A veteran Inverness minister has been appointed Inverness Presbytery’s moderator designate for 2014-15.
This is his second spell in the moderator’s chair for the Rev Alastair Younger after an interval of over 30 years.
He is the only living member of the presbytery, apart from the Rev Fergus Robertson, to whom the honour has been accorded twice.
A recognised authority on church law and procedures, Mr Younger has agreed to take up the appointment following the resignation of the Rev Jan Mathieson, Cawdor and Croy, who had earlier been chosen for the post, but who has stepped down for personal reasons.
Mr Younger, who retired in 2008 as the last minister of the former St Columba High Church, Inverness, after 32 years’ tenure, and stepped down as Inverness Presbytery clerk in 2012 after 14 years’ service, has been busy for more than two years as interim moderator for the vacant charge of Nairn Old Church
He was born in Glasgow, and educated at Whitehill School, the Scottish College of Commerce and Trinity College, Glasgow University.
As a fledgling minister, he served as assistant to the Rev Dr Peter Brodie in Alloa, before moving to the charge of Cardenden, a deprived mining village in Fife in 1970, where, he said: “People called a spade a spade.”
He was inducted to St Columba High in 1976, and also served as chaplain to Inverness Prison from 1978-96.
Mr Younger and his wife Pat, whom he first met as a child in Sunday School, are in retirement members of Old High St Stephen’s, though he has long been absent while carrying out his Nairn duties.
Mrs Younger, a former teacher, is a staunch member of the Old High Church Choir.
Meanwhile, retired minister the Rev Trevor Hunt, who formerly held the three linked charges of Evie, Firth and Rendall, in Orkney, has agreed to accept temporarily the appointment of clerk to Inverness Presbytery, following the resignation of the Rev Reg Campbell, Daviot.