By Gordon Lambie
Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Lennoxville got a new minister this year, although Nigel Parker’s path to the local pulpit ended up being a little bit longer than anyone involved expected. The Pastor landed in Canada from his former home in Scotland on June 23 of this year, but reflecting on the process, he said that the path to Lennoxville could be traced back as far as 1982.
“I was fresh out of university and teaching chemistry at a community college in Jamaica,” Parker shared, recalling a group of students who came to the school on an exchange from Champlain College. “They were the first Canadians I ever met and I was really impressed,” he said, explaining that he ended up spending a fair amount of time with the students, also being from out of the country.
“All of this left me with a warm spot for Quebec, and the feeling that I should come and visit some day,” the minister said, explaining that the day ended up coming in the fall of 2019, when he reconnected with some of those old friends and learned of a vacancy at Saint Andrew’s.
“I was looking for a change,” Parker said, explaining that he had been the pastor to a church in Aberdeen, Scotland, for 26 years. “I knew my time was coming to an end.”
Following a positive visit, Parker began the process of transferring from the Church of Scotland, to the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
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