Neil LIVINGSTON

LIVINGSTON, NEIL (b. Rutherglen, Renfrewshire, Scotland, 13 May 1845; d. Cheltenham, NSW, 23 May 1930). Builder and youth leader.

Neil Livingston was the son of Archibald and Flora Livingston and was brought up in the Rutherglen Free Church of Scotland. Livingston dedicated his life to Christ during the 1859-60 revival. He became a joiner and later a builder. He was active in youth fellowship activities, Sunday school and outdoor evangelism. He moved to Liverpool in 1866 and Manchester in 1868, where he was also active in fellowship work. From 1872 to 1878, he was in New York and San Jose, California, working as well as spreading the fellowship idea and evangelising.

Livingston came to Sydney and in 1879 established the Glebe Presbyterian Church's Young Men's Sabbath Morning Fellowship Association. In 1882, he was instrumental in the bringing together of five Fellowship Associations in a Union, later the Presbyterian Fellowship Union of NSW, and in the 1930s, the Presbyterian Fellowship of Australia, one of the earliest and most dynamic youth movements in the nation, based on the premise that youth is best evangelised by youth. Livingston maintained his involvement into old age. He was also an elder, and was prayerful, busy and self-sacrificial in all his Christian activities a man of strong conviction and evangelical fervour.

Neil Livingston married twice, having eight children with his first wife Agnes Gardiner and none with the second, Kate McPhail. Sadly, he was 'a lamb abroad and a lion at home'. He was an honest businessman and his buildings included several substantial churches.

N Livingston, A Retrospect of the Presbyterian Fellowship Movement in Australia (Sydney, c1892); The Witness 18 July 1930; M D Prentis, Fellowship: A History of the Presbyterian Fellowship Movement in New South Wales, 1874-1977 (Sydney, 1977); Family information, Ian and Marcus Edwards

MALCOLM D PRENTIS