An emotional homecoming as former Friends student returns to Killlyleagh Presbyterian after 60 years

The Rev Bill Campbell, who is originally from Crumlin and a former student of Friends School Lisburn, joined members of Killyleagh Presbyterian Church for morning worship, 60 years after he visited Killyleagh for the first time to preach in the pulpit of the town's 1st Presbyterian Church in Plantation Street.

In April 1963 he was a fresh-faced minister, newly qualified from Union Theological College, at Queen’s University, in Belfast when he first arrived in Killyleagh.

He succeeded the Rev David Lapsley as minister at Plantation Street, and he recalls serving alongside the Rev J C Boggs, who was the minister of the neighbouring 2nd Killyleagh Presbyterian.

Rev Bill Campbell and his wife Professor Dr Kathy Campbell joined the congregation in the pews at the Catherine Street meeting house, he was welcomed by the church's Clerk of Kirk Session, Mr Graham Furey.

He enjoyed a fruitful ministry in Killyleagh that lasted four years from 1963 to 1967 before he decided to return to academia and he spent three years working towards earning his PhD at New College, University of Edinburgh.

In due course, he took up his first lectureship at – what was to become – the University of Sunderland in the north east of England, where Bill progressed from being a lecturer in New Testament to senior lecturer in Humanities.

After five years in the north east of England, the family moved to Birmingham where Bill was appointed Head of Religious and Theological Studies at Westhill College.