United Irvine Church of Scotland (UICS) is a union of five of six Irvine congregations. The Union started on 1st October 2023, and we are still in our infancy as a union and team ministry. The PMP allocated 2.5 FTE posts for Irvine, and these were filled by the two existing parish ministers, Neil Urquhart and Jamie Milliken and a Pastoral Assistant, John MacDonald, who was appointed to the team seven months ago; John is also UICS’s administrator. We are looking for a new Youth Pastor due to our existing one moving on.
We parish ministers were good friends before coming into the union (and have managed to sustain this!) and were already working as a team ministry in school chaplaincy across our two local secondary schools. Being in a new team has many blessings: with five congregations coming together, sustaining four existing worship spaces, different styles of worship, forming a new Kirk Session with over eighty elders with differing past expectations and practices, continuing to rationalise our buildings, and coming up with a joint mission and vision statement – having two heads and hearts working on this is definitely better than one.
The challenges include forming a team with very different personalities and ways of working, where one is named as Moderator and the other as Team Minister, one of the ministers being in the parish for 35 years, and the other in the parish for less than five years, and trying to find a new way of working seeking to find and follow God’s will in this. We are still learning and authentically going through the group forming stages of forming, storming, norming, and preforming, we’re not yet competent at the norming stage.
A significant learning is that just as you can’t simply bring five congregations together and expect it to work like clockwork, so also you can’t bring two full-time Word and Sacrament ministers together and expect that to be straightforward either. It takes perseverance, grace, forgiveness, love, and respect.
The passion that congregations have for their buildings, particularly if they are perceived to be under threat of closure, has been a major barrier to growing trust and a united sense of identity. The Presbytery Mission Plan brought us together, giving us two years to sort buildings out. Doing this prior to the unions may have splintered the union, dissipated goodwill, and prevented the empathy that we have managed to grow in some measure, but it is no less painful a process and continues to stunt our shared identity and overshadow mission.
The Ascend Study Leave programme has been a God-send for us both! Taking time out of the parish to learn and reflect has given us both a boost and helped us consider where we are and our purposes. Previous Non Violent Communication training and The Place for Hope short online courses have also been a great aid to positively engaging with change, conflict and challenging behaviour.
Some helpful advice is that teams don’t just happen. We have leaned on God’s grace and our personal friendship to see us through. Having someone come alongside us for occasional team health checks could be advantageous. Vulnerability, honesty, humility, learning to celebrate each other’s strengths and successes, having each other’s backs, and covering for weaknesses all help.
And as far as memorable experiences go, secondary school assemblies win the day. When the team works well, we bring out the best in each other. Working together in the planning and delivery is slightly manic; it is always stretching but lots of fun.
Rev Neil Urquhart & Rev Jamie Milliken