What's Missing from Ch--rch?

Every so often I'll see a sign or a facebook post asking "What's missing from ch--ch?" The answer? "U R" (you are). It's a mildly humorous attempt to encourage people to come back to church, or to start attending for the first time.

And yet there is something more than people missing from many churches in Scotland. What's often missing today is what the Reformers described as the "marks" of the church. Men like John Knox identified three marks of the church: the preaching of the gospel, the pure administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of church discipline. In other words, a church is not just an organisation that calls itself a church, it must have the marks of the church. Certainly, there are other attributes of healthy churches, but these three were singled out because they are visible as well as foundational. A church missing these marks may still meet, it may still organise lots of activities — but it may not be a true church. It may once have been a true church. It might not have been turned into a restaurant or flats or a carpet showroom. People may still meet there on Sundays, sing hymns, and listen to someone speak from the front — but it may no longer Biblically qualify as a church.

These three marks weren't just randomly plucked from the air: they were drawn from Biblical passages such as Acts 2:42 where we're told that the first Christians "devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers".

The Reformers agreed that the foundational mark of the church was the right preaching of the gospel. Just because someone speaks from a pulpit does not mean they are preaching the gospel. The Bible is often used to give moral lessons — along the lines of Aesop's fables. But men, women, boys and girls are not confronted with their need, as Jesus himself put it, to be "born again" — "to repent and believe in the gospel". One place where the lack of true gospel preaching is often seen is at funerals. The Christian hope in the face of death is wrongly applied to those whose lives demonstrated that they had no interest in Jesus Christ. Those present are left with the impression that everyone will get to heaven in the end. It might not have been said in so many words, but the heresy of universalism has been proclaimed. An opportunity to graciously and lovingly preach the gospel to (perhaps) hundreds of people is missed.

The Reformers identified the second mark of the church as the right administration of the sacraments. They began by identifying two (and only two) sacraments — baptism and the Lord's Supper. But these sacraments had to be rightly administered: baptism is not to be given to everyone who asks for it — it is only for believers and their children. Likewise, the elders of the church are to exercise oversight as to who comes to the Lord's Table. Yes, a person is to examine themselves (1 Cor. 11:28), but the elders also have the responsibility to "purge the evil person from among you" (1 Cor. 5:12).

This brings us to the third mark of the church: the exercise of church discipline. It has been said: “When discipline leaves a church, Christ goes with it". "Discipline" can sound scary, but we tend to recognise that it's not a good thing for children to be brought up without it. In the church it's simply part of pastoral care — the recognition that every sheep needs a shepherd. A shepherd who cares for you so much that if you go astray, they'll come after you, rather than leaving you to wander. Or if you get hurt by someone, they'll come alongside you.

For this mark to be present, the church needs elders who meet the biblical qualifications set down in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. Tragically, however, eldership in many Scottish churches has become a way of honouring people who've been around for a while — or been given to those who are respected in the community — irrespective of whether they have faith in Jesus. Someone once told me that their elders had never talked to them about the Bible. When it gets to the point that most of the elders shouldn't even be church members, it's clear that this mark was lost long ago.

So what's missing from church? Often the reason that people have deserted a congregation is due to the missing marks. For example, if people don't hear anything different on a Sunday than they could hear on the news or from a self-help book, why go? If public sin goes unchallenged, why invest your energies? The lack of these three marks has very practical consequences. The Reformers weren't motivated to talk about “true” and “false” churches by ego or arrogance, but by a sincere desire for the spiritual health of God's people and their communities — and his glory.

Certainly, there can be true Christians in churches where these marks are missing. But God himself would say to them, "Come out of her, my people" (Rev. 18:4).

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 9th July 2026

NOTE: James Bannerman identifies a progression from “the somewhat loose and popular definitions of the Church visible, commonly given at the Reformation, to the stricter and more scientific definitions of the seventeenth century”. He makes a distinction between things which are necessary for the church’s existence, and its well being. It is, he argues: “apostolic doctrine which alone marks out a Church of Christ".

What is the Goal of Life?

It seems that the break between football seasons gets shorter every year. It won't be long before a (somewhat-changed) Stranraer FC side take to the field at Stair Park against Irish League Champions Larne on 20th June. A week later, NIFL Championship side Dundela will be the visitors — I wonder whether I'm the only Stranraer fan to have watched Dundela play home and away. Certainly, if we're now playing friendlies against NIFL Championship sides, I've got to hope that one year we'll play my hometown team Institute (who finished 31 points better off than "The Duns" last time around)!

The close season also provides a well-deserved break for Stranraer's excellent media team, who are the envy of many other clubs. As well as the very professional match highlights, the revamped podcast ("Look Blues Talking") has been a great addition. And in this month's column, I can't resist revisiting a comment that was made as Laurence and Brian — described on the BBC last year as "the best people involved in club commentary in Scotland" — commentated on Stranraer's final match of the season.

What piqued their interest was an advertising board at Elgin's Borough Briggs stadium, which simply reads: "What is the goal of life?"

And so at a break in play, Laurence put that question to Brian, and said he'd come back to him for the answer on the following week's podcast.

As it was, listeners got not one but two answers. Brian's was: "Just be nice...try and be nice to everybody...try and be a good person". Stranraer fan Martin McClelland wrote in to say that, according to Epicurus, the goal of life was to achieve simple happiness through the absence of pain.

It's a great question to ask. Indeed, if we ever change our church's advertising board at Stair Park — which currently reads "Because Life is More than a Game" — we might just borrow that one from Elgin Baptist Church.

One thing I love both about the question — and about the two answers that were given — is the assumption that life has a purpose. I find it interesting that many people who believe that life is the result of random chance, will still talk about meaning and purpose. Because surely if we live in a purposeless universe — as so many say they believe — then there's no place for talking about life's purpose. Yes, as individuals we might still come up with goals and aspirations, but surely there could be no overarching purpose which we could call everyone to aim for.

I find the inconsistency interesting. For all our talk about living in a purposeless universe, for all our confident assertions that we are no different from animals, we so naturally talk about purpose — and use the categories of right and wrong — that it's almost as if we believe there was a Creator. For all our modern, Western, secular disbelief in God, it's almost like we believe we live in a universe that throbs with purpose, and where categories like right and wrong really do exist and aren't simply human constructs.

Why do we grieve over wasted lives? Surely it's because, deep down, we believe that everyone has a purpose.

One of the great things about being a Christian, therefore, is that I don't need to try and come up with a sense of purpose. Rather, I was born with a purpose that was given to me by a wise and kind and good Creator. And whenever seasons of life change — for example, when the kids grow up and move out —I don't need to try and find a new purpose.

My problem isn't trying to find a purpose — my problem so often is living for the wrong things. It’s seeking joy and happiness in the wrong places. As the wise preacher puts it in Ecclesiastes, after years of close observation of human beings, "God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes".

Indeed, we often fear to even ask what our purpose is. Jeremy Vine said recently that one of the things that makes us human is "our inability to stop the world and ask the biggest question of all, for fear that the result will be the end of our beautiful dance".

We don't ask the big question about purpose, Vine says, because we fear the answer. And in a sense we're right to fear, if we stop with the first part of the answer. The Bible tells us that we are more sinful than we ever dared believe. Brian's right — we should aim to be good people. But none of us live up to God's standards: "None is righteous, no, not one" (Romans 3:10). BUT, if we face up to the bad news, the good news is that through Jesus we can be more loved and accepted than we ever dared hope.

And we can be set free to live, not for a purpose we've had to invent for ourselves, but for a purpose prepared for us by a loving God from before the creation of the world.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 2nd June 2026

Politics is broken - can it be fixed?

"I used to vote for [insert name of political party], but not anymore. They're all as bad as each other." Such sentiments are increasingly being voiced. Politicians and their parties are seen as promising whatever it takes to get into power — and then failing to follow through once they do. As someone who has never voted for any politician — and so has no dog in this particular fight — I'm finding that my position is not as unusual as it once was.

I'm not so cynical as to argue that everyone who gets in to politics does it for self-centred reasons. It's surely right to acknowledge the hard and selfless work of some politicians across the political spectrum. Yet many are agreed that something needs to change. And I would argue for that being far more structural than cosmetic.

The foundational question that must be asked is about which values will shape our politics. It would seem today that we have three main options. Is society best served by secular values, Islamic values, or Christian ones? To many, the answer is self-evidently the first one. Those who are religious shouldn't seek to impose their values on society. Yet that is to talk as if there could be a government in power which wouldn't seek to impose its views on society. Such a mythical creature doesn't exist.

Can a government leave the decision whether to steal or kill up to the individual? Surely not! The question then becomes, not whether those in power have a right to impose their views — but what their views are, and what philosophical commitments shape them.

We live in societies which have been shaped by Christian values. What happens when these values are abandoned? We find ourselves in the midst of an experiment to find out. The signs are not promising. Within the last year — in the biggest change to abortion laws in 60 years — the House of Commons voted to decriminalise abortion up to birth. In the same week, it voted to amend the Suicide Act of 1961 to permit what was euphemistically described as "assisted dying". Only thanks to the House of Lords (and, I would add, Almighty God) is the bill itself dead in the water — for now.

At root is the question: "Who are human beings?" Are we created in the image of God with intrinsic worth, dignity and purpose? Or are we cosmic accidents, and ultimately expendable?

Yet many of the things that politicians value and promote still spring from our Christian foundations. As Matthew Roberts has put it, "values like self-sacrifice, community spirit, philanthropy and much else that our society values fit like a glove with a universe made by a triune God of love but can only wither like a flower left in a vase in the cold, arid universe of secularism." Politicians, and many others, assume that we can remove the Christian foundations of society — and still hold on to these values. They are tragically wrong.

In a speech to the House of Commons in July, MP Danny Kruger put it like this. After almost a millennium of assuming that we worshipped the Christian God: "In the 20th century, another idea arose, that it is possible for a country to be neutral about God, that the public square was empty of any metaphysics, that the route to freedom lay through the desert of materialism and individual reason, no hell below us, above us only sky, That idea was wrong, and the horrors of the 20th century attest to that, not least in the West, where we escaped totalitarianism but have suffered our own catastrophes of social breakdown, social injustice, loneliness and emptiness on a chronic scale. Now new threats, ugly and aggressive, are arising, because we have found that in the absence of the Christian God we do not have pluralism and tolerance, everyone being nice to each other in a godless world."

Many detect that something is badly wrong with society — and look to politics to save it. In the words of Peter Juul, they "put far more weight on politics than it can possibly bear and invest it with far more significance that it can possibly give anyone". Indeed, Juul points out that as religious commitment has declined, a new, progressive politics has arisen with its own version of original sin (white privilege), end times theology (climate apocalypticism), and separation of soul from body (gender identity).

Important as some of those issues may be, give me the theology of the Heidelberg Catechism any day. "What is your only comfort in life and death?" "That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood [and] watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven".

And so, politicians: Thank you for your work — but if you want my vote, I want to hear less about what you say you’ll do when you get in power, and more about who you believe we are as human beings.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 7th May 2026

Only on Loan

It would be hard to deny the impact that loan players have had on Stranraer FC's season. Scotland U19 prospect Matthew Gillies and mazy winger Dom Plank were joined in January by keeper Lyndon Tas and centre half Joe McGrath — not forgetting promising striker Dean Cleland, whose short time here has been marred by injury. The club have cultivated good relationships with Edinburgh clubs Hibs and Hearts — who can surely now be confident that if they send more players to Stranraer in the future, they will be given a proper chance at men's football. (It's been clear from the KDM trophy that the 'B' teams of Rangers, Celtic, etc are sorely missing that experience).

It's actually not unlike what we've been trying to do as a church over the last year and a half. As we've sought with God's help to revistalise the congregation here in Stranraer, our challenge hasn't so much been getting people through the doors, but seeing them come to faith in the first place, and then growing in that faith. Of course, a big part of that comes through teaching the Bible. The Bible says about itself: "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17). That's why we have two services each Sunday, where I preach through books of the Bible. My ministerial hero, J. P. Struthers of Greenock, managed to get through the whole Bible in 20 years.

And yet the Bible itself also stresses the power of example. The Apostle Paul could say: "What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you" (Philippians 4:9). Or as he put it elsewhere: "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ" (1 Corinthians 11:1). Jesus Christ is the supreme example for the Christian. He is more than an example — the reason he came to die on the cross was that a mere example of how we should have been living would have been no good to us — but he is not less than an example. This is particularly relevant in a day when many people get most of their spiritual input from YouTube. We need real life examples, not just talking heads on a screen. The idea of God's people being primarily taught the Bible by someone they don't know personally has no place in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul writes on one occasion: "For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you" (2 Thessalonians 3:7). On another, he can remind the same congregation: "But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children" (1 Thessalonians 2:7).

That's where the "loan signings" come in. In my decade in Stranraer, I've encouraged people to consider moving here permanently for the sake of the gospel, with one family having taken up that challenge. More recently, however, my focus has been on trying to get people to come short-term. And so over the last 16 months or so, we've had four retired couples — and one young family — come for between one and three months. (Two of them have come back for a second stint!). Most of them have come from our sister denomination in America, which is one of the blessings of being part of a global church.

Those who've come have led Bible studies, taught Sunday school, helped with hospitality, but above all have simply been examples of what Christians and church members should be like. They have lived the Christian life for decades, raised their children in the faith, and have much wisdom to share with those of us who are younger (or newer to Christianity). Personally, I've been surprised by how quickly those who've come have been able to integrate with the congregation. However as we've found even with random holiday makers visiting on a Sunday, we have more in common with fellow Christians we've just met than with others we've known all our lives.

Like Stranraer FC's loan players, we realise that they won't be here forever. But that's ok. It's all part of God's provision for us. He is the one who gives daily bread, and who keeps the widow's oil running until it's no longer needed (2 Kings 4). We won't see some of them again in this life — but we will in the life to come, when we will no longer need examples, because "when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2).

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 23rd April 2026

The First Sceptics of the Resurrection

If Jesus Christ didn’t bodily rise from the tomb on the first Easter Sunday, then Christianity falls apart. Christians have always acknowledged that. The Apostle Paul, who wrote most of the books of the New Testament, put it like this: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins”.

I’ve had the misfortune of being an away fan at a football match and seeing my team go 3-0 down after half an hour. The home fans started singing: “You might as well go home”. There’s no point staying for the rest of the match; it’s already clear what the result will be. And if there’s no resurrection, those of us who are Christians might as well go home. There’s no point trying to reinvent Christianity as some sort of moral code for life. If there’s no resurrection, it’s time to shut up shop.

But one of the interesting things about the Bible’s account of the resurrection is that even though Jesus had told his followers it was going to happen, most of them took a while to be convinced it was real. They certainly weren’t queuing up to believe in a resurrection.

The first sceptics of the resurrection were Jesus’ own disciples. What made them sceptics? Mostly the fact that they’d seen him crucified — and dead people don’t tend to come back to life.

Jesus’ friends had seen him die in a way there could be no doubt about. They’d seen him nailed to a cross. They’d seen an experienced Roman centurion, who’d likely overseen 100s of crucifixions, pronounce him dead.

And so on that first Easter Sunday morning, when a group of women walked to the tomb, laden down with spices and ointment, they were going for one reason — to embalm a body. They weren’t hoping against hope that the person they’d seen killed would have come back to life.

When they got to the tomb they were perplexed to find that the stone covering it had been rolled away. They went in — but they didn’t find a body. At which point they didn’t say: “Oh, silly us, he must have risen from the dead!” That would not be my conclusion on coming across an empty grave, and it wasn’t theirs. Instead, they jumped to the obvious conclusion that someone had moved the body.

The Bible is clear both that Jesus had predicted his resurrection, but also that when it actually happened, his friends weren’t expecting it — and in fact refused to believe it.

Two angels then appeared to the women and told them that Jesus had risen from the dead. The women went and told the apostles — the men would be the leaders of the early church. But the women’s story seemed to them to be an idle tale. Just a silly story; ‘they did not believe them’. Only two of them thought it was even worth checking. 

And yet — many of the same people would go on to die for their faith in Jesus. Which means that if Jesus hadn’t really been raised and appeared to them – they wouldn’t simply have been dying for a lie. Many people die for a lie thinking it’s true. But they would have been dying for something they knew to be a lie.

And so Jesus’ friends were the first sceptics of the resurrection. The first ones to pour cold water on the idea that he had risen from the dead. And yet they would become the very same people to take the message of Jesus to the ends of the earth.

Why does this all matter? Because if there’s no resurrection, then this world, with all its pain, suffering, heartache, shame, disappointment — this is all that there is. There isn’t a day coming when all wrongs will be put right. Again, the Bible acknowledges that when it says: “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’”

If the dead are not raised, you might as well try and fit in as much pleasure as you possibly can. Forget about other people – never mind God — and just live for yourself.

But if the resurrection is true, it changes everything.

Last year, I met a man from China who had been about to take his own life. As he prepared to jump off his apartment building, five words came into his mind: “I am the resurrection and the life”. The Bible is banned in China, so how could he have known those words? Because in school he had read “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens, and it contained that quote. Soon after, he became a Christian and his life was transformed.

If the resurrection is true, it means that no-one is beyond hope, and that even the bleakest situations can be transformed. Death itself has been defeated.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 26th March 2026