Raheel Arif is being inducted into Denny Old Parish Church linked with Haggs Parish Church and will become its first full-time spiritual leader for five and a half years.
The 47-year-old said he was very excited about taking up this “wonderful and priceless ministry” in the Falkirk Council district.
Mr Arif and his wife Humaira and their children, Rhea and Roshaan, fled to Scotland from Pakistan in September 2011 after extremists threatened their lives because of their faith.
At the time, he was the vice-principal of a secondary school in Peshawar, partly run by the state, and the only Christian out of a staff of 52.
Mr Arif said a plot was mounted against him and his conspirators tried to have him arrested for blasphemy.
They were unsuccessful but a complaint led to him being demoted to his previous role as a biology teacher and his enemies then turned their attention to his family.
Mr Arif took his wife and children to Grangemouth to visit his cousin Rev Aftab Gohar, minister of Abbotsgrange Parish Church, in the summer of 2011 to lie low until things got back to normal.
But when they returned to Peshawar two months later it quickly became clear that his enemies would never leave them in peace so they decided to return to Scotland and seek asylum.
Mr Arif, who grew up in a Christian family and was very active in his local church in Pakistan and involved in…
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