Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
With Derek Lamont
638 Plays1 year ago
In this episode we chat with a church planter and football chaplain working in the heart of Edinburgh. Be inspired by his approach to multiplying churches by sharing life and faith with individuals in a busy and cosmopolitan city.
Derek Lamont has been a pastor for 33 years, 22 of them in the centre of Edinburgh, with the Free Church of Scotland. His current church, St Columba's, has planted four new churches in different communities of the city. He will be leaving St C's in January to re-plant a Gospel church at the foot of Leith Walk. Derek is married to Catriona with four grown-up kids - two of whom live in America, the other two are married and work for churches in Edinburgh.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Pep Talk with Andy and Christy
00:00:10
Speaker
Well hello and welcome everyone to another edition of Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast from Solas. I'm Andy Bannister and I'm joined as ever by my wonderful co-host, Christy Mayer. Christy, how are you doing this afternoon? Hey Andy, I'm doing very well, thank you very much. My afternoon is currently powered by diet coke, zero sugar, zero caffeine.
00:00:34
Speaker
I highly recommend it. See, quite frankly, that to me is just an offense against sugary snacks because they've taken everything out. The whole point of Coke is caffeine and sugar. You've removed it, but, you know, there we are.
Meet Derek Lamont: Pastor and Church Planter
00:00:45
Speaker
Well, we are joined from the other end of the country by a wonderful guest on this episode of PepTalk. We're joined by Derek Lamont. Lamont, have I got that right? Derek, your surname? Derek Lamont. Some people say Lamont, yeah.
00:00:58
Speaker
Very lamentable, yeah. Fantastic. Derek, you're coming to us from Edinburgh where you are a pastor and church planter. Tell us a bit about what your life looks like. What does life look like for you on a regular basis with the kind of stuff that you're doing there in Edinburgh?
00:01:15
Speaker
Well, I've been a pastor here in Edinburgh for 22 years. Our church is right in the city centre. Well, it's about two minutes from the castle actually. And so it's a gathered church. So my week is very varied with church work and reaching out.
00:01:35
Speaker
with the gospel and teaching and pastoring. And our church is very involved in church planting.
Revitalizing City Center Churches
00:01:43
Speaker
So that's been a bit of a passion for the last 12, 14 years in St. Columbus, which is the name of the church.
00:01:50
Speaker
That's, I mean, I can't even imagine, Derek, what it's like to plant a church at all, let alone in the centre of such a vibrant and dynamic and kind of diverse city. What has it been like for you? What have your experiences been like as you've kind of planted that church and engaged with people in the nearby community?
00:02:09
Speaker
Well, I'm cheating, really. I haven't been a church planner as such. I was a pastor in a church in the Highlands. But then in 2001, we felt God called us very strongly, actually, as well as the church, to revitalization work in the city centre. So there was about 20 people left. So it was kind of like a church plan, or more like a replant.
00:02:32
Speaker
in the city centre but I mean I was bropping in but I had a real passion for the city and to see the gospel in the city and I realised that St. Club was always going to be a city centre church so really a gathered church so
00:02:49
Speaker
You know, we have a lot of high turnover of people, a lot of students, young professionals. But I reckon that if we were going to reach the city a bit more effectively, we would need to plant churches and communities rather than
00:03:04
Speaker
be a gathered city centre church. So that vision gradually grew and developed. It was new to the church, new to the denomination at that level.
Geographical Home Groups and Church Planting
00:03:15
Speaker
And about 12 or 13 years ago, we began to plant churches through our geographical kind of home groups was the model we had. We thought the home groups are geographical and we thought, well, some of them might end up being strong enough to become
00:03:34
Speaker
church plants. And that's really what happened. So we ended up with planted four churches from St. Columbus. That's amazing. So what are some of the particular challenges given that kind of urban context?
Challenges of Urban Ministry Environments
00:03:49
Speaker
I mean, I'm very struck straight away by the answer that you gave a moment ago that you came from the Highlands, which is a whole different culture up there right into the heart of Edinburgh.
00:03:57
Speaker
But I know sometimes people have this sort of sense that the city is a hard place to do ministry. Christians in some churches have over the years retreated from the city center. I love that you literally are knowing where St. Columba's is. I mean, you couldn't almost get more downtown Edinburgh and you've gone right in there and gone, this is where the gospel belongs. What are some of the sort of challenges and opportunities that that brings, trying to do ministry right there in that context? I mean, you're right.
00:04:27
Speaker
the most iconic situation for a church.
00:04:32
Speaker
in Scotland in some ways. It's right at the top of the Royal Mile. And it's hugely busy, particularly with tourists and international people. The challenges are, from a practical point of view, it can be quite difficult because the city centre is often closed for marches and races and all kinds of things.
Relational Evangelism Strategies
00:04:58
Speaker
And it gets incredibly busy in the summer.
00:05:00
Speaker
So we've got 10,000 people will be marching up and down the Royal Mile to the tattoo every three months in the summer. So it makes it difficult doing things. But from the beginning, we focused on being a relationally based church rather than a program based church. We decided that our Christian community were busy enough in life, so busy sometimes that they didn't have time to make
00:05:30
Speaker
build relationships with unbelievers and we didn't want to make that worse by giving them lots of programs to run in the church. So basically we focused a lot on relational value and encouraged relational evangelism
00:05:46
Speaker
and give people the time and space to build that in their week rather than showing up a church institution with lots and lots of different activities. So that's the kind of model we worked on. And that worked in the city center because, you know, people were traveling to come to church. It wasn't like it was their community. So we really try to focus on people building
00:06:11
Speaker
relationships in their communities, in their workplaces and learning to share their faith that way. That's such a great way of kind of approaching
00:06:23
Speaker
how to go about reaching communities through that relational dynamic. Have you found that as you yourself have created friendships and relationships with others, that people have particular questions or objections about the Christian faith, particularly in Edinburgh, is there anything there that creates a particular resistance?
00:06:49
Speaker
questions kind of yeah I mean I think it's interesting I suppose and you know you've got you know your community you know your culture I think in Scotland there's
00:06:59
Speaker
There's certainly a degree of toxicity towards not only the institutional church, but the Presbyterian institutional church, and particularly the free church, which is the brand of church that I'm involved in. You know, they see John Knox, and they talk about John Knox, and this is a great suppressor of all things happy and joyful. And they see Calvinism as this doer thing. That's maybe a more
00:07:29
Speaker
knowledgeable or at least part knowledgeable rejection from a certain part of the community or generational. Younger people, it's great. They don't know anything. You know, they've got no preconceptions really other than they think the church is completely irrelevant, but they don't have any real hang ups. I think generally they're much more open
00:07:53
Speaker
But yeah, I think institutional cynicism and a very secular political environment, which has been very anti-Christian in many ways, I think, in Scotland particularly, and that's been quite hard.
00:08:16
Speaker
One, another thing you said a moment ago, this struck me, I love that model of being a, as you say, a relational church or on the programmatic church and creating space for people to build those relationships. Do you know, the more I both do evangelism and engage in training others, I think it really is quite a big
00:08:35
Speaker
a big hurdle. Are there some ways and some strategies, some ideas that you've discovered that are really helpful in helping Christians make those friendships? Because I sometimes find that people don't know how to do it. They don't know how to build those deep relationships with those around them. So I definitely think clearing the decks in terms of the programs is one thing, but then also really helping equip and train and motivate people to create those friendships with neighbors and colleagues and whatnot. Are there things that you've found that have helped do that?
00:09:03
Speaker
I wouldn't pretend to have the answers I've talked to, that's a really great question and I think we're still always addressing that issue. I think our people generally speaking have been good at building relationships
00:09:23
Speaker
But I think the struggle is taking it to the next stage in terms of opening up with our faith. Scottish people, Presbyterian people, although our congregation is very varied now, we've got people from all over the UK and the world in fact, but Scottish people are not that open. Scottish Christians traditionally, I think, there's just been this privatisation of faith and
00:09:49
Speaker
It's something that's very heartfelt and close, but not something they have learned to share well, I think, for lots of different reasons. But I think it's for us, the challenge has been moving from building relationships and being accepted by their culture and their community to then
00:10:14
Speaker
being confident enough to develop relationships that speak about their faith. I think probably the most common question we get from our own people is, I'm not sure how to actually share Jesus. And that's the ongoing challenge for us is to equip people. I think the other thing that's really, the one thing that's really helped is
00:10:40
Speaker
disabusing people of the notion that evangelism needs to be just simply an individualistic thing.
Building Faith Through Community and Prayer
00:10:46
Speaker
We try and encourage community and say, Luke, share your faith, share your friends with your non-Christian friends, with your Christian friends, have them around together for a meal, work in community, do things together, pray for one another.
00:11:01
Speaker
we've developed a prayer ministry really that's focused on Christians getting together and naming people that they love and that they care for and that they're witnessing to and encouraging one another to do that. So I think there's ways in which
00:11:21
Speaker
we can take away the fear factor a little bit by developing more community-based evangelism and also just
00:11:33
Speaker
I think people are scared of the word, to be honest. They don't like the word evangelism. I think it's scary. And we talk about sharing life and faith as a sneaky way of talking about evangelism without, I hope, scaring people off too much. Because that's really what it is, isn't it? We're wanting people to share their faith and their lives with others. But I actually don't have a lot of answers, a lot of questions.
00:12:00
Speaker
That's such a great way of kind of thinking about evangelism, just sharing your life and faith. You're totally right. I think that's something that Andy and I have seen as well. And that's partly why I wanted to put this podcast together is so that listeners and ourselves can just be really deeply encouraged that talking about Jesus isn't a expert specialist niche. This is who we are as Christians. It's an outpouring and an overflow of our relationship with God.
00:12:28
Speaker
I'd love to hear, you mentioned that sometimes people just say to you, I'm not sure how to share Jesus. What's your response to that question? If someone says to you, Derek, I don't know how to share Jesus, how would you encourage them? What would you say? I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that.
00:12:51
Speaker
I think a lot of it stems from developing a culture in people's minds and lives that the whole of their life is about glorifying Jesus so that everything they do has to be both prayerful and intentionally Christ-centered so that, you know, how they work in their office, how they respond, how they don't gossip or anything like that,
00:13:21
Speaker
becomes the place that provides an opportunity for sharing the gospel because the famous passage that speaks of how to be ready to give a reason for the hope that you have
00:13:34
Speaker
does suggest that it's something that's triggered by a witness, by a life, by a presence. And I think that it has to be both and. There has to be a consistency, a courage, a compassion that leads to just very naturally. And one thing I say to people is to just rehearse it in front of the mirror, what you would say.
00:14:02
Speaker
Ask yourself the question or pretend someone's asked you that question and then just answer it in the mirror on your own and learn how to personally get the message across. I think there's a danger of the ticking the ABCs, of getting all the truth out and getting to the last point and saying, hey, you know, you need to come at faith. And it's very, can it prove?
00:14:30
Speaker
almost programmatic, tick-box, saying all the right things. But I try and encourage people to say, well, you have to learn to tell your story about Jesus.
00:14:43
Speaker
as it's been real in your life. And that's challenging for us sometimes because it makes us think, well, how real is Jesus in my life and what kind of relationship do I have and how can I get that across to someone who has never read the Bible, who doesn't know any of the terminology and born again, heaven, hell, eternal life. All these things are just weird concepts. And so trying to get across
00:15:14
Speaker
that these are the kind of things they need to learn to share rather than having a memorized step-by-step story of the gospel, which is good to have, but it has to be adapted, I think, into people's personal contexts. That's very helpful, Derek, and I think a lot of wisdom in there, so thank you for that.
00:15:40
Speaker
One other thing that you let slip when we were chatting before the show began was as well as the church planting and the church-based ministry that you've been doing for some 30-odd years now, which is amazing because quite frankly, people who can't see Derek, you don't really look old enough to be doing church-based ministry for 30 years.
00:15:59
Speaker
You also do sports chaplaincy, which is really interesting. You are one of many pastors I have met who've begun to get involved in that.
Sports Chaplaincy as Ministry Outreach
00:16:09
Speaker
It'd be great to talk about that for a few moments. Perhaps the first question would be why sports chaplaincy? You are obviously busy with church planting, church-based ministry. That could take up all of your time, but you've obviously seen an opportunity and a need to, as it were, extend the sphere of your work by getting involved with sports
00:16:28
Speaker
pay stuff. So why, why, why the, why the attraction and what again, what's that, what draws you into that, into that line of work? Um, that's a great question. I, my wife has beaten me to it and she's been a chaplain at Hibbs ladies for eight years. Um, and so I've obviously had a lot of contact through her. Uh, and a couple of years ago, I became the chaplain to the men's team at Hibbs. Um,
00:16:55
Speaker
And I know a lot of people who are involved in it. But for me, it was really very important because as you know, ministers don't live in the real world. We just flow about in our study and study the Bible and read Calvin and do all these kind of things. And we don't actually ever really meet
00:17:13
Speaker
have many opportunities to meet people, ordinary people who are not Christians. Something we do with our neighbours and maybe when our kids are in school we get to meet parents and things like that and these have been in the past great opportunities for me. But I always feel increasingly isolated from the real world and it's been an absolutely brilliant opportunity for me to learn a lot about
00:17:41
Speaker
Obviously a particular sport environment is quite unusual in some ways.
00:17:49
Speaker
there's a meet up with a lot of staff who work for the club as well. And to be in an environment where there's very, very few Christians and not be the minister as it were, not be the pastor, to be a chaplain, which, and I'm their first chaplain, I'm the first chaplain they've had in the mains game there. It was such
00:18:11
Speaker
It was taking me out of my comfort zone so much. I mean, I love football, I love sport. I'm a hip supporter, which helped. But to be stuck in a role where people say, well, what are you doing here? Why are you here? What are you about? What's a chaplain?
00:18:31
Speaker
And it was usually highlighted by the fact that they never had to write anything down about the chaplaincy, they spelt it C-H-A-P-L-I-N as in Charlie, because they didn't realise the difference I think between Charlie, me and chaplaincy. But it's been a fantastic, there are many days, I go in every week, once a week, so it's a priority.
00:18:51
Speaker
it's a whole half a day that I go in so it's a big chunk of my time and some people have asked well why are you doing that seems a bit excessive but to me it's the most important thing in a sense I do.
00:19:05
Speaker
because it's just given me so much insight into how people are thinking and the lives they're living and how to live as a presence, as a Christian presence in that environment and to build relationships. There's many days for the first year and a half I think I drove out to HTC thinking, what am I doing? This is just so awkward and difficult.
00:19:30
Speaker
But it's been humbling. It's driven me greatly to prayer. I've got a prayer support network for it. And yeah, I'm beginning to see cracks in the rock. And it's been really great. So that's why I go into it, I think, because there's a lot of lost souls in the football world, any sporting world, I think. That is so encouraging, Derek, and just heartwarming.
00:20:00
Speaker
in a really deep way to know that God sends His people into these particularly really hard and difficult contexts in order to be a light for Him. And that He has sent you to do that there. That is really remarkable. Thank you so much for serving us and the Lord by doing that. What kind of things do the players talk to you about? What kind of conversations have you had with them?
00:20:26
Speaker
It's still mainly relationship building. There's been a couple of guys at various points have had maybe crisis or something where they've come and spoken to me. But I think it fits in very much with living as a Christian in the world. It's long term.
00:20:44
Speaker
commitment, prayerful remembrance of them recognising they're great people but they're losing, they're missing the most important thing in life even though they're chasing this kind of amazing
00:21:00
Speaker
lifestyle in many ways. For the first time last week, I got the opportunity to speak to the squad, all the guys together for various reasons that hadn't happened. But I ended up by just saying, I'm going to say the most uncool thing you'll hear all weekend,
Authenticity in Sharing Faith
00:21:22
Speaker
and I guarantee you'll never have heard it in the squad room before he said but I just want to say that I pray for you all, I pray for your families, I pray for your lives, I pray for any of you that might have issues that you're dealing with on your own in the loneliness of that and encouraging you to talk to someone and it was just a kind of next stepping stone
00:21:43
Speaker
I think to just being myself, you know, it's a very uncool thing to say to a bunch of players, footballers, young guys, but you just got to be honest and say these things and hope that God honours that with the next step at some point.
00:22:06
Speaker
That's a great place to bring it to a close at the top of the show. And what I like about that observation, that applies to any of us wherever we are. If you're in there with the players, if you're in the workplace or at your school and you're a Christian, you want to share your faith, be real, be honest, be yourself, pray for the Lord to work through that. You don't have to be a million dollar evangelist. We need a million, one dollar evangelists. And it's amazing what God
00:22:33
Speaker
can do that. Well Derek it's been a real pleasure thank you for taking the time to be on on pep talk and I hope that people found this interesting and encouraging so once again thanks for being with us and Christy and I will be back in two weeks time with another episode and another guest so do join us then so it's from me and Christy and Derek it's goodbye and may the Lord bless you as you seek to share Christ with your friends neighbors and colleagues bye for now