Dayton Free Church - Our Church

The Free Church of Scotland is a presbyterian church adhering in its worship and doctrine to the position adopted by the Church of Scotland at the Reformation. At the Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843, the Free Church carried forward the spiritual identity and succession of the Reformation in Scotland.

At the heart of the Free Church heritage is the gospel of Jehovah’s love in saving fallen creatures from their sin—a salvation arising from God’s eternal election of a particular people, and pursued through redemption purchased by Christ alone and applied only at divine initiative, so that all the praise for the sinner’s deliverance is reserved for the originating, procuring and efficacious love of God. This salvation is publicly offered to the world through the commission which Christ has given to his church to preach the gospel to every creature. Every one who embraces the Lord’s invitation to receive his freely-bestowed salvation, by placing his confidence in Christ as Mediator, will enter into reconciliation and everlasting communion with his Maker and Judge.

The institution of the church has as its first concern the worship of God. The Lord in his Word has explicitly reserved to himself the prerogative to determine the form of action to be used in his worship. Our faith and obedience towards him are to be visibly expressed by observing the worship forms he has sanctioned. The Lord has given us the canonical text of Scripture for public reading and for singing his praise, and has appointed the symbolic actions of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, always to be accompanied by a verbal proclamation of the gospel through the exposition of Scripture. The prayer of faith is to underlie every act of worship. In the simplicity of these ordinances, the worshipper is to look by faith to the ascended Savior, the glory of whose priesthood lies not in the outward pomp of the Old Testament temple, but in the efficacy of his once-for-all sacrifice to take away our sin and to bring us into the kingdom of heaven.

The believer’s experience of salvation is more than a mere acceptance of biblical doctrine. The Reformation age was marked by entire societies committed to a Christian view of the world and life. But the Reformers knew that this intellectual and cultural posture was no indication that the multitudes had experienced the new birth, or found personal contrition for sin or fled to the Savior for deliverance. It is not enough that children be raised in the church or be educated in biblical principles. Preaching to the Congregation must show the way to Christ, discriminate between the converted and the unconverted, fence the Lord’s table against the admission of all who are in scandalous sin, and warn professing Christians of the danger of eternal destruction if they are not in saving union with Christ. Preaching should delineate from the Scriptures what it means to experience the power of the truth, providing guidance to the believer for his self-examination, mortification of sin, pursuit of full assurance, patient submission to trouble, and fervent love to Christ.

The foundation for activity in every department of man’s life is to be the acknowledgment of God’s glory and the recognition of that true religion revealed in the Scriptures. Civil government and the social life of the nation are no exception to this universal obligation. Not only in the individual conscience of the believer, but also in the constitution and public policy of our corporate existence as a society, there must be commitment to the honor and authority of the true God. It belongs exclusively to the church to preach and administer the ordinances of worship and discipline. But in the civil ruler’s administration of specifically civil matters, it is incumbent on him to recognize and promote the true religion. The departure of modern nations from this Reformation principle is the consequence of Enlightenment philosophy, as well as of fear among evangelicals that the privileges of an established religion would be abused and the spirituality of the church compromised. Two hundred years later, the consequences are manifest in the moral and spiritual waywardness of societies whose original populations were personally committed to biblical principles but who devised civil constitutions that eschewed commitment to biblical religion.

In every age the doctrines and practices known and loved by the parents must be taught to a new generation. There is no way around this necessity to train the successors, giving them a thorough grounding in the biblical truth and godly living which captured the hearts of a previous generation. Will we hold these things fast and learn to love them as dearly in our generation?

The History of the Free Church of Scotland

The Free Church of Scotland is a Presbyterian Church adhering in its worship and doctrine to the position adopted by the Church of Scotland at the reformation. Its divergence from the Church of Scotland dates from the Disruption of 1843 when, under the leadership of Dr Thomas Chalmers, the Evangelical Party in the Church of Scotland as by Law Established, withdrew from the Establishment to form the Church of Scotland, Free.

Disruption

The immediate cause of the Disruption was the insistence by the civil courts that the Established Church had to ordain men to the parish ministry irrespective of their acceptability to the parishioners. The Evangelical Party regarded this as an intolerable interference in the spiritual liberties of the church and so they withdrew from the Established Church to form the Free Church. The Disruption was not intended to be a disruption or division of the Church. Rather it was to be a severing of the link that bound the Church to the State. However, since the Church was not of one mind regarding the proposed action, the Church itself was split. The Established Church remained and the Free Church, claiming to be the same Church as that which it had left, a church adhering to the same Confession of Faith, loyal to the same principles and differing only inasmuch as in the discharge of its spiritual function it was to be subservient to no other authority than the will of God as understood by the collective mind of the Church, came into being.

Declension

The Established Church and the Free Church were not the only Presbyterian Churches in nineteenth century Scotland. In the eighteenth century there had been more than one secession from the Church of Scotland giving rise to the formation of several groupings with distinctive confessional standpoints. In the late nineteenth century a movement to unite the splintered Presbyterian Churches in Scotland was begun. Not surprisingly, given the different, not to say opposing, nature of the confessional formularies of the various churches, union was found to be possible only on the basis of compromise - an agreement to adopt a confession of faith sufficiently vague and elastic as to allow those holding different views to subscribe it with good conscience. When the Free Church was confronted with this dilemma, a minority took the view that the doctrines which were being treated as open questions were so vital to the faith that the duty of Christian unity had to yield to the higher duty of fidelity to the truth. The consequence was that when the great majority of the Free Church entered the Union of 1900 to form the United Free Church of Scotland (and in 1929 to reunite with the Church of Scotland) a small minority elected to continue the Free Church of Scotland. The adherents of this 'constitutionalist' party, as it was termed, were to be found mainly, although not exclusively, in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

Today the Free Church of Scotland, although much reduced in size, maintains in continuity with the Church of 1843 the system of doctrine and the form of worship adopted by the Church of Scotland at the Reformation. The singing of the Scottish Metrical Psalms unaccompanied by instrumental music is, perhaps, the most distinctive feature of its liturgy, but the chief emphasis of its worship is still to be found in the centrality of the pulpit and the proclamation of a free and sovereign salvation.

Division

The Free Church has continued down until the present day. At the Commission of Assembly in January 2000 a division occurred because a majority was determined to act in a way that was against the constitution or 'rule book' of the church, which all office-bearers must uphold. A number of ministers and elders signed a 'Declaration of Reconstitution' in which they pledged themselves to continue the Free Church in a constitutional manner. They are the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing). We use this title to distinguish, solely for the purposes of administration, the reconstituted Free Church of Scotland from any residual body claiming that title. We remain the Free Church of Scotland.