Being the second Tuesday in February this evening all the presbyteries in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland met and cast their votes for one of two candidates for the Moderator of their 2013 General Assembly.

Nineteen of the twenty one presbyteries selected the Rev. Rob Craig as their next GA Moderator.

Rev. Craig is pastor of Kilfennan Presbyterian Church, on the east side of Londonderry, in the Presbytery of Derry and Donegal. He is a graduate of Queens University, Belfast, and after completing his BA he served for three years in northern India with Operation Mobilisation. He did his ministerial training at Union Theological College, Belfast, and was ordained in 1983. Last year he completed his D.Min. at Union.

He began his pastoral service as an assistant at Glengormley and then as pastor of the congregations at Clough and Seaforde. He has been at Kilfennan for almost 28 years.

This year’s GA will not be held in its usual quarters at Church House in Belfast as it most commonly is but instead will be held in Londonderry making Rev. Craig a bit of a home-town favorite.

I have not yet identified any social media points of contact for Rev. Craig but I will place that in the GA preview post if I do find any. UPDATE: Thanks to @AlanInBelfast we know that Rob Craig does tweet, occasionally, at @RobCraig54. He also has a good story on the new Moderator Designate.

We congratulate Rev. Craig and his wife Karen and their whole family on this honor. We wish them well and assure them of our prayers for the Assembly as well as his moderatorial year.

For more information there is the PCI press release as well as stories by the Belfast Telegraph and the BBC NI. More news should be available tomorrow after the Moderator designee holds the traditional press conference.