Back in 1984, Mark Johnston was involved in starting a new work with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) of N. Ireland in the village of Richhill, Co. Armagh.
Although the village itself is not large, there is a population of around 50,000 within a five-mile radius and people began to find their way to this fledgling work. Mark was to serve as its minister for the next ten years.
Subsequently, the congregation faced a series of challenges that caused division and damaged its work in the local community. Numbers fell and so did the morale of those who were left. However, they, along with a number of people from other EPC churches, committed themselves to keeping the flame alive.
Last year they approached Mark to ask if he might be willing to come back to the village to effectively start all over again, and he agreed to do so. He and his wife Fiona and Lindsay, their adult daughter with learning difficulties, relocated from Wales to N. Ireland and have been settling into the work once more in Trinity Church EP Richhill.
Mark says: ‘Trying to relaunch a church in the midst of Covid restrictions has proved challenging. But, at the same time it has provided its own opportunities to connect with people. The main initial focus has been to put a new website – trinitychurchrichhill. org – in place and advertise it locally through social media and other community platforms. This has already proved effective in seeing new people getting in touch.’
These are exciting times for the Johnston family and for the little group who form the nucleus of this work. They press ahead, trusting that the same God who began this work over 30 years ago will see fit to rekindle it all over again.
