The Network met on March 15th.
The major items of business were consideration of how the principles behind the Australian Churches’ Covenant could be applied to the Scottish situation and discussion of how the “ecumenical memory” of Scotland could be preserved for the future.
Considerable progress was made on the Australian Covenant proposal. A questionnaire, designed to establish where denominations can already agree and to identify the places where agreement is, at the moment, clearly not possible, was discussed. The next step will be for each denomination’s representative(s) on the Network to complete a questionnaire as a “trial run” both to provide an unofficial picture of the level of agreement and disagreement between the denominations and alos to allow for refinement of the wording of the questions.
At its next meeting the Network will consider the implications of that unofficial response to the survey and agree on any necessary changes to the questions before deciding when and how the questionnaire might be submitted officially to the denominations.
The Network was hopeful that the Australian Churches’ Covenant’s methodology might allow smaller denominations, which did not feel ready to seek full membership of ACTS, to become more closely involved with the ecumenical movement.
From the discussion of the fear of the loss of ecumenical memory came a recommendation that a small task group, to be convened by ACTS’ General Secretary, should be set up to consider ways in which the memories might be gathered and preserved. The Network itself put forward a suggestion that a library of video interviews of people who had played significant parts in the development of the ecumenical life of Scotland should be compiled. It was envisaged that the material gathered would be made available on the web as well as on DVDs.
