Class notes - Princeton Theological Seminary

fall 1997
ormation
Nurtures Sc
tish and American
Clergy
"We ministers in the Church of Scotland
have been living on very thin gruel," says
PTS alumnus Nigel Robb ('79M, '89M),
referring to the lack of serious continuing
education for pastors in his denomination.
"Other professions in Britain have been
much more aware than the church of the
need for people to be updated and supported
in their professions." As the first director
of educational services for the Church
of Scotland's Board of Ministry, Robb is
in a position to help change that.
Beginning in 1998, the Church of
Scotland will provide every parish minister
(1200 of the denomination's 1300 clergy)
who has served for five or more years a total
of two weeks and up to 250 pounds (about
$425 U.S. dollars) annually for continuing
education. Or, as Board of Ministry convenor
George Whyte (who spent several
weeks doing his own continuing education
at Princeton last summer) calls it, "ministry
development. "
This is the first time ministers in the
Church of Scotland have been guaranteed
continuing education as a part of their calls.
The Board of Ministry will administer the
new policy, which includes the option of
banking some or all of the time for up to
seven years so that a minister may take a sabbatical
of fourteen weeks, with the General
Assembly paying to supply his or her pulpit.
Where will these pastors find continuing
education events to attend? Princeton
Seminary intends to provide part of the
answer.
This past summer Princeton and St.
Mary's College of St. Andrews University
held their first Joint Institute of Theology for
pastors from both sides of the Atlantic. Robb
was the Institute's Scottish director; PTS's
Dean of Continuing Education Joyce Tucker
was the American director.
by Barbara A. Chaapel
"I got on the plane to Scotland in June
as a sort of leap of faith," says Tucker. "There
were a lot of administrative
snafus in planning
this Institute
across an ocean, and
I wasn't sure just how it would all work out."
She need not have worried.
For two weeks,
sixty-six Americans, thirty-three Scots, and
two Irish pastors enjoyed lectures by faculty
from both sponsoring institutions (Nora
Tubbs Tisdale and Patrick Miller were PTS's
contributions), worshipped together in
St. Salvaror's Chapel (dating from 1410),
and discussed theology each evening in the
pubs of St. Andrews.
"The Institute was a spiritual experience
for me," says Tucker, "as if we had antennae
alert to God's presence there. We were in
St. Andrews during the 1400th anniversary
of the death of St. Columba,
of that anniversary
and the spirit
was woven through
the Institute. [Columba brought Christianity
to Scotland in 563 when he left his native
Ireland to build a mission on the island
ofIona that became the center of Celtic
Christianity]. We had a historian from
Aberdeen who talked about Columba's story,
a story filled with both myth and history, as
one of the evening programs. We sang songs
from the liturgy of the Iona community. We
worshipped one afternoon in the ruins of the
old St. Andrews cathedral, demolished by
Knox's followers during the Reformation."
Knox is, of course, one of the reasons
Princeton has ties with Scotland.
Born near Edinburgh and educated
at St. Andrews, the reformer was ordained
as a Catholic priest in 1536. The year 1547
found him at St. Andrews, where he purportedly
received the call to preach the
Gospel as a Protestant. He spent the next
decade in Geneva studying under John
Calvin and imported the Presbyterian form
of government to his native Scotland.
A century
later, settlers in the middle
colonies in America, some of whom had
immigrated as the result of English persecution
of SCOtsPresbyterians under Charles II,
requested a Presbyterian minister from the
homeland.
In the late 1600s, a Scots-Irish
minister named Francis Makemie answered
the call and established a Presbyterian church
in Accomack County, Maryland, and later
the first presbytery
in America.
These same first- and second-generation
Scots founded Princeton University and later
Princeton
Seminary.
As the Church of Scotland's roots run
through Geneva, the roots of the Presbyterian
Church in the United States run through
Edinburgh and St. Andrews. Knox's Book of
Discipline is the foundation for the PC(USA)'s
constitution,
which he authored,
and the Scots Confession,
is one of the confessions
by which American Presbyterians are guided.
Now the "mother church" is turning to
the "daughter" to continue a theological conversation
that began centuries ago.
"Scotland has accepted a fairly static
model of church," says Robb. "I think this
is because a big part of our mission is to provide
the ordinances
of Scotland."
Whyte,
of religion for every inch
who is the pastor of Colinton
Parish Church in Edinburgh (where PTS
alumna Easter Smart is a full-time assistant
pastor), explains: "In Scotland we have
parishes, not congregations. A minister serves
as a sort of chaplain
For example, parish ministers
funerals and weddings
to the community.
or not the people are members
do all of the
in the parish, whether
of the
church. That can mean as many as 120
funerals a year, or six or seven a week."
The expectations
of this model of ministry
means Scottish pastors have had little
time to develop their skills in preaching,
10. inSpire