-in-charge and his pastoral relationships with the congregations. Towards the end of 2021 he took compassionate leave, and he relocated to the Church of England in the late summer of 2022.
Looking ahead
Meanwhile, like so many other churches in the locks-down, we discovered new ways of keeping in touch with each other through online worship, video conferencing, telephone networking and social media – learning new techniques and skills in the process. Things have now reverted to something like ‘normal’: the revamped church is in almost daily use by a variety of organizations as as ourselves; the memory cafe is a thriving enterprise; our pattern of worship is similar to pre-Covid days. But the organizational questions that led to the Centre of Mission still confront us.
The three-way linkage with St Peter’s and St Cuthbert’s has now been dissolved in favour of a two-way linkage with St Peter’s Galashiels. With the Bishop’s encouragement, we have appointed a full-time priest-in-charge for the two congregations. Rev Dr Lesley Penny, who was relatively recently ordained after a distinguished academic career in Veterinary Science, will be joining our two congregations as priest-in-charge during the second half of 2023. We look forward to her ministry alongside us at St John’s in support of the collaborative mission and ministry which has become so much a part of who we are.