The new Priest-in-charge of the Parishes of Fahan Upper and Fahan Lower, Rev Mel Niblock, came face-to-face with her new parishioners for the first time – formally – at her Service of Introduction in Christ Church, Buncrana on Friday 11th September. The service, which was led by the Rural Dean for Raphoe and Inishowen, Very Rev Liz Fitzgerald (Dean of Raphoe), was attended by leading clergy from other denominations.
There was a strong family feel to the evening, with Rev Mel’s husband, Mark, delivering the first reading, and son, Finn, helping to lead musical worship on the organ. Her other son, Josh, and her mother, Carol, were in the congregation to follow proceedings. Musical accompaniment was also provided by Jack Wilson, the organist at St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast.
The sermon was preached by the Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, Rt Rev Andrew Forster, who disclosed that Rev Mel had also accepted a new and additional responsibility as Chaplain to Ulster University at Magee.
In his sermon, Bishop Andrew focused on Psalm 84, which the congregation had read together earlier in the service. He said it was essentially about a group of people who felt homesick. ‘This was being written by a group of people who had been carried off into exile – carried off into slavery and captivity – in Babylon, and they were just longing to be home again, at the Temple, the place that they loved. They wanted to be back home, and nowhere else – nowhere else – would do.’
There was nowhere else, the Bishop said, that the people in the congregation – Rev Mel’s family, friends, colleagues and new parishioners – would rather have been on Friday evening than in Christ Church, Buncrana.
‘I actually think this “homesick psalm” speaks to us about a spiritual homesickness that many people feel. Their life might look fine, they might be standing by the beach with the sun shining and it all looks good, but within them there’s something missing. They want something more. There’s a sickness for “home”, a sickness for that spiritual home, that closeness with God that the psalm is all about – a spiritual homesickness that realises that deceitful materialism doesn’t satisfy you; that vacuous secularism won’t satisfy you; that lukewarm religiosity won’t satisfy you. It is the presence of God, the closeness of God [that will satisfy you]. You know, those who know the closeness of God – that relationship with God – would say that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else than with him.
‘I want to put it to you, tonight, that in Fahan Upper and Lower, in County Donegal, in Derry and Raphoe, right across the world, there are people who feel homesick – spiritually homesick – longing for the reality of a close relationship with God. They know that things just don’t seem to add up.
‘The Rev Mel’s role – all of ours, if we’re followers of Jesus Christ – is to be the signposts, the signpost that says we can show you the one who will answer that spiritual homesickness and his name is Jesus. That is our ministry. That is why we are here. That’s why tonight is important. That’s why you matter – Fahan Upper and Fahan Lower, and whatever parishes are represented here – that’s why you matter, because God has called you to be a signpost in a needy world, to point homesick people to their true spiritual home which is closeness to Jesus Christ.’
Bishop Andrew said in his childhood he had often holidayed in Inishowen and had loved the bright lights of Buncrana. Addressing the new Priest-in-charge directly, he said she would come to love her new parishes and the people of Fahan and Buncrana.
‘A night like tonight is a night for renewed vision and for renewed hope,’ Bishop Andrew said. ‘It’s a night to be excited. It’s a night to be filled with expectancy. It’s a night to get right behind your new Priest-in-charge, to support her and pray for her, to help her “signpost” – to be signposts yourselves – and to say that we wouldn’t be anywhere else.’
After the service, the congregation enjoyed refreshments and fellowship in the church, and many of the local parishioners availed of the opportunity to welcome their new Priest-in-charge.
