You may have picked up from the news recently that the Church of Scotland is facing something of a funding crisis. Like any family or business if you spend more than you earn then you’re in trouble. It is now getting to the hard bit, so far they have been using up some of the Church’s reserves held to pay for ministers but they will soon run out and so we need, like the country to balance our budget before we are declared bankrupt. Across the country there are something like 1,300 posts but we can only afford 1,000. Some of the posts that exist on paper do not at the moment have a minister in place, but we still have over 150 too many. What will this mean? It will mean that Presbyteries will need to look at their plans and see where the plan can be changed and the numbers reduced over the next three years. I think it will mean that ministers will have to cover larger areas and as a consequence be involved in may other things in the life of the larger parish that simply the life of the congregation, things like funerals, weddings, school chaplaincy and many of the other things that people in the congregations are sometimes not aware of. Some may think that this sounds the death knell for the church. I don’t share that view! What I do think it will mean is that more people in the church will get a chance to be involved in the ministry of the church week by week. In many places everything is left to the minister to arrange and organise and many ministers are quite happy with being “in charge”, now we are being challenged to let go of the reigns and trust the people and let then share in the ministry of the church. It is in many ways another reformation moment a time of real change, finding a new direction. This doesn’t mean that it will be easy or painless it won’t even in Falkirk we will have to face the possibility of cutting back on the number of paid ministry staff in the area, the greatest challenge is to see this as an opportunity to do something “old” (something we have always done) in a new way and trusting in God’s Spirit to lead us into a new kind of church.