McKechnie, Colin Campbell
1821-1896; e.m. 1838

PM minister, he was born on 13 November 1821 into a Paisley Presbyterian family which came under PM influence after the Carlisle Circuit missioned Glasgow in 1826. Called out by the Paisley Circuit in 1838, he walked in 1839 from Paisley to his first regular circuit appointment, Ripon. His circuit ministry was spent entirely in the north east. In the 1850s he promoted the formation of Ministerial Associations for intellectual and spiritual improvement and in 1854 was the first editor of the Christian Ambassador (renamed PM Quarterly Review in 1879 and the Holborn Review in 1910), continuing for 40 years. The five year rule was suspended to allow him to serve as Connexional Editor from 1876 to 1887, during which time three new hymn-books were produced and the magazine Springtime was launched (1886). An advocate of a better informed laity and of ministerial training, he combined deep scholarship with strong evangelicalism and led the way in persuading the PM ministry to come to terms with modern biblical and theological thinking. He was Vice-President in 1879 and President of the Conference in 1880. He died at Darlington on 6 September 1896.

Sources
  • F.H. Hurd, Earnest Men: Sketches of eminent Primitive Methodists, minister and laymen (1872) pp.131-41
  • G.J. Stevenson, Methodist Worthies (1884-1886), 5 pp.783-90
  • John Atkinson, Life of the Rev. Colin C. McKechnie (1898)
  • Joseph Ritson, The Romance of Primitive Methodism(1909) pp. 201-3
  • Margaret Batty, in Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, vol.59 part 1 ((2013) pp.22-5
  • David W. Bebbington, The Intellectual Attainments of Evangelical Nonconformity: a nineteenth-century case-study (Dr. Williams's Trust, 2014), pp.17-24

See also

Entry written by: DCD
Category: Person
Comment on this entry