Rev John Hay

Minister Born: January 2, 1933; Died: February 29, 2016

REV John Hay, who has died aged 83, was a loved and respected minister whose life and work was guided by his gentleness, kindness, courage and honesty. He was born in Annan where his father was minister of Erskine Church. While John was an infant his family moved to Airdrie, then some years later to Falkirk where he completed his secondary school education.

He obtained a first-class honours degree in classics at Edinburgh University before gaining first-class honours in divinity at New College, Edinburgh, where he won the medal for New Testament studies. As a student, he chose to travel from Falkirk to Edinburgh daily, so that he might support his parents in their care of his frail younger brother Patrick who died in his teens.

Licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Linlithgow and Falkirk in 1957, he served from 1957-58 as an assistant at St Giles Cathedral. A fellow assistant still recalls his gentle but insistent remonstration with the minister of St Giles over a point of principle and how he had changed the great man’s mind.

Like his parents, William and Grace, along with his late brother, John was an extremely gifted musician. His services as organist were much in demand at the weddings of fellow divinity graduates and throughout life he enjoyed relaxing at either the piano or the organ. A self-contained man, he was never known to over-react to any of the frustrations that ministry can bring. The only clue detected by his family that meetings of Board or Kirk Session had been difficult would be his immediate recourse to the piano on his return to the manse. The longer and more stridently he played, the more difficult the earlier meeting had been. His record was a two-hour “recital”.

Ordained and inducted to St John’s Church, Ardrossan, in 1959, he met Catherine Mackenzie, his wife-to-be, in Kilmarnock Infirmary while she was a patient there, home on medical leave from missionary nurse duties in Malawi. He and Catherine married in 1970.

There followed succeeding ministries in Leslie: Trinity and in Buchanan linked with Drymen from which latter charge he retired in 1995. This early retirement was prompted by a heart attack and subsequent heart surgery.

He had nursed the quiet ambition to serve his final years of ministry in the Holy Land, where he and his wife Catherine had led eight tours, but this was not to be. As a family, the Hays remained ever grateful to the parishioners of Buchanan with Drymen for the many kindnesses shown them at the time of the house fire which gutted the manse, robbing them of their pet dog and most of their belongings which included John’s treasured piano. The piano was the first item to be replaced.

By the time he retired, he had served the wider Church as Moderator of the Presbyteries of Kirkcaldy and Stirling, respectively. He moderated the final meeting of the Synod of Forth at the time of the abolition of synods within the Church of Scotland.

He and Catherine retired to Stewarton where his ministry as locum tenens in one of the vacancies is still spoken of with affection and esteem. He was hugely supportive of Catherine during her presidency of St Colm’s Fellowship.

This devoutly Christian man’s instinctive courtesy and graciousness never left him. He has left his mark on many, not least on those who survive him: his wife Catherine, their sons William and AlexJohn and all four grandchildren.