ARCHITECTURALLY, Ballyarnett Presbyterian Church is a very typical 'meeting house' in the 'barn' style, which derived from a plain way of ministering over the centuries.
A church of the Reformation, which provides unity with what went before with the Scriptures, the Presbyterian Church proper was a break away from what was perceived as an excessive form of worship. To that end, the pulpit is in the centre, and the wh
ole focus of the building is one of the people sitting around the Word of God and the Communion Table.
In all, Ballyarnett has around 150 families attending services, and the Minister, Rev Alistair Rosborough is keen to stress that associations with the church are built on a strong sense of community.
“Since the late 1960s most of those 140 to 150 families are the Waterside of the river, but remain very loyal to the church despite the fact that they have migrated. I would hope that church and community go together because we have always tried to emphasise in the Presbyterian Church that church is never the building, it is the People of God, and without the People of God there, the building is just a shell.
“We are not there to run an Ecclesiastical museum for people to walk through, we are trying to be a living community of God, albeit the families that were historically connected to Ballyarnett, not exclusively, have moved away, but they still have that affinity with that community. That gives a sense of connectedness and there are many deep family connections as well. I have been there for 10 years and I am still discovering that people are connected to other people and to other rural congregations,” Rev Rosborough says.
Ballyarnett has been linked with Knowhead Presbyterian Church near Muff for three decades, but the two church communities would have interacted long before that, which includes joint services and festival services.
“More recently we have occasional combined services with our friends in the Church of Ireland which adds a sense of fellowship and goes back to the days when all the congregations go back to farming and harvest. Thanksgiving was a time for people to get together and give thanks. Much less so now, as very few families in Ballyarnett now have a connection with the countryside, but the pattern is there.”
The congregation of Ballyarnett dates from 1848, but, while the district around it became more urban, the folk memory remained, and this was particularly the case before Foyle Bridge was built.
“I would find from time to time people would say ‘We are country folk’. Now, for a visitor they might raise their eyebrows because they see all the houses, but the people were there before all the housing.”
Rev Rosborough was brought up in the congregation at Banagher, between Claudy and Feeney, and received his call to the Ministry when he was studying in Scotland. He trained in Belfast at the Theological College and served his assistance in Bangor, Co Down, before being eligible for a Call.
“So I have come back almost to where I came from, but in a round about fashion.
