One Highland kirk has bucked the trend of dwindling congregations selling church buildings to become pubs, buying the local health centre instead to cope with increasing numbers.
Tain and Fearn Free Church recently purchased the old NHS building in Tain for over £100,000, after deciding against bidding for a bus depot and a care home. Now its members intend to construct a new multi-purpose church facility over the coming years.
Minister Rev Alasdair MacAulay said "We don’t know yet how much we will demolish and how much we might retain of what is already there. Some of the building is only 20 years old."
The former BBC Radio nan Gàidheal journalist explained that in the past few years numbers at Sunday services in Tain had almost doubled, meaning that latecomers and occasionally visitors were having to sit in the very front pews because of the church’s limited 120-capacity.
The Fearn end of the congregation completed a £50,000 extension earlier this year, because they had run out of room for children’s activities.
Mr MacAulay said: “Tain and Fearn currently covers an area that used to have five congregations. We have folk coming from all these areas to our services.
“The Fearn congregation was united with Tain about five years ago, when it was vacant and unable to support a full-time ministry of its own with Sunday attendances in the low 20s. Fearn now has over 50 attending each Sunday morning with a large number of kids. To cater for these a new extension to the hall there has just been completed. Most of the work was done voluntarily by tradesmen in the congregation which kept the cost to a minimum.”
He said Tain had also grown from attendances of around 60 on a Sunday morning to around 90 now on a regular basis and sometimes reaching over 100.
“Our building could hold 120 if all the seats were filled. But even at current capacity it is difficult for families to find a place where they can all sit together. It can be difficult for new folk as they may need to come to the front for a seat.”
He said the congregation had considered various options including demolishing and rebuilding on their current site, purchasing a neighbouring bus depot and even a former care home.
In the end, they bought the old Tain Health Centre. The site covers an area of 0.66 acres including ample parking space. It is also only 100 metres away from the present church enabling the congregation to remain in the same part of town.
Mr MacAulay added: “We believe this is an ideal site for a church. It is a very prominent corner site close to the centre of Tain. "
In addition Highland Council had agreed to replace all of Tain’s schools and nurseries with a single 3-18 campus about 500 yards further up the street, where the current Tain Royal Academy is located.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel