Pastoral Letter

Dear friends,
Summer is once again approaching fast. I am sure we will all welcome some warm sunny days after a rather chilly winter and spring. As I write the General Assembly is still in progress. A colleague who is a commissioner this year commented on the fact that there were encouraging reports about care for and work amongst the most needy people in our society and in other parts of the world but expressed a feeling of spiritual emptiness in it all. He said this "One man stood up when they were discussing doing this and that to presbyteries, etc. and said - we have all these grand plans but if you asked most people in the churches if they had prayed this week or read a spiritual book recently they would answer negatively" My colleagues conclusion was "so we are still not willing to admit what is wrong". In the midst of the financial problems there are good things happening in the church as we would expect since the Holy Spirit is not controlled by human financial circumstances but I wonder how much better things could be if we were to take our Christian faith much more seriously than we do and were willing to pay heed to the exhortations in the scriptures regarding prayer and devotion to God and his word.

On Pentecost Sunday (just passed) I said a little bit about revival and described it as "a significant moving of the Holy Spirit at particular times and in particular places when many peoples lives are transformed in an instant by the power of the Holy Spirit". A recent publication "Glory in the Glen" describes how around the middle of the first decade of the twentieth century was a time of notable revival in central Scotland. The book describes revival in Netherburn at that time as well as in Crossford, Kirkfieldbank , Carluke, Ferniegair and Strathaven. Almost invariably revivals can be linked to earnest prayer on the part of the church. For example we read the following in connection with revival in Strathaven: "Many conversions were recorded in Strathaven and neighbouring villages following five nights weeks of nightly prayer". This should be no surprise since we have the following promise in the Bible which I quoted on Sunday If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven forgive their sin and heal their land" (2 Chron. 7:14).

The sad fact is that even although we have that and other such promises solidly endorsed in history up to the present time by the actual experience of revival breaking out in the wake of extraordinary seasons of prayer on the part of the people of God so few of us are prepared to take the time and the trouble to meet the conditions for God to pour out his Holy Spirit once again on the church and the community. I have said before "God is determined not to give us what we are not determined to have". How determined are we to see the church revived and people in large numbers being converted and added to the church? Determined enough to join fellow Christians to pray for it to happen? With these words I challenge myself as much as you. Perhaps we should have a gathering for prayerspecifically for revival for even an hour every week. If you would be interested in this proposal in principle at least, the details - time and place to be determined, please tell me. As I said on Sunday after I had quoted the paragraph about revival in Netherburn - "it could happen again" but it will never happen unless we are prepared to meet the conditions - are we? are you?


Yours faithfully,

Cameron McPherson