I WAS four years old when my father became a minister on his ordination and induction to the charge of Lochee: St Ninian’s, in the Presbytery of Dundee. Like many of his generation he had experienced a sense of calling while on military service during the Second World War. He responded to this and, on demobilisation in 1946, began his divinity studies at Christ’s College, Aberdeen. His father was a lay missionary in his native Lewis, having previously served parishes in Sutherland and Skye. I recall that, on my appointment as Principal Clerk in 1996, Life and Work’s Gaelic Supplement carried the story with a small picture of me, a medium-sized photograph of my father and a large image of my grandfather – a nice illustration (literally) of the old Scots saying, ‘I kent his faither’!
The Very Rev Dr Finlay Macdonald
“ We worry sometimes as to whether the Kirk has a future. Well, it certainly has a past and one element in securing the future is learning from the mistakes of the past and avoiding their repetition.