New Presbyterian moderator Rev Richard Murray: I left my job at Guinness as it wasn't compatible with my faith

However, the domestic dilemma was soon eclipsed by the heart-warming news that he had been selected as the new Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI).

Receiving that momentous phone call, Rev Murray recounts that he initially “felt numb”.

​"I just thought, is this really happening. I felt overwhelmed, honoured and privileged. It is very special and there’s a huge sense of responsibility with it as well. It’s not about me, it’s about the Lord and I will try and keep that as the focus throughout the year.”

Rev Murray was one of five nominees for the church’s Moderator role - its principal public representative. He received the most votes from its 19 presbyteries and will be the denomination’s 179th Moderator since 1840, serving one year.

So, why does he think he was elected to the auspicious role? "That's a good question. I don't really know. What I am hoping to do in my year is to be faithful to the message of the Bible, to scripture and to be committed to God's word. I suppose I would be known for that."

Rev Murray will be formally elected as Moderator by the Church’s General Assembly in June, succeeding the current Moderator, Rt Rev Dr Sam Mawhinney. Until then he will be known as the Moderator-Designate and continue to serve his 850-strong congregation in rural Drumreagh.

“Drumreagh is a very busy congregation – you can't be lazy in a congregation like that, you have to be a worker, you have to be doing the visits, preaching the sermons, burying people, marrying people – it is a very busy life. I do try to work hard and I do try to give myself to what I believe God has called me to.

“We have great people (in Drumreagh) who are very supportive of me so I'm really going to miss them, but I'm looking forward to just being out around the congregations and the General Assembly and maybe visiting some missionary somewhere in the world.

“I’m looking forward to hopefully encouraging people. I think we live in days of confusion about the Christian message and I want to focus on the person and the work of Jesus Christ.”

Richard Murray grew up in Belfast. His late father was a maintenance fitter at the Ford Motor Factory in Dunmurry and his late mother had her ‘dream job’ working as a salesperson for Belmont photo film. He has one sister, Jennifer, a special needs teacher. As a boy, he attended Suffolk Primary School in west Belfast and Suffolk Presbyterian Church. Due to the Troubles, the family moved to Finaghy on the outskirts of the city, becoming members of Lowe Memorial Presbyterian Church, which he considers his ‘home church’.

Rev Murray said he was 11 when he first made his commitment to Christ.

“I was at a Christian Endeavour summer camp in Tollymore Forest and it was very, very real. I came home and told my parents. But that was the year I transferred from primary school to secondary school (Wallace High School in Lisburn) – and when you go to secondary school it’s a totally different ball game.”

It was during this time he entered, what he describes, as his ‘prodigal years’.

“For a while I would have kept up a level of church attendance and I was in the Boys’ Brigade, but gradually there was a kind of fading away of any sense of God in my life. And I very much became one of the party people in school. The Coach nightclub in Banbridge was the big place to go on Saturday nights. But I was still working in school and got nine ‘O’ Levels and three ‘A’ levels. I wasn’t just throwing my life away.

“That carried on until after I left school and was into my first job. Those were very much my prodigal years – when I was very far away from God, with absolutely no thought for God at all.”

His first job was as a distribution clerk for Arthur Guinness & Co on Belfast’s Boucher Road, where he worked for three years, his office ordering the Guinness, Harp and Smithwicks beer for Northern Ireland. He admits he did take a drink and enjoyed the party scene, but a “sense of emptiness” began to grow in his life.

"I had a lot of good things, a lot of blessings, but there was just a sense in my heart of emptiness, which got bigger and bigger and I started to kind of wonder what was life about. The question really hit me very, very strongly... ‘is this all there is to life’.”

During this period of questioning, a family friend directed him to the Crescent Church in Belfast.

"The late Derick Bingham at that time had a Bible class. The first night I went in with my coat almost over my head in case anybody saw me going into a church. As he was preaching I just saw he had something I didn't have, and it was Christ. I just prayed that God would give me what he had and He did and it changed me.”

At this stage he felt his job at Arthur Guinness “wasn't compatible” with being a Christian, so he left and worked with Ulster Bank for three years.

"When I was there I felt called in the ministry. I went to Queen's for three years (he graduated in 1992 with a BA in Ancient History and Social and Economic History) and then PCI’s Union Theological College for three years.”

During his ministry, Rev Murray has had three charges Hilltown and Clonduff, Co Down, Connor Presbyterian Church near Ballymena and Drumreagh,

Having experienced his own crisis of faith as a young man, Rev Murray says he understands how it can impact families.

“Lots of people are sad because their teenage young people grew up in church, youth club, Boys’ Brigade and Girls’ Brigade, and in their teenage years they do drift. Materialism gets a hold of people's lives and they just want away from any sense of living under higher authority. In a sense when I came to Christ in a powerful way when I was 20, it was like I got a new life, it was like starting afresh. I just had an awareness that life was going to be different from now on.

“I think we live in a society where lots of people – and I was there myself, so I’m not judging people – live messed up lives, in all sorts of ways. But when you meet Christ, the person of Christ, the holiness of Christ, the love of Christ, the righteousness of Christ, it just transforms you.

“And if we're not about teaching people how to know God through Christ, then I don’t know why the Church exists. Good deeds are important as proof of our faith, but we're just not preaching ‘churchianity’, we're here to preach christianity.

Rev Murray has been married to Lynn, a GP in Coleraine, whom he met while working at a church children’s summer camp in Kilkeel, for 32 years. They have a 28-year-old son, Andrew, who is married to Erin, and a ‘crazy granddog’. By happy coincidence, Lynn’s father, the late Rev Dr David McGaughey, who was moderator 30 years ago this year.

Outside of ministry, Rev Murray enjoys reading historical biographies, particularly those of the German inter-war period, and he and Lynn are 'compulsive walkers’.

“We go to Austria most summers and walk the Alps, and of course you can’t beat the north coast for walking.”

And what would he have done had he not responded to that call to ministry? “Sometimes I think I would have liked to have sold cars,” he laughs.

“I did toy with going into the Royal Navy when I was at school or maybe being a history teacher.”