Celebrate Fifty Years of Worship at Ballee Presbyterian Church, Ballymena // Friday 3-Sunday 5 April 2026

Members of Ballee Presbyterian Church will celebrate 50 years of work and witness there during a special weekend of services, which will run from Friday 3rd-Sunday 5th April 2026.

Rev Eddie Kirk, who covered the vacancy at Ballee during 2024, will preach at Friday’s gathering, which will begin at 7.30pm. Worshippers at Ballee are very grateful to Rev Kirk for his support and the help given by others during the time of vacancy.

Former Presbyterian Moderator, Rev Dr Ian McNie, is looking forward to leading Sunday morning worship at 11.30am on 5th April.

Rev Joseph Andrews, who ministered to the Old Antrim Road fellowship from 1987 until 2022 will make a welcome return to the pulpit there for the evening service that day at 6.30pm.
Refreshments will be served before each service.

Originally, the Ballee Presbyterian Church Extension Congregation opened on Saturday 3rd April 1976 by the then Moderator of the General Assembly, Rev Dr Trevor Lundie.
Rev Brian Savage was instrumental in the early development of Ballee while Rev. John McCullough occupied the pulpit from 1977-1986 before Rev. Andrews’ arrival in January 1987.

Before his retirement, Joseph reflected on some of the highlights of his ministry on The Church Page:
“In December 1987 I was only there about ten or eleven months when we dedicated a new organ and a new pulpit. Two years later I was privileged to be asked to lay the foundation stone for our new Church Hall which we opened in 1990. Now, while all this was going on we decided that we should think about pews that were going to be placed in our existing building which was going to be used for worship. One evening, back in March 1989 I happened to mention this casually to my wife, Susan, during a conversation. She informed me that she had seen pews being offered for sale in the previous week’s Belfast Telegraph. Well, to cut a long story short, our Clerk of Session contacted the vendors and four of us went up to the synagogue in Belfast to see the pews. They were exactly what we needed. Unfortunately, they had just been sold that afternoon to a dealer. Four very dejected men returned to Ballymena, but our hopes were revived when we were informed that the deal had fallen through. The only snag was that we had to remove the pews at short notice.
Subsequently, a team of our men went to Belfast very early in the morning but by late afternoon only half the pews had been removed. We realized that we were going to need twice as many men to come to Belfast if we were to get the rest of the pews removed by the deadline which was midnight that night. We reckoned that we might get them out by midnight but that it would be the very early hours of the next morning before we got them to Ballymena.
We came to the realization just before teatime and I began to ring around men in our congregation and every single person that I spoke to agreed to help. Just after teatime a convoy of cars left Ballymena and we had so much help that we got the last of the pews loaded onto the lorry well in advance of the deadline. When we arrived at the storage facility in Ballymena another team of men were there waiting to help with the unloading. Subsequently, ladies arrived with tea and sandwiches and that night I put the car into the garage at 11pm exactly.”

Numerous outreach events, missions and prayer initiatives have happened during Joseph’s years in Ballee. He is quick to pay tribute to members of Christ’s family there, who have risen to the occasion to extend the Kingdom.

Giving thanks to God for the last 50 years of Ministry in Ballee, a spokesperson told us:
“We are looking forward to our Anniversary weekend. For 50 years the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been proclaimed in Ballee and many people have come to faith in Jesus as Saviour. We are extremely grateful to all those people who, over the past fifty years, have been a part of Ballee congregation at the different stages in its history. As we offer to Almighty God our thanks and praise for his blessing on our congregation over that time, we look forward with excited anticipation to what plans he has for us in the future. As Ballee Presbyterian Church celebrate fifty years, it will not be a case of looking back to the past, but rather ‘Fifty Years – looking forward’.”

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