MEDIATORS are being lined up to prevent an exodus of ministers and congregations once the Church of Scotland has voted on gay clergy.
Speaking days ahead of the opening of the 2013 General Assembly, the Reverend Lorna Hood said she believed the Kirk's conflict resolution wing could prevent a split some are predicting has the potential to be the biggest since the Free Church of Scotland broke away in the 1840s.
In recent weeks the Free Church has claimed as many as 50 Kirk congregations have made contact with a view to a possible link-up if gay ordination is voted through.
Kirk sources have dismissed the figures as Free Church scaremongering, pointing out only two congregations have left since the issue first arose four years ago, one in Glasgow, the other in Aberdeen, in addition to six ministers from a total of almost 1000.
Ms Hood – the Kirk's third female moderator and the first who is a serving parish minister – has been heavily involved with A Place For Hope, a group of 30 trained mediators set up in 2008 following a report on the cost of conflict within the church.
She said: "I hope Place For Hope will be involved in this. A lot will depend on the decision.
"It has been involved in the Aberdeen presbytery because that is where the whole thing started.
"It just gets people talking together and listening and getting to what the real issue is.
"I will be speaking to A Place For Hope about this and they have said they are willing to get involved."
The new moderator said she was "terrified" about chairing the Kirk's weekend debate at the General Assembly on permitting the ordination of gay ministers.
In 2011, when the Theological Commission On Same Sex Relationships and the Ministry was set up, around 120 kirk leaders signed a notice of dissent against the establishment of the body, with the same number again against allowing openly gay ministers ordained before 2009 to remain in the church.
Various votes on whether individuals in civil partnerships should be ordained have been split almost 50-50.
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