About SCIM
Scottish Churches Industrial Mission is an activity of the Scottish Churches engaging with the working life of Scotland encompassing three main strands: work place chaplaincy (Work Place Chaplaincy SCOTLAND), engagement with civic institutions and engagement with churches.
Engagement With Civic Institutions
Even before the development in the 1990s of chaplaincies to local government
staff, SCIM had long been engaged with political and civic institutions
such as the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) and Scottish Council Development
& Industry (SCDI) at a national level and at a more local level with
Chambers of Commerce, Local Authorities, Trades Councils and so forth.
We seek to bring to the structures of industry, commerce and politics our faith traditions in the belief that they have, both as light and as salt, fresh insight when so often the wisdom of the so-called 'real' world gets stuck in dark and unattractive inevitabilities.
This role is, we believe, currently of particular significance with the establishment of the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood.
We were delighted with the opening of the Scottish Churches Parliamentary Office and believe there is a challenge to the churches to feed into the process of political and social change in our country the stories of faith with their ancient truths that are so astonishingly relevant and excitingly liberating. But we must tell the stories in a way that engages the tempo and temper of modern life.
Engagement With Churches
We have long seen as important the engagement with the churches that brings
into the structures and worshipping communities accurate and up-to-date
information and analysis of the challenges and changes encountered at the
workplace; the pressures facing individuals, companies and sometimes whole
industries as they struggle to survive in the modern, ruthlessly competitive
market place.
We seek to encourage the churches to regularly reflect and pray on these matters which are the daily experience of those who earn their living in the Scottish economy.
Many people in our work places are church members, who occupy the pews Sunday by Sunday and who, so often in their 'spare time', provide the energies and the skills that sustain the functioning of the churches.
We seek to, consistently hold before the churches the plight of unemployed people, given our understanding of the particular concern of Jesus for the poor and the powerless. Mass unemployment still stalks our land and in many homes, particularly in our great cities, unemployment has become an inheritance.
We seek to keep the churches, whose servants we are, reliably informed of the sea changes that we are able to discern in economic and employment patterns and regulations.
SCIM is an Associated Ecumenical Group of Action of Churches Together in
Scotland (ACTS).