New Church for 1st Ahoghill unveiled

WORK is underway on a new building to house the congregation of First Ahoghill Presbyterian Church.

Being erected at a cost of £2.4 million, the meeting house will be spotted by passers-by as they enter the village coming from Ballymena and is expected to be ready by September 2013. Explaining why the members of his flock decided to rebuild their facilities, First Ahoghill’s Minister, Rev. Eddie Kirk, said: “We always had a problem with parking and disability access. When we looked at the facilities we had we realised that it would have been necessary to spend a huge amount of money on them and it is more cost effective to move to a Greenfield site.” “The Galgorm Road is also very busy but when you look at where we are at now, on the junction of the Straid Road and the Galgorm Road at the Diamond, you can’t see towards Portglenone at all. There is a bad bend in the road so it is quite dangerous”, added Rev. Kirk.

Not only will the new facilities be safer and easier to use, they also promise to be ‘second to none’. Rev. Kirk said: “We will have a new sanctuary area and multi-purpose hall. There will also be a really big foyer for people to come into with a coffee bar. In addition to a new youth wing with a lounge upstairs, we will also have rooms for the committee, Sunday School and an office.” “There will also be shower facilities for any groups who come and stay as well as excellent kitchen facilities”. In common with his congregation, Rev. Kirk is experiencing a range of emotions as he contemplates the move. He comments: “A lot of us are very excited about it and all of us are more than a little overawed by it. It’s a huge step of faith - a bigger one than we have ever undertaken in our lives so ‘excitement and fear’ probably would sum it up. It’s been extremely difficult for some and understandably so because the building holds so many memories.” The most significant historical event to take place there centres on the 1859 revival. On March 14 of that year, 3,000 people tried to get into the building. So many people were in the gallery that it moved. The foundations actually collapsed on side and they had to evacuate the building. Remarkably, the gallery is still off the plumb to this day. In more recent times, people can look back on memories of particular weddings, baptisms and funerals that were significant for them. For all of these reasons, the decision to relocate was not an easy one for the people of First Ahoghill. Rev. Kirk said: “It would have been easier to do nothing but it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do. I think the very fact that we are building it is saying something to the community - that we believe our God will provide what we need. We believe in investing in the work of the Kingdom and that is how we see it. We are investing not just in a building but also in people’s lives so what we are doing is definitely worth it”.

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