Dr Roderick MacDonald, born on 20th August, 1899, in the parish of Applecross, Ross-shire, Scotland, passed to his everlasting rest on 22nd February 1974 in Vancouver, Canada.
Educated at Dingwall Academy and Edinburgh University, he graduated Doctor of Medicine in 1926.
After deciding on serving the Church as Medical Missionary in the Church’s Foreign Mission and on completion of his theological studies, he was ordained by the Southern Presbytery of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1928. That same year, he left for Rhodesia where he laboured for twenty years.
In 1949, he, as Deputy, visited the Church’s congregations in Canada and returned to Scotland in 1950 when he decided to accept a call from the Vancouver congregation. In January 1951, he was inducted to this pastoral charge. This induction was an historical one as Dr MacDonald was the first minister of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland to have a congregation in Western Canada.
During his long ministry of forty three years, in both the Foreign and Overseas Missions, he rendered faithful and fruitful service. Throughout Dr MacDonald’s time in Rhodesia, conditions on the Mission were comparatively primitive but he, like his contemporaries, quietly and competently carried out his duties. As the Church’s only resident minister in Canada, travelling long distances was an essential part of his work. This also he did cheerfully.
In his profession as doctor and minister, he was all things to all men; his piety self-evident and his Christian witness clear. As pastor, Dr MacDonald was highly esteemed, his ministry deeply appreciated and his message warmly received. By an intimate friend he was appropriately described thus, “a wise and able minister of the gospel.”
Adored by his own and a man of rare qualities, in all his relationships, he projected a favourable image, cultured, talented, sympathetic and generous, though always uncompromising in defence of the faith once delivered to the saints. He died as he lived, in peace, leaving a cherished memory worthy of a man of God.
The Presbytery in recording the loss caused by the death of this long-standing and loyal member express the Court’s deepest sympathy with his widow, family and congregation. May the God of all comfort comfort them with the words, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant . . . enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” Matt.25:21.