A proposed £2.4 million project will see them vacating their current home and moving to a new complex incorporating a meeting room capable of accommodating 300, a sports hall and a cafe which the minister, the Rev Paul Ritchie, says “will be the presentation part of the building - the area through which people pass when they arrive”.

He explained, “The simple fact is this; our current hall is too small and while the church building itself - where we meet for worship - is okay, we know we need to change things.

“Since we cannot change the hall in isolation, we need to look at things as a whole. So the hall will be coming down.”

Land surrounding the current complex will be sold for housing, with the money raised as a result financing a sizeable proportion of the project’s costs.

However, with the market in decline at the moment, Richhill’s Methodists are in no rush to sell.

Mr Ritchie said, “It may be 18 months before our application makes its way through the various stages of the planning process and it cannot go out to tender until all of that is done. It will take a further 18 months to build, so clearly none of this is going to happen overnight. You’re probably talking about three year from now.”

SPECULATE

He refused to speculate as to what will happen to the current church building.

“That remains to be seen,” he said. “A new group - Methhill - has been set up to handle these matters and while it is independent of the church, it exists to raise money for it. These are the people entrusted with ownership of the church building so decisions as to how best to proceed are their responsibility.

“What I can say is that there are no plans to knock down the church building or sell it at this stage. It may be sold; we’ll see. That’s what happened in the case of Richill Presbyterian Church so it’s an option. But no decisions have been taken as yet, nor will they be taken in the near future.

“At the moment the property market is in a very depressed state so this wouldn’t be an ideal time to sell, even if that’s what Methhill decided that’s what it wanted to do.

“And everything has to progress hand-in-hand, of course. It all has to be choreographed. Obviously, while the work on the new project is going on, we will have to come up with alternative arrangements. So there will have to be some creative thinking with regard to our youth organisations, for example. Those are things we will need to address.”

The meeting room will consist of a ‘flat’ floor catering for 180. This part of the complex will be built first and will be operational while work on the second phase - creation of an area of terraced seating accommodating 120 - is carried out.

GROWTH

“This will allow us room for the anticipated growth of the congregation,” Mr Ritchie said.