THE number of Church of Scotland presbyteries could be dramatically reduced in a “radical” new rescue plan aimed at shoring up support and saving the 458-year-old organisation from extinction.

The proposal comes after a 10-year strategic plan which was put together after two years of consultation with more than 2,000 people was rejected by church decision-making body the General Assembly this week. An amendment to the motion backed by ex-moderator Derek Browning, which called for more radical proposals to be brought before next year’s gathering, was backed by 439 votes to 130.

Before the vote on the plan, the report’s author Martin Scott – who is secretary to the Assembly – told the Sunday Herald the life expectancy of the Church of Scotland could be as little as 30 years unless there was reform. Membership of the church has fallen by almost 20 per cent in five years, from 413,000 in 2011 to 336,000 at the end of last year. That decline has had a knock-on effect on church finances, with congregational giving down almost £2 million in the same period.

Speaking after the vote, Scott said he was disappointed by the “rejection” but welcomed the opportunity to offer sweeping changes next year, which could include cutting the number of Scottish presbyteries from 43 to 12. Presbyteries are groups of congregations of varying sizes.

Scott said: “I’m disappointed they didn’t go with the plan because it loses us a year of work, but I’m not disappointed that they asked us to do something more radical, because I think many of us, myself included, would like to see something much more radical. The problem is that the General Assembly doesn’t like things that are too radical and tend to hold the middle ground.

“Now they’ve given us the authority to prepare something radical, I think that’s very exciting for the church. We’ll come back next year with something significantly more radical.”

Outgoing moderator Browning said the report was “very thick on gloss and very thin on substance”, while Rev Robert Allan who brought the counter-motion said: “To agree to this plan would be to put another nail in the coffin of the institutional church …what we need is urgent, radical action. We have had 60 years of decline and it will be worse in 10 years.”

In an apparent riposte, Scott said: “A lot of the things that were talked about [by critics of the plan] were already in the plan, but they were not the prominent things, necessarily. Some of it will be bringing these things to the front and making them much clearer and simpler for people to understand and to grasp.”

Among the new proposals in the plan will be a move to reduce the number of presbyteries and change the way the church collects money from congregations. Each congregation must contribute a sum to the church each year to bring in £43m, which is then redistributed to pay for ministers and staff. Smaller congregations pay less, larger congregations pay more, but congregations’ numbers are dwindling at different rates. The church may also have to release more money from its reserves, according to Scott.

Scott added that “structural reform” could see the number of presbyteries reduced to “around a dozen”.

“It’s a big piece of work and it’s not been a piece of work that’s been popular in the past, which is one of the reasons we shied away from it,” he said.

A new plan will be brought before the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 2019.