Diocesan News01 Sep 10

Bishop Harold Miller honours the unique contribution of Revd Cecil Kerr (Down & Dromore)

The Revd Cecil Kerr, who died last week, was buried today, 1st September, after a funeral service in Kilbroney Parish Church.

The service was conducted by Rev Niall Griffin, a friend of Cecil's since their days together at the Divinity Hostel in Dublin. Naill and his wife Gerry were also part of the Rostrevor community for four and a half years in the 1980s.

Paying tribute to his friend and colleague Niall described Cecil as, "A person who always met violence with peace, always met prejudice with truth and always met hatred with love. He was a man of courage, compassion and integrity who worked across the divide and with all the churches. He was a man for the people."

The Right Revd Harold Miller, Bishop of Down and Dromore, gave the funeral address, saying:

"Cecil Kerr was a unique person with a unique ministry at a uniquely important period in Irish history. He has left behind him a heritage which is beyond description, and indeed a heritage which lasts into eternity.

"Cecil’s life was transformed by an experience of baptism in the Holy Spirit in the early seventies while he was chaplain in Queen’s University. That was to change his entire direction in ministry. Up to then he was simply a very able, articulate ordained minister with a great future before him in the church. After that, he was visionary - risk-taking and ground-breaking, prepared to go wherever God might lead him, even at great sacrificial cost to his security, family and career. He never sought for nor was honoured with any 'titles’ in the Church of Ireland, but the honour of following his Lord was enough for him. He never became a bishop, but exercised oversight and influence way beyond any bishop and well beyond the Church of Ireland.

"It was my joy in a simple way to recently choose him as one of a small number of missional characters whose lives were celebrated in the Diocese of Down and Dromore’s Spirit of Patrick event, recognizing (though he couldn’t be there to see it) the great work which the Lord had done in him over several decades.

"Cecil will be remembered most specifically, and along with his beloved wife, Myrtle, for their leadership at the Christian Renewal centre in Rostrevor. In that house, they created a community from across all the divides, welcoming people from North, South, East and West and well beyond this island, no matter who they were or what Church they belonged to. In that place Catholic and Protestant met under the Lordship of Christ, and discovered in worship a true and deep unity in the one Lord. It was a place way beyond its time, in the days when unity was a costly but wonderful vocation. Cecil deeply believed in the oneness of the Body of Christ and in the upbuilding gifting of the Holy Spirit in all the people of God, and lived out those priorities.

"Sadly, over these past years, he was afflicted by Alzheimers. It was difficult to see him deteriorate, and hard to understand how one committed to the healing power of God had to suffer such illness. But now, he is ‘absent from the body, and present with the Lord’ - the Lord whom he loved and served, the Lord whose salvation he knew, and the Lord whom he sees face to face, with full realization of his glory and beauty."