Former Dundee minister the Rev Dr James Murdoch Rogers has died.
Mr Rogers was successively minister of Second Presbyterian Church, Saintfield, Belfast, the former Ryehill Church in Dundee, Roseangle Ryehill Church (now Dundee West) and of Gibraltar and Costa Del Sol.
He was born in 1928 in Limavady and brought up in Belfast. At Queen’s University, Belfast, he studied history and then philosophy, graduating with honours in the latter. He also rowed for the university.
Called to the ministry while at school, he attended the Assembly’s College, Belfast, where he won numerous prizes, graduating with a BD from Queen’s.
He served as a student assistant in Great Victoria Street Church, Belfast, where he first met his wife, Doris, and as assistant minister in Bloomfield Presbyterian Church.
He became minister of Saintfield in 1955 and he and Doris married in 1956.
A long-time Boys’ Brigade lad who had become staff sergeant in his Coleraine Company, and then a lieutenant, he founded the Second Saintfield company and Doris the Girls’s Brigade company.
He then served at Ryehill Church for 15 years and then the united charge of Roseangle Ryehill for 13 before being asked to help resolve the future of the church’s charge of Gibraltar.
Retiring in 1996, he continued to serve the Board of World Mission in a voluntary capacity, writing and researching. He also served as a locum minister in Lisbon and Trinidad, and in St Luke’s and Queen Street, Broughty Ferry, and Auchterhouse, Murroes and Tealing.
Within a few years of moving to Dundee he was deeply involved in leading Christian Aid in the presbytery and became convener of the Christian Aid sub-committee of the overseas council of the church, then convener of its home organisation committee.
During his Ryehill years he served as chaplain to Ninewells Hospital and in Roseangle Ryehill was a chaplain to Dundee University.
Throughout his ministry in Dundee he was closely associated with the Royal Dundee Institution for the Blind as a member of the board of directors of its workshop.
Mr Rogers served as president of Claverhouse Rotary Club in the centenary year and was made a Paul Harris Fellow in 2007.
He is survived by his wife Doris and sons Stephen and Philip and four grandchildren.