New canons installed in Dromore Cathedral
Warmest congratulations to the new canons installed in Dromore Cathedral last night, 6 June – Revd Canon Myrtle Morrison, rector of St John’s Newcastle, and Revd Canon Scott McDonald, rector of St Patrick’s and St. Mary’s, Newry.
Family friends and supporters came from the two parishes as well as Downpatrick, the Shankill area of Belfast, and Cork.
Dean Geoff Wilson installed the canons, presenting them with their scarves and leading them to their cathedral stalls. Scott becomes Prebendary of Dromara and Myrtle becomes Treasurer.
Archdeacon Mark Harvey preached from 2 Timothy 2:1–15, which depicts the Christ follower as a soldier, an athlete and a farmer. In this passage the Christian life is one characterised by death to self and endurance.
Mark noted that Myrtle and Scott are both commissioned Church Army evangelists whose ministries had followed not dissimilar paths. Both worked in the Shankill Road area (St Matthews and Glencairn), both have ministered in housing estates (Craigavon and Glencairn) and both are now in the Newry and Mourne area.
He continued: “Similar in other, more significant ways – both Myrtle and Scott have been prepared to follow God’s call to the hard places, and to the unglamorous places, sometimes at personal and family cost. They have shown faithfulness in those places.
“Our reading from Timothy chapter 2 speaks into this kind of faithfulness in ministry, which applies to some of us here tonight, but it also calls all of us to faithfulness in discipleship.”
In concluding his address Archdeacon Mark said: “This evening we thank God for the faithfulness, the hard work and the fruitfulness that we see in Myrtle and Scott, in their lives and in their ministries, and we rejoice that this is being recognised by the wider church.”