The incoming moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland yesterday admitted the Kirk has not been attractive enough to encourage new worshippers through its doors as numbers reached a record low.

The Reverend David Lunan made the comments as figures showed membership below 500,000.

Mr Lunan, who said he was "not unduly despondent" about the statistics, partly blamed society's materialism and pointed to a lack of children attending Sunday school.

But he conceded: "I think we have not probably been as attractive as we might have been. I think there's a lot of same old, same old' goes on."

The figures will be presented at the Kirk's General Assembly which begins next week in Edinburgh.

A report by the legal questions committee shows 489,118 members last year, down from 504,363 in 2006 and 520,940 in 2005. The number of new members each year has fallen by nearly 80% since 1981.

Mr Lunan, 63, who formerly held the post of clerk to the presbytery of Glasgow, is expected to take over from Rev Sheilagh Kesting when the Assembly gets under way.

Asked to explain the drop in membership, Mr Lunan said the average age of church-goers was a factor he had noticed when visiting congregations.

He said: "You are left with the impression that most people who go to church no longer have their hair colour.

"The age profile of congregations would be, I think, over 50, maybe even over 60.

"We used to worry about there not being young people around and that's still an issue."

Mr Lunan added that people were often "shielded" from asking the deeper questions of life in our modern society, but on the membership figures, he insisted: "I'm not unduly despondent about that. The Church has gone through worse times than this before."

He pointed to "imaginative" work in deprived areas across Scotland, as well as to the dedication of current members.

Principal clerk to the General Assembly, the Very Rev Finlay Macdonald, pointed to figures in the same report which show that over 75,000 children are involved in congregations, while a further 19,400 adults go to church but are not on the official roll.

"You can add almost another 100,000 with children and folk who attend church but who aren't registered as members," he said. "Compared with 30 or 40 years ago, the numbers are still down but it's not as gloomy as is sometimes made out."

Mr Lunan was born in London and raised in Cambuslang, near Glasgow. The father-of-four was ordained in 1970 and worked in Moray before being called to Renfield St Stephen's Church in Glasgow.