John Kirkpatrick had reached that stage of ministry when papers are cleared out and books start to get packed into boxes. He had attended the ministers’ pre-retirement conference last October and was planning to retire from his Portrush congregation this summer.
Instead, he’s now cutting down on biscuits – “Tell them I don’t do sweet stuff!” – ahead of a year that is likely to involve a lot of eating as he and his wife Joan represent the denomination at home and abroad.
A combination of a misbehaving email account and “not being paranoid about looking at my emails” meant that when the Clerk of the General Assembly, Rev Trevor Gribben, phoned to ask what his decision was, John’s reply was that “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about”, completely unaware that his name had been put forward as a candidate for Moderator.
A couple of times over the years when people asked John whether he’d be willing to be nominated, he said, “No, it’s not the right time”. Now at the end of his parish ministry, it didn’t seem quite so out of the question.
Mulling the proposition over with Joan that night, he says they both felt that “if ever there was a time that we could do this, it would be now; and if ever there was a way that it would happen, this is about the only way that we would have accepted it.”
The next day, John allowed his name to go forward. Like other pivotal moments in his life, it was a case of “we’ll say yes, and see what happens”.
A matter of weeks later, on Tuesday 1 February, John was taking part in an online beekeeping course. The phone call came… it was Moderator David Bruce informing him that a majority of presbyteries across the island of Ireland had voted for him and he was now the Moderator-designate.
The hand on the tiller of his life has definitely been God’s rather than John’s.
The son and grandson of Presbyterian ministers, there was nothing inevitable about John’s call to ministry. His father had left the family home in Limavady and moved out of their lives when he was just three. His mother died of cancer when he was just 10 years old. Sent to board in Coleraine Academical Institution, he left school after his O levels and switched to Greenmount College to study farm management.
John admits that his teenage years were relatively unchurched. His faith journey really began, aged 19, while spending the middle year of his course working on a farm.
I wouldn’t want to relive my life…But I thank God for it. Even the miserable bits. They are the dark shadows that highlight the brighter parts…
“That’s when God really met me in a powerful way. I had no intention of meeting him at all. I was going very fast in the other direction, just doing my own thing. But it changed the whole trajectory of my life.”
His education – both academic and spiritual – continued when he enrolled in a social sciences degree at the new University of Ulster in Coleraine, later switching to Environmental Science. “I was responsible for looking after an old uncle who was on his own, so I couldn’t really go any further than would allow me to return to him during the week.”
He picked up a leadership role in the Christian Union, but the call to full-time ministry was still not properly on his radar. Through a university friend Tony Davidson, he got the chance to work part-time – in what today would be termed youth ministry – in Dungannon, alongside Rev Andrew Rodgers.
“I then applied to go to Belfast Bible College, because it was interdenominational and there were a number of theological issues in my head that I wasn’t totally settled denomination-wise. The college gave me space and time to think.”
His one-year course included input from figures such as Patton Taylor (Greek), Alan Flavelle (homiletics), and Ian Hart. John certainly knows about hard work. Those college days involved getting up at 5.30am each morning to drive to Belfast for lectures, followed by practical work in the afternoon, and then more lectures right up to 9.30pm at night. “By the end of that year I was nearly physically burnt out by the routine.”
An extended student placement with Rev Alastair Dunlop at Portglenone proved to be a turning point in John’s decision to study at Union Theological College. The logic began to fall into place. Community work in the agriculture and social science sectors, youth ministry in Dungannon, church placements and overseas visits while at college, and now working in the congregation at Portglenone, all began to convince John that what other people had long been saying was right: he had the gifts for ministry.
The interview process was smooth at first until he failed to turn up for the psychological assessment, nearly scuppering his entry to Union! The rest is history, with a two-year assistantship in east Belfast, nearly six years in Garryduff, before settling in Portrush in 1993.
.jpg.aspx?width=300&height=200)
John told his congregation on the first Sunday after becoming Moderator-designate: “New job, same John”. So, what will he bring with him into his new role?
John is a thinking pastor: “On the essentials [of faith] I have complete peace. But that doesn’t mean to say that I don’t still continue to learn about those things.” So, he’ll be open to learning as he travels the length and breadth of Ireland and beyond.
There’s a great need for the church to develop a strong apologetic…
And he’ll be himself. “You begin to realise you don’t have to do it the way it’s been done before. You just have to be yourself. People say to me, ‘You were elected because of who you are. They haven’t elected you because they want you to be put into some sort of straitjacket.’”
He’ll definitely bring his love of apologetics, something he’s been intentionally studying and sharing for two decades, and a practice he expects to continue into his retirement. For 12 years, his Portrush congregation has been running an apologetics course with a broad curriculum, covering contemporary issues alongside the classical existence of God.
“There’s a great need for the church to develop a strong apologetic. Not just letting society create the issues for us… If we’re to be salt and light in society, then we ought to be able to be the first to say something about some topics.”
John brings his own lived experience. “I wouldn’t want to relive my life, nor want any of my children to have lived my life. But I thank God for it. Even the miserable bits. They are the dark shadows that highlight the brighter parts of my life for me. And I have come to learn so much through them.
“I hope it has made me a person who will not come to a quick judgment about people, but will try to understand that behind every person there’s a story. And so when people come and ask about this issue or that, I’ll say, ‘You’re a person before you’re an issue’.
“And it’s only as I take time to get to know and understand people that you can have a proper conversation about any of the other things. I might not have experienced what they’re experiencing, but I can learn to understand other people.”
John has taken the theme for his year of ‘Grace Works’. “Rescuing people from religion”, John says, “seems to be the mission I’ve been on all my life, including myself, because my own heart can tend to that religiousness, that works will always come back in.”
Being in the spotlight this year will be an “uncomfortable coat” for him to wear. Away from the front, John is looking forward to the quiet conversations. He’ll not be rushing to speak out about big political issues. But he will be “very happy to sit down with any politician and say, ‘tell me about yourself’”.
“I look at the way Jesus went about, encountering many, many people along the way. And I’m aware that in our lives we will encounter all sorts of people that, in God’s providence, he will have located us alongside. I just pray that we will have enough wisdom and sensitivity to listen to those people, because a big part of what we need to do is listen. And if we take more time to listen, when we do say something, it will be spoken in such a way that it might be more helpful. Tone is very, very important.”
Watching Kenneth Brannagh’s film Belfast reminded John that so many people have a story that has never been told. “If you don’t have a gun, if you don’t shout loudly to get noticed… all those people in the middle… they’re the ones who are paying the price.” So in the coming year, he expects that he may “advocate for people that nobody notices… that can’t advocate for themselves.”
John believes that ministers ought to find space amongst the busyness of congregational life to rest and relax. Aside from spending time with his family – four children and five grandchildren – John enjoys walking, gardening, bees and bikes.
… we will encounter all sorts of people, that in God’s providence, he will hve located us alongside…
Tilling the soil and watching things grow connects John with his rural background and farming days. A builder told him that his garden needed bees, supplied a beehive, and John had to quickly learn the art and science of being an apiarist. “I’ve got stung multiple times since, but that’s not a big deal. Bees are fascinating, absolutely amazing creatures.”
John’s been a race chaplain for the Motor Cycle Union of Ireland for more than a quarter of a century. While he no longer rides on the road, for him “it’s a fascination with speed, an adrenaline thing. Some people can go out and tour on a motorbike. I couldn’t really do that. I like to go fast and I like to go around corners fast. Even when I was a child, if I had a bicycle, I wanted to make it go fast.”
Now his work as a race chaplain is about the relationships “you build with riders, their families and children, teams and officials”.
He has conducted more than 20 funerals for motorcyclists, returning to his previous congregation in Garryduff on three tragic occasions to bury brothers Joey and Robert Dunlop as well as Robert’s son William. Does the ethic of a sport that kills so many participants bother him?
“Yes it does, but while they make that choice I’d like to be available for them and their families.
“I’m not an apologist for road racing… But I respect their wish to do so, and will try to be able to provide the same sort of support I provide for people doing anything else.
“There are people who do things we don’t agree with, but we wouldn’t walk past or abandon them because they were in trouble. I’m not there to start the race, and I’m not there to make their bikes go quick. I’m there for them as people.”
Photos: Dr Kirkpatrick with his wife Joan (and the family pet) in and around Portrush where he has been the minister of Portrush Presbyterian since 1993 (photo credit David Cavan).
Alan Meban writes about culture and politics as Alan in Belfast on his own blog and the award-winning news and opinion portal Slugger O’Toole.