REGARDING your article about vicars' posts being axed through lack of cash (LET, September 4), this announcement comes two weeks after the £100,000 'flattened dustbin' sculpture was stuck on Blackburn Cathedral's wall. Good timing.

Yes, it was funded by European money which had to be spent on something like a sculpture, but then there is the £70,000 being spent on the nearby Pavilions and the £1 million that will have to be spent on converting them into a restaurant. And they say there is no money.

It's about time that the Synod recognised that the church is going to have to come out of the 16th century and start to do something for the communities that they are in.

They should sell the stained glass windows and the silverware, convert the smaller churches into drop-in centres for drug and alcohol addicts, stop the vicars from doing what people regard as a one-day-a-week job and get them out on to the estates to work with youngsters and help old people.

I am sure that the end product would be that people will have what they want -- religion. And that this would be reflected by money in the pot.

ROY DAVIES, Olive Lane, Darwen.