GLASGOW LETTER:Spiralling church repair costs could end up reconnecting clergy with their community
CLOSED FOR many years, the church in Kilbride near Millhouse in Argyll is, according to the Church of Scotland’s own sales literature, close to the beach, a popular sailing club, shops and restaurants. It even comes complete with its own graveyard.
The church on the Ardlamont peninsula is but one of a number now put on the market by the Church of Scotland, a Presbyterian church struggling to maintain its 3,000 buildings.
If Kilbride does not attract, how about the listed Holywood Church in Dumfries, built in 1779, which offers “an excellent opportunity for conversion, subject to obtaining the usual consents, to a unique dwelling house with splendid rural outlook”?
In Edinburgh, meanwhile, it has put St Colm’s International College up for auction for £3.2 million (€3.6 million) or more after it ruled out plans to spend £1.2 million refurbishing the 100-year-old building last year, saying its unusual acoustics could offer the city a new theatre.
The Church of Scotland has sold buildings quietly for years, but the pace is set to accelerate following a decision by its synod to hold a full review of property stock. This could see 1,500 buildings offloaded.
Saying the church has far too many properties, Dr James Jack, the vice-chairman of the trustees, said many are “often neglected and quite often in the wrong place”, adding there is “no point” spending money on buildings that “are no longer required”.
Like churches elsewhere, the Church of Scotland is facing difficult times. Congregations are dwindling and ageing. Ministers are in short supply, forcing neighbouring kirks to share them.
However, selling off the buildings will not always be easy. Some are “in the middle of graveyards”, said Dr Jack, or listed, so they will be difficult to convert. But a successful sale could help to fund “imaginative forms of ministry” currently unaffordable.
More and more congregations, he said, “are realising that if we are to achieve our essential purpose of conveying the salvation of Jesus Christ, the connection between church and community has to be restored.
“A growing number of congregations are embracing change with vision and have realised that their buildings have a part to play by being places of attraction and bases for mission. We believe these are representative of some of the green shoots of the emerging church,” he went on.
Besides selling off unwanted properties, the Church of Scotland, he said, needs to be imaginative about how it uses the ones it does keep.
Many should be turned into part-time community centres and not just remain as places of worship.
The removal of permanent seating, the creation of rear gathering areas and external porches greatly improve the user-friendliness and attractiveness of church complexes, he said.
The creation of “community church centres” has already “clearly revived” congregations, he said, pointing to the experience of the faithful in Bankfoot in Perthshire, who lost their church to a fire in 2004.
By 2008, Bankfoot had built a new church, though they are still crippled by the bill left behind.
It has “become the heart of the village”, offering a new way of “doing church” and a place where “daily life and worship merge into one”.
Not everybody, though, wants to embrace the new.
In Perthshire, the church has decided to close the older of a number of available churches it has in and around the historic village of Scone, as part of the merger of Scone Old, Scone New and St Martin’s parishes.
The B-listed, 1805-built church, the oldest building in the village, was relocated stone-by-stone from Scone Palace, the traditional crowning site of Scottish kings, to its current spot in the village.
Left with no right of appeal, villagers doubt if the 400-seat kirk can be sold, both because it has a graveyard and highly regarded stained windows: “It doesn’t look an obvious candidate to turn into a home or flats,” said one local.
Some of the Church of Scotland’s property headaches today can be traced back to the 1929 merger with the United Free Church, when “we suddenly had exactly twice as many buildings as we needed”, said Rev Alan Sorensen, minister at Well Park and Mid Kirk in Greenock.
Strategic plans are one thing, Rev Sorensen believes, but sentiment is another. Many church members will fight “tooth and nail” to retain their buildings.
“Of course, people get attached to buildings, especially if they have deep memories of family occasions attached to them. But the problem is that we become thirled to them.”
Back in Millhouse, auctioneers are confident that they will have viewings, though potential buyers are warned that they would have to just get used to the neighbours in the graveyard.
Exhumations in the UK, if they are allowed, cost £4,000 a time.
