A former president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, the Rev Vincent Parkin, has died at Ballynahinch, Co Down, where he was living in retirement. Mr Parkin was a Englishman born at Washington, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
He originally planned a career in biology, and took his first degree in that discipline. While at college he felt a call to ordained ministry, and studied for this in Cambridge. During the second World War he was a chaplain to the RAF, and at the end of the war spent some months at Belsen working among the survivors there.
On his return to England, he spent much of the rest of his ministry in theological colleges. For a while he ministered in Sri Lanka, which has had a close connection with Irish Methodism through the years.
In 1973 Mr Parkin came to Ireland as principal of Edgehill College in Belfast. He and his wife soon became very much at home in this country, and won friendship and respect within and outside the church.
His expertise and clarity of thought were of immense service in the ethical debates of the following years. His remarkably retentive mind made him one of the few ministers to preach without written notes in front of him.
He was president of the church for the year 1979/80, and two years later retired. The Annual Catherwood Lecture organised by ECONI will take place in the Chapel of Union Theological College, Belfast, next Tuesday at 8 p.m. This year the subject is "Christian Social Reform - What is the Agenda?" The lecturer is Dr Michael Schluter, who has worked as a economist in Europe, and in several parts of Africa. The 1999 Methodist Peace Award had been give to the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayor, an organisation of women in Argentina dedicated to tracing children who have "disappeared". The presentation was made in Buenos Aires.
The Methodist Recorder has reported the president of the organisation, Senora Estela Bar nes de Carlotto, who accepted the award, saying: "We receive it with gratitude but at the same time as undeserved, because is it an act worthy of merit that one day our son or daughter didn't appear and we will search for him or her as long as we live?"
Of the hundreds of children who have disappeared, the organisation has been able to restore 33 to their families, to put another 25 in touch with their grandparents, and to confirm that another eight have been murdered.
Glenburn Methodist Church will hold a festival of flowers from Friday, October 8th, until Sunday, October 10th. There will be an Evening of Praise in the church on Saturday at 8 p.m., and the president of the church, the Rev Dr Kenneth Wilson, will participate in this.
From tomorrow until Wednesday, Dr Wilson will be visiting Methodist churches in Cork city and county. On Thursday, October 7th, he will visit the European Methodist Youth Council, which will be meeting at Castlewellan, Co Down.
On Sunday, October 10th, Dr Wilson will preach in the morning at Hamilton Road Methodist church in Bangor, and that evening in the church at Glastry in the Ards peninsula.
The following Monday he will address the harvest thanksgiving service in Queen Street Methodist church in Lurgan. On Saturday, October 16th, he visits autumn soul, the youth praise event in Bangor.
RTE Radio 1 will broadcast morning worship tomorrow from the Methodist church in Athlone. The service will be led by the Rev Ivor N. Owens and members and friends of the Methodist churches of Athlone, Birr and Tullamore.