The Church of Scotland will cease to exist by 2040

(This article was originally written in April 2014 and is republished here from my previous blog).

According to this article Church of Scotland membership has declined by at least 50,000 over the past three years (approx 17,000 per year).

As the number of communicant members of the church is 446,179 a linear projection would show the Church of Scotland running out of members in 26 years (2040).

This is actually better than many of my colleagues predicted when we graduated in 1993. Most felt that the kirk would see them out to a pension. As they were mainly in their late 20’s and would be expecting to retire at 65, that would have been  around 2030.

The Church of Scotland itself predicted this:

“In 1980 a report to the Kirk’s Council of Ministry predicted the reduction in membership – and in 1997 the church suggested that if the decline in numbers continued, it would cease to exist by 2033.” (BBC)

Of course, a linear decline is not realistic. There will always be some members left, and a rump of the kirk will always remain. The real question is not the decline of the Church of Scotland, but how other churches take up the challenge to fill the gap left by it.

The historical decline in membership since 1981 looks like this (figures were originally in a table here but they have vanished from the BBC web site):