Scots Church Adelaide

Being Church in the City

Our Statement of Mission says: We the Uniting Church people of Scots Church on North Terrace are called by God to be a faithful, worshipping community growing in faith, visible and positive, so that we can be channels of God’s love through whom others in the community recognise the God who welcomes them.

The word 'mission' comes from the Latin word 'missum' meaning 'sent.' It is an important word for a church. It is a reminder that we are not here to 'do our own thing'; we are not a private club.  It is a reminder that we are here to live the way God wants us to live. Although people find wisdom and nurture for life in many places, as Christians we have committed ourselves to finding and submitting to the wisom shown to us in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

Mission is also a hard word for a church; we have to acknowledge a history of churches acting as though we had a monopoly on knowledge and God's wisdom.  People reasonably mistrust what churches have to say. For all that, we believe we are called to live our lives as Jesus would live if he were here in our situation. We are called, knowing our shortcomings, to live the best lives we can, and to enable those around us to live the  best lives they can have.

This is our mission- the thing we are sent to do and be. Words like love, justice, and peace describe the Jesus we see as we study the source documents of the church- especially the New Testament stories of Jesus.  At Scots we are about living out these things.