At a congregational meeting on the 11th November, the Airdrie congregation voted to call Rev. Stephen McCollum, minister of Stornoway RPCS, to be their minister. The call was then processed by the Presbytery and at a special meeting of Presbytery on the 24th November the call was passed to Rev. McCollum who accepted it.
Stephen is from Cullybackey in Northern Ireland, and he grew up in the Irish RP Church where his dad, Rev. Wallace McCollum, was minister of Cullybackey RPC. He first came to Airdrie as a teenager, serving on a ‘Go Team’, an outreach team of the RPIC. He then studied Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, during which time he attended Airdrie RP and became a memeber of the congregation. He went to America to study at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh. His wife, Brenda, is from Broomall, Pennsylvania, and also is no stranger to Airdrie having herself come over on numerous RP Mission Teams and also having taken part in the Semester in Scotland programme. After Stephen’s graduation from seminary, they moved back to Airdrie, and Stephen worked for a time as the head teacher at Mellville-Knox Christian School in Glasgow. During this period of busy work life Stephen was ordained as an elder in the Airdrie congregation. Stephen taken under care of the presbytery of the RPCS and was later called to be the minister of the Stornoway congregation, where he has been faithfully labouring for almost 5 years. Stephen and Brenda now have three children: Zoe, Eloise, and Knox.
Presbytery has set the date of Saturday 19th March 2022 for the induction service, God willing.
We give thanks to God for this answer to our prayers, and we are looking forward to having Stephen, Brenda, Zoe, Eloise, and Knox here in Airdrie. Please keep them in your prayers as they make plans and preparations to move. Pray also for the Stornoway congregation as they now face a time of vacancy.
