Crisis in Humanitarian Aid

There was a great duet of programmes on BBC 4 on Sunday - the first entitled, "The Trouble with Aid", was followed by a debate around the issues raised by the documentary. The debate was chaired by Ed Stourton of Radio 4's Today before he left it in 2009.
The double edged nature of crisis aid relief is an underlying sore in the work of the big aid agencies. The programme illustrated this well using a number of celebrated case histories. Aid can often be used by one side or another to bolster its own campaign, feed its fighters, and pay for its weapons. Malnutrition, carefully and intentionally nurtured can be used as a powerful tool to attract aid.
The Aid Agencies are faced with enormous difficulties. How much do they tell the public about the problem of getting the aid to the right people? If they tell the whole truth about the percentage of aid hitting the target, then giving will dip, and less good overall can be done. The counter argument goes like this: in some cases we need to do less good, perhaps withdraw altogether, as this will result in far less harm ultimately, and may save more lives in the long run. There was another thought which ran through the documentary and rippled the following debate a little too, which is that the Aid Agencies are now businesses which need to be self perpetuating. They have a big staff to support, ongoing costs to pay for, and so on. They need us to keep their coffers full, and not just for the purpose of supplying aid.
I was very impressed with Medecins sans Frontiers, both from the documentary's perspective and also in the debate which followed. They seem to stand head and shoulders above many, with a keen sense of the need to remain independent, and to act with integrity in each crisis.
Hopefully the insights won't stop those who give thoughtfully from giving, but there were some nice touches of realism from the Medicins sans Frontiers Director. He said that if we the donors thought we were trying to save the world and make it a better place, don't write the cheque. "All we are trying to do," he said, "is trying to stop someone from dying."

St George's Tron Part 2

Sunday - an article on the Scottish edition of BBC News, focussing on the eviction of a congregation from their building in Glasgow. Yes, St George's Tron had hit the news. The Church of Scotland really does not need this kind of publicity at the moment. But not only were we told that the congregation were being evicted, but that the Minister was being evicted from his manse, and bailiffs had served notice on him. For those of us who know our church history, this brought to mind scenes from the Disruption of the Kirk in 1843. The media did not mention the fact that the congregation were leaving because they opposed the move to open the ministry of the Church of Scotland to gay clergy, which might have cast the Church of Scotland in a slightly less malevolent mold in the mind of the general public. But that was in a way, neither here nor there. 

The Church of Scotland had this one coming. Churches in general are stuck in a place where they cannot make gracious and magnanimous gestures, because they are ruled by committees, assemblies and courts. This state of affairs which limits the exercise of grace, is a far more serious and damaging thing, and far more erosive of the Church's reputation, than any of the high profile issues which dog the churches at the moment. Women Bishops, gay clergy; these are not the issues which ultimately will bring us down and reduce us to a whimpering impotent stump of toothless Christianity. What will do for us, if we let it, is our dereliction of duty in the face of our theological imperative to show unremitting, unhesitating grace in every situation of conflict and disagreement. A move by the Church of Scotland to allow a congregation showing substantial dissatisfaction with the Church and severe discontinuity with her evolving liberal theology to remain in their building would have been a coup d'etat of grace. It was never going to happen. This is church after all. 

Church and the generation gaps

I was reacquainted with an old smouldering anger last night, as I listened to a talk being given about the generation gaps as they relate to Church. I belong to the Baby Boomer generation (people in this country roughly between 48 and 65. The generation below mine is referred to as Generation X and the one above, as the Builder Generation. Below Gen X we have Gen Y. These differences between the generations are being explored in order to give us some insights and understandings into church life. I'm angry because an analysis like this was needed 40 years ago, when the Boomer generation were entering the ministry of the Church of Scotland and the decline in church going was beginning to show. Then, the response of bodies like the General Assembly was one of apprehension that, wait for it, too many people were entering the ministry and we would have too many ministers in the future if the trend kept up. Of course the trend was never going to keep up simply because there was at that time a big pool of potential candidates due to the spurt in population growth: (the boomers are called the boomers because there was a baby boom back then!) This was unlikely to continue once the population began to decline again.

The reason that there should have been a considered look at the generation gap back then, is because many of the boomers could have been helped far more to ready the church for the future generations if the church had been forward looking. What happened was that the Boomers came in, and were held to ransom by the Builder Generation which was effectively in control of the church during the 70's, 80's and 90's. This was a critical time for the church. The Builder Generation is essentially a backward looking generation - not in terms of their desires and aspirations, but in terms of their attitudes and their style. They give respect to status, traditions, structures handed down from the past, and to the given order of things. Boomers were ready to challenge all that and move things on. But they deferred to the Builders who were largely the people attending, supporting, maintaining and controlling church life. Those who challenged the Builders too much found themselves stressed into illness or pressurised into conforming, or both. Small wonder that many of us capitulated and worked hard to make everything fit the Victorian model of church life with which the Builders had been very contented. The working model for the minister's job description which had served the Builders well, was expected to fit the new and changing circumstances of the Boomer Generation people. This conflict was never mentioned in those days where it needed to be mentioned most - the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and its committees. We are now reaping the results of these times. Many congregations are in what feels like terminal decline with few applicants for the ministry and churches closing or amalgamating.

My anger isn't an anger against the Builder Generation - it's against a church that just couldn't or wouldn't see. Of course the General Assembly and its committees were controlled by career ministers with Builder aspirations and mentality, so that was never going to help during those critical years. We are now in the hands of the Boomers - the generation who may feel guilty that it didn't do more to pass the baton on, and that guilt may in itself need addressing in the not too distant future, before we have all retired.

But, I am an optimist with regard to the church. She has survived for the best part of 2000 years. I think she can survive these generational upheavals too. Here in Scotland she may be leaner and smaller in the future, but hopefully fitter too. I think the roadmap of church life will need to be radically rewritten. Generations X and Y I think will have a relatively free hand to do that - the Church is too sick now to be able to stop it thank goodness, so here's to an interesting and eventful future.