THE Church of Scotland's prayers appear to have been answered with a new generation of young ministers flocking to join the Kirk.
The Presbytery of Edinburgh has reported that record numbers are applying to train for the ministry.
During Tuesday night's monthly Presbytery meeting in the capital's West End, 28 candidates currently in the training process were welcomed –
a stark contrast with the meagre ten applicants a decade ago.
According to senior Kirk members, a change in the public perception of the church as being an "alternative lifestyle" choice, coupled with an innovative "taster course" to allow potential trainees to dip their toes in the ministry waters through work experience, lectures and guidance, is having a positive effect.
Dr George Whyte, Edinburgh Presbytery Clerk, said: "The Kirk instituted a system at the beginning of the decade called Inquiry where people could attend a day course about how they could work for the church.
"They could then take three months shadowing a minister."
The new system, he said, was attracting a younger and different type of person who had a different perspective on the church.
"They are certainly more diverse and younger than ten years ago. The average age of an ordinand is around the early thirties. Ten years ago it would be 39, 40," he said.
Edinburgh trainee Sang Cha, a former Hollywood agent, said the Kirk's outsider status was important: "I think it's right and good that the Kirk is the national church but not the established church. It helps the Kirk to sit loose to the development of society. It makes us more agile to respond to it.
"It's almost going back to the original forms of ministry. We were the ones on the outside, in pre-Constantinian Christianity."
