Commission of Assembly agrees with Presbytery of Edinburgh about Ministers and Manses
MINISTER FACES THE SACK FOR REFUSING TO LIVE IN MANSE
Saturday November 14,2009
By Dean Herbert
A KIRK minister who refuses to live in his manse because his wife does not like it could now lose his job over the row.
The Reverend John Munro,60, moved out of the manse and has repeatedly defied orders to spend his nights there because he felt “duty bound” to sleep under the same roof as his wife.
Yesterday, he faced a panel of senior Kirk members who ruled that he must obey presbytery orders to live full-time in the property.
Mr Munro, from Edinburgh, a minister for 33 years, moved just 500 yards into a smaller house with his wife.
He said he uses the manse to carry out all his business as minister of the parish of Fairmilehead.
But the Kirk’s Commission Assembly yesterday voted in favour of Edinburgh presbytery’s order and could begin disciplinary proceedings early next year.
During the heated hearing at St Cuthbert’s Parish Church in Edinburgh, the minister denied he had contravened Kirk rules about occupying the manse, because he did everything but sleep in it.
Read the rest of this article in today’s Daily Express here
The Commission of Assembly has done its work. It was asked to consider a case and make a judgement, and it has done so. Ministers must obey the laws of the Church. Life in the manse is an expectation laid on parish ministers. Although I believe that ministers and their families should be free to live where they wish, if the Kirk says that ministers must live in the manse, then we must live in the manse, for that is what the word ‘occupy’ is intended to mean. If we disagree, then we must continue to live in our manses but use the processes of Presbytery to try to effect a change in the way things are done. We are not free to simply do what we like independently of the rest of the Kirk, which is what the appellants argued in their appeal to the May 2009 General Assembly against the decision of Aberdeen Presbytery in the case of Queen’s Cross Church.
I am not saying that ministers who disregard the instruction of a Presbytery should not have to face the Commission of Assembly. I am simply arguing that the Kirk needs to be fair and consistent. For example, I would have thought that a minister who teaches and preaches ‘another gospel’ other than that which the Kirk discerns in scripture, to which it assents in the historic creeds, which it adheres to in its subordinate standard, and which it rallies round in the First Article Declaratory should surely be required to give account to a Presbytery or to a Commission of Assembly. I have heard a former Moderator of the General Assembly deny the bodily resurrection of our Lord. I have also listened to another former Moderator of the General Assembly clearly unable to say what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is in terms that reflect the reformed faith of the Kirk. I have also read the views of a number of ministers on theological matters that ought to have raised questions about the nature of the gospel they preach. Yet I have never heard of a minister being asked to explain to a Presbytery or to give an account of his or her unorthodox view on any central theological or biblical question.
My question is this: why is it that Presbyteries are clearly ready to pursue the line of discipline in order to ensure that the contents of a manse include a minister, yet the theological content of a minister’s preaching and teaching goes unchecked for the whole of a minister’s working life and ministry, as far as I can tell?
I believe that some Presbyterian denominations in the USA annually ‘check’ that the theological views of ministers who preach and teach have not departed from Christian orthodoxy. Those who have spiritual oversight and pastoral responsibility for congregations are given what amounts to a theological MOT to ensure that they are still up to the task. I don’t know how this might happen in practice here in Scotland, but it seems to me that the issue which ought to concern Presbyteries most is the biblical faithfulness of our teaching elders. Here is precisely where we are either powerful or powerless.
We look silly when we discipline ministers over the occupancy of their manses yet do nothing about the content of their preaching.
Soli Deo Gloria
I have read your comments on the case of John Munro, and agree with them. I was a member of the Commission of Assembly, and I found this case very sad. Here are my thoughts on it.
John Munro based his appeal on the fact on the wording of the regulation passed at the 2007 General Assembly which states that “A minister has the right to live in the manse and a corresponding duty to occupy it.” He argued that while he did not live in it, he did occupy it. The point at issue was whether, in the regulation, the word ‘occupy’ was intended to be synonymous with ‘live in’. John Munro argued that it was not. The opinion of the Procurator was that in the regulation, ‘occupy’ did, indeed, mean ‘live in.’ (This was my own reading, as well.) Hence I took the view that, legally speaking, John Munro did not have a leg to stand on.
There were, in my opinion, other weaknesses in John Munro’s case. There is a manse adjudication procedure, whereby ministers can get permission not to live in manses, which John Munro knew about, but chose not to use. Furthermore, John Munro had employed a solicitor to act for him, and I take a dim view of ministers (or candidates for the ministry) instruct their solicitors to assist them in their personal disagreements with courts of the church.
However, I was also unimpressed with the Presbytery of Edinburgh’s conduct. In 2007, the Presbytery Clerk heard unsubstantiated verbal reports that John Munro was not living in the manse. The matter was investigated, and this led to an instruction that John Munro should live in the Manse.
I believe that there was no good reason for doing this.
1) There was no suggestion that John Munro’s failure to live in the Manse had caused significant unhappiness in his congregation. On the contrary, the Kirk Session of Fairmilehead supported his right to live in his own home.
2) There was no suggestion that John Munro was involved in conduct declared censurable by Word of God.
3) There was no suggestion that the preaching of John Munro was heretical.
4) The Presbytery was well aware that the reason John Munro was not living in the manse was because his wife strongly disliked living in manses, and Mr. Munro had a duty, as a husband, to take his wife’s feelings into account in his living arrangements.
5) The regulation spoke of “a duty” to occupy the provided manse, rather than a requirement to do so, leaving the Presbytery some flexibility.
6) The reason for the General Assembly’s regulation requiring ministers to live in manses is connected with the position of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in not considering manses to be a taxable benefit. In fact there is no reason believe that John Munro’s failure to live in his manse would have been of concern to the Inland Revenue because:
a) in the opinion of the Procurator, isolated instances of ministers not living full time (or at all) in their manses did not constitute a threat to the tax position of manses,
b) it is quite possible that the inland revenue would regard John Munro’s level of occupation of his manse as constituting occupation for their purposes,
c) it is extremely unlikely that many other ministers would follow John Munro’s practice, since not many ministers can actually afford to live in their own house and, at the same time use the manse provided by the congregation.
The argument at the Commission of Assembly was that good order must prevail in the church, and good order demanded that John Munro’s complaint should be dismissed. And I suppose that is true. However, in my view, good order would have been more effectively maintained if the Presbytery of Edinburgh had chosen to turn a blind eye to John Munro’s living arrangements.