Obviously being a minister within the Church of Scotland the internal workings of the “machine” has some relevance and importance to me. However, I acknowledge that for the casual bystander the “noise” of the Church is of little importance. But there is one issue which will greatly affect many if not all communities in Scotland. Over the next 3 years the Church has instigated a plan to reduce the number of paid full-time staff to 1000. I see this having the effect of spreading ministers more thinly over the country and there may well be occasions whether this is no minister to take funerals or conduct weddings. The danger is that the already diminishing profile of the church in the community will be further eroded and simply other people or celebrants will step into the gap with no control over the quality of the work they do or the values which they embody. Moreover there is a danger that people may take some form of fuzzy hotchpotch of ill conceived ideas and assume they are Christianity. The Church needs people from within its faith communities to step up to the mark and become equipped to provide some of these forms of public ministry to ensure that it is the Gospel of Jesus that is proclaimed and not the good news according to Jean or Jim. It is a very sad day when the driving force of the church is the balance sheet, but that seems to be the age we are now in and every Christian in the nations has a responsibility to change this, to reform the church and renew its life and witness across our land. This has to start now and not wait until things are so bad that there is no return. But one of the other key factors is the ministers in posts at the moment, we need to learn to devolve and allow the ministries of the people of God to evolve in a supported and encouraging way. So the future of the church is not up to me, or you it has to be us.