The fall in numbers of young people attending Sunday worship is “nothing short of catastrophic”, the Church of Scotland’s leading cleric. has warned.
The Right Rev Dr Martin Fair, moderator of the General Assembly, said churches needed to ask themselves what they were doing to attract new worshippers or was the truth that some parishioners “like it this way”.
Writing in this month’s edition of Life and Work, the Kirk’s house magazine, Fair said the church had been declining in numbers for decades and as people returned to the pews with the pandemic easing “it can’t be the same as it was”.
“This needs to be stated: the closure of our buildings cannot be spun as a ‘ban on worship.’ I’ve worshipped every Sunday throughout the pandemic, in a building on a handful of occasions and otherwise joining with others online,” he stressed.
He added: “We were declining numerically and had been for 60 years and, most worryingly, the decline in numbers of young people had been nothing short of catastrophic.
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“So I’m pretty sure that whatever Church is going to be like, it can’t be the same as it was. What it was wasn’t cutting the mustard. It’s not that we’re finished, more that we need to find new forms — new wineskins for new wine as Jesus put it.
“And some new priorities. Actually just one. Mission.
“Let it be asked of every worship service; is it being designed with younger people in mind, or those who have never been, or with a, ‘We like it this way?’ attitude?”
A former moderator, the Very Rev Albert Bogle, writing in the same magazine, said it was “time for a new world order”. He added: “There is a longing in so many hearts today for the renewal of how we organise our world. We need to begin thinking about what the purpose of economy is and above all what is the purpose of church?”