CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: ‘I have never heard such a passionate, positive description of Christian experience’
The young woman exploring Christian faith through an Alpha course at St Columba Church in Inverness, suddenly realised ‘I believe this!’ And then she said: “Why didn’t someone tell me before?”
Scott McRoberts is minister of the church, which is comprised of families and people of all ages and currently meets in Drummond School. Many of the younger people he sees in his community work come from families which have never had direct contact with Christian faith over several generations.
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The Church website highlights Jesus’s promise: “I have come so that they might have life and have it to the full.” What, I asked, does this fullness of life look like, feel like?
Scott speaks of the joy and hope which comes from knowing God loves you; about a new worldview, a new, satisfying perspective on reality; about the social dimension of joining a local expression of an international, multi-ethnic family; about the connection with God which will endure beyond death.
How, I wondered, did he become convinced as an adult of the truth of what he’d been brought up to believe? We talked about his questioning as a young theology student, and his settled conclusion, after much thought and study that, yes ‘scripture is the word of God’.
We also talked about his wife Heather's diagnosis with a rare form of cancer in 2016 (initial treatment was successful, she continues to be monitored). So many questions, but a conclusion that God is love and God is present. ‘I wasn’t crying out to a God I didn’t know. I was crying out to a God I did know.’
Aware that ‘there is much God wants done in the world now to see it transformed,’ St Columba Church focuses particularly on supporting young families, and people experiencing social isolation. And of course on sharing the good news of Jesus’s promise with the community, and rejoicing when, awakened by God, people join them as ‘disciples’ or ‘apprentices’ of Jesus, seeking to live as he lived.
I have never heard such a passionate, positive description of Christian experience. “Life with God is so much more technicolour,” Scott enthuses.
Conscious of my often dulled spiritual emotions, I wondered: ‘Is this too good to be true?’ I asked Scott how he responds to those who feel on the edge emotionally, perhaps due to mental health issues. Do they, too, feel included?
I was heartened by his response. He is open in his preaching about things he is struggling with and about the times he has ‘hit burnout or had mental health struggles’. Through Scott’s vulnerability and brokenness those who struggle, as I do, feel welcomed not just by the church, but by the technicolour God whose brightness is sometimes dulled by our pain.
