EVERY Church of Scotland parish in Edinburgh is at risk of closure as part of a radical attempt to reorganise how the Kirk reaches out to its congregations.
The Scotsman has learned that senior officials now accept they cannot sustain the upkeep of 86 parishes in the city's presbytery.
Dwindling numbers, ageing congregations and a lack of funds and leadership have forced the church to consider the d
rastic move.
However, some believe the change is an opportunity for the Kirk to address the changing needs of the capital and move towards "saving souls instead of clinging to old patterns of parish life".
The key result of the report is the suspension later this year of the superintendence scheme which reviews all of its churches on a five-yearly basis and monitors their viability.
In its place will be a delegation that will spend 2010 visiting all 86 of the Kirk's churches in Edinburgh to assess whether they fit the new direction of the presbytery and decide whether they should continue as they are, find additional roles working with other charitable bodies or close.
Rev Dr George Whyte, presbytery clerk and author of the report, said: "What we are trying to say to congregations is that the city that put the churches where they are has changed.
"We are trying to respond to the city as it is today and there are question marks over whether we need so many individual units. Although we may end up with more Christian communities, they may end up more closely connected to each other."
The drastic measures come months after an internal survey found that office bearers' (those within an official role in a congregation) main concerns were falling numbers, ageing congregations and a lack of funds and leadership.
Dr Whyte said that the Kirk had responded well to the post-war landscape.
However, he added that during the presbytery meeting there was a "common sense that we cannot keep doing church the way we had. The demographics won't allow it."
He said that new approaches to worship had to be embraced, and that it had to be accepted that people were less rooted in their communities and had less attachment to local churches.
He acknowledged that people who had stayed in one place were fond of their churches because they represented landmark moments in their lives such as marriages and baptisms, but that this type of church member was rapidly vanishing.
The Rev Peter MacDonald, the departing minister of St George's West in Shandwick Place, Edinburgh, said that his church is one of those that faces an uncertain future.
"I was the convener of the committee that came up with some of the plans of this report," he said. "My own congregation is going to be affected by this. I'm about to leave and they are not going to get a chance to replace me. There will almost be a union of some sort in the city centre and my congregation know that.
"They are not going to be bleating because they know the reality because we've already worked on that, and what they will want to do is continue the good work that we've done in the city centre that we can't do alone."
He admitted that some would be unhappy. "Sometimes you've just got to upset people," he said. "There are hard decisions that have to be taken."
View from the pulpitTHE Rev John Smith is minister of Morningside United Church, which has a congregation of 250.
"I personally welcome the report and the challenge it offers. In terms of individual congregations, we will be asked to address the question 'what is your job and your mission?', which is something that has not been asked before.
"It may be that we have to ask some churches whether there is a future here, but we're not at that point.
"We need to go through this process. The closure of churches is a process that has been going on for 90 years, but the difference this time is that we're moving the focus from whether we are successful in terms of money and numbers to what we are doing in our communities.
"We'll respond to this well. People will say this is what we do all the time, because we're an ecumenical church.
"If you're a smaller, struggling church I can imagine there will a sense of defensiveness. I don't think the exercise is designed to put people down. It may make them defensive, but that's all right as long they are tenable.
"Rationalisation is further down the line. We're trying to establish a sense of what people think their job is."
