Clergy & Leadership

Rector

The Rev Canon Kevin O’Brien joined us as our new Rector in July 2023. He runs the YouTube channel Evolving Anglicans and the podcast Think,Question,Believe. He is currently training as a Logotherapist (Viktor Frankl school of psychotherapy) and has training in the leading of meditation and hypnotherapy. He is a Diocesan advisor for safeguarding, Co-ordinator of the Church of Ireland European Working Group and a member of Diocesan Council and General Synod. His MA thesis was on the Five Factor personality trait model and its interaction with the psychology of support for, or opposition to, same-sex marriage.

Select Vestries

The Adare and Kilmallock Group of Parishes has two Select Vestries (governing boards). One serves the Adare, Croom, and Kilpeacon union of churches; the other serves Kilmallock. Each Select Vestry is made up of lay members elected by their respective congregations. In the polity of the church, the Rector is responsible for the spiritual affairs of the parish, and the Select Vestry looks after the temporal affairs (financial and property). In practice, it works best if Rector and Vestry work together on the entire ministry of the church. 

Lay Readers

Laypeople especially chosen and trained for the responsibility help in leading worship in the parishes, especially because the Rector cannot be in all four congregations each week. The Adare and Kilmallock Group currently has four Lay Readers. One is a Diocesan Reader: someone who has received training and has been commissioned to be able to serve at any congregation in the Diocese. In our parishes, this person is Stanley Wallace. The other three are Parish Readers: people who can serve any of the congregations in the Group but not elsewhere in the Diocese. These are Dorothy Brislane (normally serving in Kilpeacon), Ann Kenny-Ryan (serving in Kilmallock), and Kevin deBurca Murphy. Kevin is in the Adare parish, but also assists in the other parishes in the Group. In the photo above, Kevin, on the right, is shown with the late John Scanlan, a former reader, on the day of their commissioning as Parish Readers in 2017.