Colston Milton has been my first and only charge for these last 17 years. It is a Priority Area parish in a post-war housing scheme in North Glasgow, with high levels of deprivation, poor health and poverty, both material and spiritual, reminding us that Jesus says the poor are blessed. In terms of size and capacity, the congregation is about as weak as it has ever been; shrinking from a membership of 1500 in the 1960s when Colston Milton was a thriving church extension in a newly built salubrious housing scheme, to 40 people today, with an average attendance on a Sunday of 25. By contrast, our neighbours, St Augustine’s RC parish, is one of the strongest in Glasgow, with three masses over the weekend. Nevertheless, over the last 17 years, I have conducted an average of 3 or 4 infant baptisms each year and ten times that number of funerals.
While traditional parish infant baptism has never entirely fallen away, of those 3 or 4 baptisms a year, I perceive very little sign of any ongoing commitment or transformation. Yet, I never turn anyone away seeking baptism, though I always offer a service of blessing, which some feel is a more honest response to where they are at in their faith journey. These ‘parish’ baptisms are often slightly bittersweet. Getting to know a family in advance and being excited at talk of faith, the day of the baptism itself, usually means a full church of people dressed up and wanting to be there.
This is a great opportunity for the church to be welcoming, open, joyful, interactive and relevant. Many of those guests leave saying they enjoyed their experience, and some even say they’d like to come back. But for most, it is a positive but not transformational experience. Perhaps a necessary condition on their faith journey, but not a sufficient one.
The same can be true of the parents and the child. Usually, we don’t see much more of them. But who knows what seed is planted? It is important for me to say that, and believe it, whilst also acknowledging my disappointment. I suspect most of you will know what I mean. Of late though, we have had some rather different experiences of whole family baptism and membership. First, a young Mum and her two primary-age daughters. Then a Mum and Dad with two primary school-aged children. They had been born and brought up and living in Milton, and attended worship for the best part of a year. They invited others along, being active themselves and dedicated within the congregation. Behind this relationship with the Church there was a background of multiple bereavements. With connections to the wider Church family, and their involvement with our arts project, connections and relationships were developed that enabled them in both good and hard times.
As is often true in Priority Areas, those most able to do well in life leave for pastures new. Having baptised and welcomed this entire family into membership, they then emigrated to Australia. They continue to join us via Facebook Live and have been involved in a local church in their new country. Importantly, before they left, they brought others along!
Since then, we have welcomed another 11 new members, some returnees, others totally new starts, others RC by background. Some are connected to the baptism family, including the Gran of the young Dad and the sister, brother in law and niece of the young Mum. Others had no connection, and so I have baptised and welcomed into membership another family, an older Mum and Dad and a 17-year-old daughter. They had also been attending regularly and still do!.
Then a month later, we baptised and welcomed into membership a 19-year-old girl, the daughter of one of our elders who was never baptised as a child and had always wanted to be. She was 2 when I began in Milton, and she has never left the church, attending regularly, feeling at home and growing in faith, excited and willing to tell her friends that she goes to church and believes in Jesus.
So we have seen two different types of faith journey. One that follows the traditional infant baptism model (except she never got baptised as an infant but has grown up in and stayed in the church) and then three families, coming later in life. All have brought us great joy and encouragement as a congregation, a sense that God is at work.
I think for those (church members and visitors) witnessing such baptisms, there is renewed confidence and trust that God has not finished with the church. After 16 years of relentless decline (and more like 70 if you go back before my time). I have long believed that just as baptism for the individual points us to the death and resurrection of Jesus, that we die to self and rise to new life, our congregations and denomination also needs to die and rise. This is the pattern, it is the blueprint of God’s mission. I believe Colston Milton has done enough dying to be able to be resurrected and born again.
What might you ask has died? Hats (and suits) on a Sunday, middle-class respectability, social expectation of ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’, children being seen and not heard, adults being seen and not heard, the hymn sandwich of 19th-century music, ‘churchianity’,a killjoy, punative and judgemental God, belief in our own power and that it is our mission, and Protestantism with a Capital P!
And what are we rising to? Joy, informality, contemplation, communal, one all-age family, rooted and loving, trusting that God is in it all, inclusive and ecumenical, reformed and always reforming – for me, Brian McLaren’s new type of Christianity (controversially perhaps, I’d say Christian universalism). I love the definition of mission as ‘finding out what God is doing and joining in’. There is an extent to which this growth is unexpected and inexplicable – it is the Spirit’s work. Might we be part of God’s doing?
I reckon there is a clear connection to funerals, mainly parish funerals, which offer me the chance to affirm my trust in God, who holds the souls of the living and the dead. It allows me to remind people that God loves them and always has done, where I can proclaim good news that bidden or unbidden and that God is present and active -what I call reading the big book of God. Especially in a Milton context where people are honest about their faults, that society judges harshly like drink or drug addictions, criminality or violence. They are honest about people’s faults and still proclaim that they are loved and part of God’s story. This is the Christian universalism bit for me, which I clearly proclaim at every funeral, and which I think is slowly shifting culture from one which viewed the church as irrelevant at best and judgemental at worst, to one that is seen as life-affirming and comforting and irrepressible.
It simply makes no sense to me to say that the power of Jesus’ death-defying resurrection can be limited by a person’s lack of trust in, or awareness of, it: Jesus’ life and death and resurrection has overcome any separation between us and God, and I find that a much more convincing sell: it doesn’t even matter if you believe it to be true, God still loves you and will carry you even through death into eternal life. Heaven is not a reward for believing the right things; it is a gift of grace from God. Life after death is not salvation. Salvation is for the here and now, and what we are seeing is people’s growing trust in God. We cultivate that faith by coming together with other like-minded Christians, and bringing change, making life more joyful, and bringing the fruits of the Spirit.
If mission is about recognising what God is already doing and joining in with it, then I explain baptism as part of that dynamic. I don’t believe baptism changes anything; rather, it recognises changes that has already taken place, namely an awareness that God is real and present in the life of the person seeking baptism, whether that is with an assurance of pardon for past wrongs or an acknowledgement of being blessed with life. As a sacrament, it is not necessary for salvation; rather, it is a reflection of the ‘already-ness’ past, present and future reality of that salvation. Bidden or unbidden, God is present and active. That is good news, with no catches, no ifs or buts.
We always begin our worship with these affirmations:
Milton belongs to God
Glasgow and all its people
Whether we know it or not
God is present
For we are made in God’s image
and gather in God’s name
I hope these words bring encouragement. I offer them rather diffidently, feeling somewhat insecure to presume to share anything. I know some people may think that as a Priority Area minister, I am either some sort of super-Christian or, conversely, that living and working where I do is somewhat akin to a posting to the Eastern Front. I am no different from you; I am trying to do my best to serve in the place to which I am called and committed. I’m not trying to show off or cause offence or controversy. I was invited to write this, and I have tried to tell something of what I think is happening here -which may or may not be of great significance.
P.S.
Having written this article, I went to pick up my daughter from her primary school, and as I walked down the road, I had a sense that God’s mission is simply life, nothing hugely spectacular but totally miraculous, and that is God holding all things in life.
By Christopher Rowe