Church of Scotland
THERE is no getting away from it: the story of the Church of Scotland in numbers from 2000-2020 makes brutal reading for anyone with the good of the Church at heart. In the year 2000, the Church could claim a membership of just over 607,000 (which was already less than half of its 1950s peak). The blue book to the 2019 General Assembly reported the total on the rolls as 325,695. It doesn’t get any better if we widen the definition from formal membership: as we reported last month, the percentage of the population expressing allegiance to the Church of Scotland dropped from 42% at the 2001 census to 22% in the 2018 Scottish Household Survey.
Anyone connected to the Church will be familiar with the results of declining membership: ever-increasing unions and linkages, closing buildings, fewer ministers resulting in more and longer vacancies. Income from congregational giving, which until recently had remained remarkably steady through the declining membership, has now started to fall as well.