Ballyalbany Leadership

Rev. Jeff Gawn

Meet Our Minister

Rev. Jeff Gawn has been our minister since December 2024. He is married to Vicky and they have a son George. Originally from just outside Antrim, Jeff headed West to work for Scripture Union as a School’s Worker in Fermanagh (where he met Vicky) before feeling called by God to train for pastoral ministry within the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. He trained in Union Theological College, Belfast and served as the assistant minister in Richhill Presbyterian before heading south.

His great passion is to open up God’s Word and share the Good News of the
Gospel with men, women, boys and girls – so that they too might come to know
Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, become active members of the local church and
grow more and more in their love for God and love of their neighbour.

We are a Presbyterian Church which means that we are governed in a particular way.

There are three courts or leadership bodies within the church: Kirk Session, Presbytery, and General Assembly.

Each higher court supersedes the lower one, much like in a civil setting. The Presbytery sits under the authority of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland’s General Assembly.

Our congregation is led by a group of elders (the Kirk Session) who are elected by the local congregation and ordained and installed by our local Presbytery (made up of ministers and elders from each of the other congregations within our local area).

We say local, but in our case the Monaghan Presbytery runs from Dundalk right across to Ballina, so geographically we are a pretty big Presbytery.

Within the Presbyterian Church, we recognise a distinction between ruling elders and teaching elders (the minister).

Each congregation usually has one minister and then a number of ruling elders.