When Sinclair Ferguson was growing up in Scotland in the 1950s, the culture was not only Christian but also Reformed. Ferguson memorized Bible passages at his public school, learned nighttime prayers from parents who weren’t believers, and attended church for years before converting to Christianity.
In the years since, Ferguson has written more than 50 books, spoken at virtually every Reformed conference, and taught at nearly all the Reformed seminaries.
Meanwhile, the Church of Scotland membership has plummeted from 1.3 million to less than 300,000—that’s a million people lost in a single lifetime. The denomination has cut pastoral positions and discontinued ministries. Many of her massive granite church buildings are now restaurants and apartments and bars with names like Soul.
Ferguson retired a few years ago. After the career he’s had, he could speak anywhere and write for any publisher. But you won’t find him based in an influential American city or church or ministry. Instead, he’s in a small city in Scotland, writing sermons and preaching the evening services at a church of 200.
This is a story about why he’s doing that, about why it matters. This is a story about the gospel, about hope, and about coming home.
Transcript
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Sinclair Ferguson
As I said, early on, almost everywhere I go, I find this experience that people notice I’ve got an accent. My favorite place, outside of the sanctuary of the Lord’s people in the United States is in elevators, falling into conversation with people in elevators, son, and then getting off at my floor. And then they pluck up courage to say to me, but do you come from? And as the doors close, I love to say, Columbia, South Carolina. And see the look of puzzlement. Now, my friends, that’s a parable of what is possible for the people of God in our own time. But wherever you are, it’s not so much what people see when you’re in the room. But the questions that are lingering in their minds when you leave the room that makes them say, where did she come from? What kind of accent is that? This is somebody who has been with Jesus.
Sarah Zylstra
Have you heard that accent before? Sinclair Ferguson is one of the most well known figures in reformed Christianity in the United States. He’s authored around 50 bucks is a fellow at Ligonier Ministries and preached for years at the historic First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina. But as you can hear, he didn’t grow up in the United States. He was born in Glasgow, and grew up right next to a church, though his parents didn’t go. Sinclair story is full of ironies like that one. His greatest inspiration and influence was a disorganized, long winded preacher. He was gifted at golf, and yet deliberately chose a university that didn’t have a good team. He spent a decade laboring on an island of about 1000 people, while at the same time becoming well known enough for one of the world’s premier seminaries to seek him out. His faith deepened and his influence steadily grew, while the denomination that ordained him was utterly collapsing. What Sinclair is doing now also seems counterintuitive. in retirement, you won’t find him in an influential American city or church or ministry. After the career he’s had, he could speak anywhere, right for any publisher. Instead, he’s in a small city in Scotland, writing sermons and preaching the evening services at a church of about 200. This is a story about why he’s doing that about why it matters. This is a story about the gospel, about hope, and about coming home. I’m Sarah zostera, and I work for the gospel coalition you’re listening to recorded.
Sinclair Ferguson
I was born in the east end of Glasgow Easterns in the United Kingdom are not usually the better end of town. So as a very modest, normal home, not not many resources, but a great deal of love and commitment on behalf of my parents, but we never went to church
Sarah Zylstra
church was the Church of Scotland, which broke away from Rome in 1560s. During the Reformation, its most famous influencer was John Knox, who was so fiercely committed to the gospel that he spent time in a Scottish Castle under siege from the Catholics, and then as a galley slave for the Catholic French before being released. Eventually, he made his way to John Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland and loved everything he saw. When he came back to Scotland. He influenced both the church and the government, which at that point, were basically the same thing toward Calvinism. In fact, Calvinism seemed to take better in Scotland than in Switzerland, while Switzerland wrestled with the Catholic counter revolution and was never more than 60%, Protestant, Scotland went all in on Presbyterianism. Even their church splits had names like United Presbyterian Church, the free Presbyterian Church and the reformed Presbyterian Church. And everyone’s theology was so close, that sometimes split denominations joined back together or joined with other Presbyterian offshoots. So while Sinclair’s parents didn’t attend church. He was growing up in a culture thick with reformed Christianity.
Sinclair Ferguson
I think probably everybody I knew was connected to the church, or at least there was a bridge between them and the church. So many would have been in church organizations of one kind or Another conscious Sunday school. We had religious education in, in the state elementary school I was in which and my only memory of it was for somewhat mysterious reasons I was I was elevated to an advanced class, and I walked into this class. And that 37 or eight year olds chanting, and Jesus went up unto a high mountain, and he sat down and opened his mouth. And he taught them saying, Blessed are the poor and spirit, and they rattled through Matthew five, for 16 verses, I had no idea what that was. I knew it was Bible, but I no idea what it was, I thought help. I’ve got allowed in this. So I learned the commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes, Isaiah 53. passages like that, I think, because the the elementary school teachers didn’t really know how to teach any Christian education. And in those days, it was expected to be Christian.
Sarah Zylstra
Those Christian expectations meant Sinclair’s parents sent him to Sunday school every week. It meant they taught him a prayer to say before he went to sleep at night, it meant Sinclair diligently participated in a Bible reading group. And he went to church often, but it didn’t mean any of them believed the gospel,
Sinclair Ferguson
my time and that Sunday school was punctuated by, I think, three or four Sunday school teachers, or Bible class teachers when I was 12, or 13, who were very vital Christians. And I noticed the difference. I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it. But I noticed that they were different.
Sarah Zylstra
They’re in the middle of state mandated Christian education and churches on every corner and robust Bible memorization. Sinclair had found actual Christian. And then he made an even more surprising discovery. And when
Sinclair Ferguson
I was 14, because of one particular thing, that happened, I became convicted of the fact that I was actually a sinner. And this, which is so Elementary, really, when you understand the gospel was a tremendous shock to me. And, you know, I think looking back, one thing that it kind of invested in life and ministry was just what a shock it sometimes is to people who have, for example, gone to church all their lives, to discover that they’ve never thought of themselves as perfect, but they have never thought of themselves as as having a twisted and bent heart. And it was a tremendous shock to me. And so I spent, I think I did, in retrospect, what fairly typically people who come under that kind of conviction do, I resolved to do better.
Sarah Zylstra
But it didn’t take Sinclair long to figure out he couldn’t do any better.
Sinclair Ferguson
It was a January, Sunday night in January, I was walking home from church and I was walking down a hill. And I, I slipped on the ice and just caught my balance. And standing behind behind beside me, just as I caught my balance was a sharp man dressed entirely and blank. And we kind of stood there. And I saw him glancing down at my hand down here. And obviously, he noticed that there was a Bible in my hand. And he said to me, are you saved son? And I just felt the the heat, the fire come to my eyes, and the beginnings of tears? And I said to him, I don’t think so. But I want to be more than anything else in the world. He told me to go home and to ask Jesus into my heart. And I did. And I knew I couldn’t. I, it was looking back now, I think it was the last confirmation to me, that without the special aid of the spirit, it’s not I was beginning to see, but it was completely incapable of entering. But it was another step on the journey, heightened my desire that I might come to a living faith in Christ. Shortly after
Sarah Zylstra
that Sinclair did come to faith at an evangelistic revival at a church in town. Even Jellicle was an old word in Scotland, but few would still use it to disk write themselves. The number of evangelical students in seminary, it was joked was so small, they could hold their meetings in a phone booth. For a lot of people being evangelical meant that you weren’t open to new ideas to science to change. It meant you probably still believed in a literal creation story, you are probably still complementarian or you probably still affirmed the whole Westminster Confession. It’s not that all the preaching in the Church of Scotland was liberal per se. Most did preach Jesus, but cracks were beginning to show and there was very little expository preaching. Sinclair first ran into it during college.
Sinclair Ferguson
My first Sunday there I went to the I went to the college chapel service, I walked into the city in the afternoon, to find out where this church wise evening service was at seven o’clock. So I turned up at seven o’clock. And Mr. Still started reading the scripture passage, I think about 25 After seven, and he kept doing this till about five minutes before it. So he read two chapters of the Bible. And he made all kinds of very interesting comments as he went along. And then he announced to him and we, we sang to him. And I actually, towards the end of the him, I was, I was thinking, that was really interesting, but I’m going to miss a sermon
Sinclair Ferguson
so at the end of the hair, my stood standing waiting for the benediction. And I was the only person standing, everybody else sat down. And I’d been with friends to non Presbyterian churches, were they they were dead set against benedictions because that’s what Presbyterians did. So they just sat down and had a closing prayer. And I thought this is really weird, because this is a Presbyterian Church. But maybe that’s what they’re doing. So I sat down, bowed my head and close my eyes. And then I heard a sentence that I thought that is not the first sentence of a prayer. This was actually the first sentence of the sermon.
Sarah Zylstra
The pastor Williams still went on for another hour. He ended with a criticism of the Church of Scotland. Sinclair can still remember it,
Sinclair Ferguson
and the last parts of the sermon were, and and then where will your stewardship and Budget Committee be? Amen?
Sarah Zylstra
More than two hours of Bible reading, thinking and sermon, maybe you like me wondered why Sinclair went back the next week,
Sinclair Ferguson
or because? Because everything he was, he was full of Christ who was full of the Bible. He was full of love for the people. He was honest. He was honest,
Sarah Zylstra
Pastor still was all of those things. And an expository preacher, something he discovered almost by accident when he happened to string together several sermons on Romans early in His ministry. He preached in the manner of the Puritans interpreting scripture by Scripture. He believed the biblical stories, even ones like creation that seemed increasingly far fetched to other pastors. He was theologically deep, but he wasn’t organized. Sinclair compares listening to him to following someone deep sea diving, when you don’t have a light, or any idea where they’re going. You grow up along wondering what on earth you’re doing down there. And then pastor still would come up with a pearl, a gospel connection, a theological truth, something beautiful that made the whole long wandering trip worthwhile. Pastor stills thoughts didn’t progress in a straight line or with discernible logic. And that first service wasn’t an anomaly. Still services regularly lasted for more than two hours, twice a Sunday. And yet, the church he took an Aberdeen the one Sinclair found, had been dying when he got there. It had shriveled so far, that some said not even the Apostle Paul himself could revive it. Under pasture still, it began to grow dramatically.
Sarah Zylstra
Sinclair was only in Aberdeen because he didn’t want to play golf. He’s an excellent golfer, actually. So much so that his cash strapped parents made the investment to buy him memberships at two private clubs. There, he could practice constantly, and he did, playing 12 to 20 rounds a week. He made the high school golf team at 12 and was talented enough to play for both the Scottish and British national teams in high school. It wasn’t too hard to imagine him as a professional golfer.
Sinclair Ferguson
From the I was converted, I would say, probably for the next must have been six months, maybe even to a year. It was as though Golf was like Dagon smashed, and I kind of lost all interest in testing it.
Sarah Zylstra
Eventually he picked the game back up again. But he was afraid of playing too much, especially since nobody in his family had been to university and everybody else talked about how hard it was. He wanted to be able to focus on theology, and he didn’t want to be distracted by the greens. So when the choice came down to the University of St. Andrews, where Golf was literally invented, or the University of Aberdeen, which did not even have a competitive team, Sinclair picked Aberdeen. As it turns out, university wasn’t too hard for Sinclair, he would have had time to study and to play golf too. But if he’d been at St. Andrews, he never would have sat down and William stills church, come under his mentorship or began his preaching career there, and he wouldn’t have been around. When pastor still began inviting other evangelical pastors he knew to a conference, it grew to several 100, the largest gathering of ministers outside the Annual General Assembly. Sinclair stays connected to pastor still while earning three degrees in theology and philosophy in Scotland’s third largest city, and then while spending his first decade of ministry on the remote, northern most island of the United Kingdom. While there, he also began writing books, one about why Christian doctrine matters for Christian living, one on how to discover God’s will, and an exposition on Jonah. He wrote so well that in the mid 1980s, Westminster Theological Seminary President Ed Clowney told one of his professors to go to Scotland, and not to come back without Sinclair Ferguson.
Sarah Zylstra
Westminster was just the right spot for Sinclair, though for a while it looked like a critical mistake. Sinclair’s father and brother had previously passed away. And while he was in America, his mother’s health began to suffer.
Sinclair Ferguson
Basically, we realized that she wouldn’t be able to manage. And she hadn’t really nobody else. So I mean, I must say, in praise and thanksgiving to God for my wife that basically, she became a kind of Tata to my mother, however amazing, you know, my mother really regarded her as, like, you know, gift from heaven.
Sarah Zylstra
Sinclair’s wife, Dorothy and their children ended up staying in Scotland to care for his mother. He then took on what is possibly the world’s longest commute to work, from Glasgow to Philadelphia. His pattern was to teach for three weeks, and then to come home for about a week.
Sinclair Ferguson
It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t as horrific as it might sound. And we felt we felt, as you know, the Lord’s promise that you don’t give up anything for the kingdom sake without him taking care of you. We really kind of nailed ourselves to that.
Sarah Zylstra
At school, Sinclair was learning as much as he was teaching.
Unknown Speaker
I hadn’t had a good theological education. You know, I just all so much to the fact that day and daily, I was sitting, having coffee with men who were far brighter, more able more landlords, and I was and, and, and just appreciated the look, the acceptance and the affection and the Brotherhood. That was a tremendous privilege.
Sarah Zylstra
I think Claire was shy, but he was making friends left and right. People might have felt sorry for him. His wife was in Scotland for Pete’s sake. But he’s also bright, interesting and charming. He got invitations to lunches, and two dinners. And then he got invitations to preach. And when he proved capable, he got invitations to speak at conferences. He became friends with Tim Keller, who is a junior faculty member with him at Westminster. He became friends with RC Sproul and Alice her bag and Bob Godfrey
Sinclair Ferguson
you know Rolling Stones gather no boss, but gospel ministers Gala. I think back to Actually sir, when I when I was just on the process, as it were of entering a kingdom of God, thinking, I think I might lose some friends at school. And I because I’d been reading the Bible since I was nine. I knew this promise that you don’t, you don’t lose anything but you gain even a hundredfold looking back now, I mean, I I don’t know if I lost friends. But looking back, what really amazes me is not just the hundredfold but the quality of
Sarah Zylstra
them. Some of his closest relationships were made in his churches after unced, which was his first island church. He held two other pastorates, one for about eight years in Glasgow, followed by another eight years in South Carolina. When he retired in 2013. To make room for his successor, he knew he never wanted to take another penny from another church.
Sinclair Ferguson
I couldn’t have left the congregation I served in Colombia for another job, I would rather have died than do that, you know, there would be nowhere else I would want to go. And it was, you know, it was a very blessed season of ministry fire me. And I’m just, I’m profoundly grateful to that congregation that they called me in the first place and I’ve been back a few times since I, I still can’t take in. You know, you’ve got to love your minister. You don’t need to love him when he’s gone. But to sense the affection and the bonds just there’s there is absolutely nothing like that really is such a privilege.
Sarah Zylstra
Sinclair didn’t have a solid plan for retirement, he moved back home to Scotland and began working part time and for free with his daughter’s Church, which interestingly used to be Robert Murray McShane pastor it. In 2019, the senior pastor there moved to Australia to focus on evangelism, Sinclair thought he’d step back to give the new pastor a smoother transition. It wasn’t like he’d be bored. He still gets emails from all over the world asking him to speak and write and teach. But one caught his attention.
Sarah Zylstra
What? Yes, completely out of the blue he wrote.
Sarah Zylstra
He is David Gibson, who was born in Tennessee and raised partly in Africa by missionary parents, partly in Northern Ireland, where his dad is from nearly 20 years ago, he moved to Aberdeen to do a PhD in systematic theology and the New Testament like Sinclair, he stumbled into a Church of Scotland congregation that had good preaching. Within a few years, he’d converted to Presbyterianism, and had all four of his children baptized, David began preaching in the Church of Scotland about 40 years after Sinclair, but the denomination was only a fractured facsimile of what it was. Since 1960, membership had plummeted from 1.3 million to 300,000. That’s 1 million people lost in a single lifetime. The denomination has cut pastoral positions, discontinued ministries and sold dozens of church buildings. But the leadership hasn’t yet managed to make the connection between loss of theology and loss of membership as their theology liberalizes. Church leaders don’t sound worried. No one should think that this is cutting for the sake of saving as such, one church leader said reassuringly, it is pruning in order to grow. Rarely,
Sinclair Ferguson
is sometimes I think it’s just true in history, the places which have had the greatest opportunities for the gospel when they no longer one, they become very hard places.
Sarah Zylstra
But just a few decades ago, Sinclair Ferguson was a pastor there, evangelicals were starting to identify themselves. expository preaching was beginning to pop up prayer meetings at William stills church would go on for hours. What happened
Sinclair Ferguson
in the 1960s, through the 70s. In Scotland, there would be a growing number of evangelical ministries, but not necessarily a large number of evangelical congregations. So there would be an essence, what they used to call ecclesial law in ecclesia, which was there would be a little Evangelical community in a larger church, so that the number of churches that became Evangelical, were relatively small, proportionately smaller a number than the number of evangelical ministries, and an evangelical preacher is one thing, but the future lies in an Evangelical Church. Unless the gospel is grounded in the community. There is no guarantee of its its future, not that it guarantees the future. But I think that was one thing. A second thing I would say was that the strategy there was a very definite strategy, which was essentially not to have a strategy. And and the language that was used was quiet infiltration. And an element in that which had not been true in Scotland for many years was in the United States evangelicals create institutions so they would they and I don’t mean this pejoratively, I mean this in a good sense. They institutionalized the evangelical convictions to to preserve them for the future. And in Scotland that would have been like asking for money, you just don’t ask for money. You it would have been very counter intuitive and actually quite countercultural.
Sarah Zylstra
In addition to evangelical leaders like William still weren’t natural organizers, so when those men passed away, it took away the pillars the movement was resting on with less to slow them down, the liberal movement gained steam. While David was an assistant pastor in the Church of Scotland, a practicing homosexual minister was appointed in another Aberdeen church. David’s Lead Pastor Peter Dixon argued for three years that the move was unbiblical. Finally, the national church decided in favor of the same sex minister, but by then Peters church had been hearing him preach the gospel for 15 years. When Peter decided to leave the denomination in protest 170 of the 200 church members came with him. Peter and David moved their services to a nearby hotel, and called themselves Trinity Church. Over the next 10 years, the Church of Scotland continued to bleed, they voted time and again to affirm and expand same sex relationships. Though many cheered their advances in the media, fewer and fewer people showed up on Sunday mornings, more conservative congregations, which tended to be larger and have better giving left. The national church began combining dwindling congregations, which then dwindled even further, fewer students went into the ministry, costs began to mount those old stone church buildings aren’t cheap to maintain. Over the same 10 years, Trinity Church continued to thrive. Peter moved on and David took over as the lead pastor. Two years ago, the congregation managed to buy an abandoned old church right in the heart of Aberdeen. It’s a huge building seats 1000, which is way too big for them right now. It’s beautiful, with plenty of space for outreach and children’s programs and growth, with a pulpit set right in the center of the building. It’s also run down with worn out electrical wires, and outdated fire system and a leaking roof. That’s what David is offering Sinclair a chance to preach a bit, and teach a bid to about 200 people in a worn down church in the center of a city that will likely lose another 10 churches in the next few years. You know,
Sinclair Ferguson
that’s why we exist. I don’t know when I learned the first question of the shorter catechism. But it really, I mean, it’s a great question. And so but it’s really been a huge influence on me that, you know, warts and all, the the only issue is the glory of God, and how can how can I serve and enjoy him best, and the ministry here has really, it has grown wonderfully. You know, that’s what I want to do. I want to help, you know, the future ministry,
Sarah Zylstra
in a corner of the world, in his corner of the world, Sinclair can see both spiritual darkness and a little gospel light.
Sinclair Ferguson
If God grants the provision, but they obviously need to be able to fulfill it, it will make quite a statement about something is happening here. This does not happen today, in the decline of the Christian faith and the decline of the church. You know, I think people want to know, why is why is it when other places are closing, this place is actually expanding. And I think that will open up many opportunities.
Sarah Zylstra
After he raises the funds to fix up the building, David can see all kinds of opportunities, adding mercy ministries, growing the student programs, stocking up a theological library, and opening Scotland’s version of the Simeon trust preaching workshops in Claire can see those two,
Sinclair Ferguson
your task is to be the farmer who saw as the seed and yeah like Lou that you go to bed and you know, you pray and and so on, and God does the work, but you do look for signs of spring. This to me is a sign of spring. What kind of harvest you know, will it be 30 fold 60 fold or 100 fold? That’s God’s business and his prerogative but I think This is to us a sign of spring that encourages us to keep on sewing.
Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra is senior writer and faith-and-work editor for The Gospel Coalition. She is also the coauthor of Gospelbound: Living with Resolute Hope in an Anxious Age and editor of Social Sanity in an Insta World. Before that, she wrote for Christianity Today, homeschooled her children, freelanced for a local daily paper, and taught at Trinity Christian College. She earned a BA in English and communication from Dordt University and an MSJ from Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She lives with her husband and two sons in the suburbs of Chicago, where they are active members of Orland Park Christian Reformed Church. You can reach her at [email protected]
Sinclair Ferguson is a Ligonier teaching fellow and distinguished visiting professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary. He previously served as the senior minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina, and he has written more than two dozen books, including The Whole Christ, The Holy Spirit, In Christ Alone, and, with Derek Thomas, Ichthus: Jesus Christ, God’s Son, the Saviour. Ferguson is currently the preaching associate at Trinity Church of Aberdeen. He and his wife, Dorothy, have been blessed with three sons and a daughter and 12 grandchildren.
