Just The Man To Lead A Broad Church
May 12th, 2008, 12:44 am Hobbies News
As the Kirk’s annual gathering opens, he will be given the mantle of Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, a title he will carry for the next 12 months.
Like his immediate predecessors, Mr Lunan takes on the
at a time when the Kirk faces challenges both from within and without.
Congregation figures continue to fall. There were 489,118 communicants last year, down from 504,363 in 2006, while civil society becomes more secular with each passing year.
As a minister of 40 years, Mr Lunan has stated that he intends to be a “no-frills” Moderator, seeking to serve the Kirk and its members. Despite having been born and spent his early childhood in London, he spent his formative years in the west of Scotland, living in Cambuslang, attending Glasgow High School and then Glasgow University.
As a minister he has seen both sides of life. Starting off in Glasgow’s East End working among the gangs, he later moved with his teacher wife, Maggie, to Moray, where they brought up their four sons.
Returning to Glasgow after 12 years, this time to the ministry of Renfield St Stephen’s in Bath Street, he subsequently became moderator of Glasgow Presbytery in 2002.
While moderating the largest presbytery in Scotland may have proved the perfect preparation for Mr Lunan, the challenge of the Kirk’s General Assembly will be a serious test of his skills.
Sometimes we have tried to persuade ourselves that they are not as bad as we thought. But the truth is that during the years of my ministry, they have dropped from about a million and a half to a million. And while numbers are not the be-all and end-all, it is a concern that fewer people are responding to the gospel. As most of our members are in the upper age group, there’s a kind of inevitability about that.
Tags: 12 months, age group, challenges, church of scotland, gangs, lunan, renfieldRelated posts
