A BARRHEAD church will bring its 175th anniversary celebrations to a sparkling climax by hosting a fireworks display tonight.

It has been a spectacular year of prayer, thanksgiving and joy for the parishioners of St John’s Church.

Father Paul Brady, parish priest, wanted to thank the community of Barrhead for its support over the past 175 years and decided to end the celebrations with a bang by hosting the fireworks show.

The parish will also host 10 religious sisters and a number of priests and seminarians from the Incarnate Word Order and the Servidoras for a mission that runs from September 16-24.

Fr Brady said: “The celebrations for our 175th anniversary, which started last October, will soon finish and, to mark the occasion, we thought we would put on a fireworks display, as we did a few years ago to celebrate our 50th anniversary of the parish being in this building.

“We are inviting the whole community of Barrhead to come along on the night to join with us and hopefully have some good fun.

“We will also have hotdogs and things like that here in the church grounds for people to enjoy.

“There will be some entertainment in the hall, fairground rides in the small car park and we have a pipe band coming.

“We just hope there will be good weather on the night. When we had the 50th anniversary of the new church, we had torrential rain – but still had a good time.”

Fr Brady is also delighted the year of celebrations will end with a parish mission.

And he hopes the arrival of up to 16 religious members will bring renewed energy into his parish.

“I was wanting to have a parish mission to end the 175th anniversary year and the week that the missionaries will come will be just after we have the fireworks display,” he said.

“There is a thirst for parish missions and people are wanting to listen.

“If you get the right people to talk then the parishioners will turn up in good numbers.

“We will have 10 religious sisters who are based in Europe just now and then we will have between six and eight priests and seminarians joining us from the Incarnate Word Order.

“The chapel house will be full as we will have the priests staying with us, while the sisters will stay with some of our parishioners and they will all come up to the hall for meals.

“They will visit the schools and have an after-school club and a mission event in the evening.

“It should be impressive to see up to 18 religious members all here in Barrhead. It will certainly be different – and will hopefully bring a lot of energy to the parish.”