Scottish Baptist College: Celebrating 50 years of pastoral ministry: Rev Dr Derek Murray

Spent Saturday afternoon at a house party in Inverurie, then Sunday morning at a morning worship service in Aberdeen. Both celebrating the same thing, a fiftieth Anniversary since Ordination. That's 50 years of living faithfully towards promises made about the care of the flock of God, the ministry of Word and Sacrament, and the surrender of secondary priorities in the interests of the Kingdom of God.

Derek Murray (the taller one in the photo!) was ordained 50 years ago. As minister in Paisley, Kirkcaldy and edinburgh, as Lecturer in the Scottish Baptist College full time 1961-66, as Hospice Chaplain for 15 years, and as part time lecturer in our College for 46 years, his service to Christ, and to our denomination in Scotland is justly to be celebrated. And so it was.

A house party, a worship service, and a sermon by the Rev Dr Ruth Gouldbourne on the text from the woman who anointed Jesus, 'She did what she could', as well as a couple of sizeable 50th Anniversary cakes shared with the congregation, enabled us to do what we too seldom do - honour and celebrate pastoral ministry as life well lived, and as a vocation that is secretly transformative and life enhancing.

Derek was also presented with a scrap book of memories, greetings and photographs. My own contribution was personal, and goes back to my own experience of Derek as teacher, and my knowledge of him as a man, and as my friend. With Derek's (very reluctantly given) permission I'm including it here, both as an appreciation of Derek's contribution to our College and the theological education of our ministry, and as a glimpse of the qualities that give pastoral ministry its enduring values as an expression of the love of God.
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“A long obedience in the same direction”

By October 1974, at the Baptist Theological College of Scotland, I was plunged into the deep end of the Old Testament by Derek Murray, and taught how to swim. He was teaching Old Testament exegesis following the retirement of The Rev J Allan Wright, and the set book was Daniel. The Sunday school stories seemed straightforward enough – big statues, even bigger furnaces, a lions’ den and a grass eating king recently turned vegetarian, and in the background the God of Israel who wasn’t to be messed with.

But what about the beasts, the horns, the eyes, the Ancient of Days, the secret numbers of weeks and all the other symbolic images of politically subversive apocalyptic? One of the clear memories of those conversations around the table, supported by standard commentaries such as Heaton and Porteous, was the humility and gentle questioning of Dr Derek. It wasn’t that he was the authoritative, Hebrew- breathing, biblical specialist – it was that he was one of the learners who taught us a great deal about how to learn together, and how to open a Bible, and to read, mark and learn with open and valid questions. For preachers, there are few more liberating discoveries than that the Bible not only welcomes our questions, but gives us the kinds of answers that help us question our world, ourselves and even the ways of God.

When some years later Derek was the preacher at the College Valedictory service, he spoke about the pastorally disastrous and spiritually damaging impact of ministers who specialise in guilt-making. He was referring to the commonly held belief, then and now, that what Christians need is challenge, and challenge equates to being told the gap between aspiration and performance, the gulf between what we want to be for God, and what we know we are. Guilt, he argued, may be a powerful motivator, but nothing like as powerful as gratitude; and a sense of unworthiness may at times be a healthy astringent, but we are most galvanised into costly acts of love by the knowledge we are loved. It was an address that avoided the more popular or apparently more important questions of church growth, effective leadership, missional drivenness – and in doing so recalled us to the classic discipline of love fuelled by a redeeming and reconciling Gospel.

These two personal memories, significant as they are for me, demonstrate two pervasive Christian graces; reverent curiosity about life and faith, and grace-informed optimism about people. As a pastor, a teacher, a chaplain and a friend, Derek has quietly, unobtrusively, faithfully and in ways he himself might never take time or trouble to imagine, lived out a life of pastoral vocation that has touched many of us with decisive reminders of what pastoral care can be when it is the natural outflow of a humanity that is itself the gift. In the end what Derek the husband, father, scholar, pastor, writer, preacher, has brought to the vocational trajectory of his life, is a deep faith in God, a gently persistent faith in people, and an enviable capacity for unaffected self-forgetfulness. It has been a long obedience in the same direction.

Whereas most of us can occasionally come pretty close to false modesty about our abilities, I have never sensed anything other than genuine surprise in Derek Murray when good things are said of him in his hearing. These things are written then, so that he might have the chance to feel genuinely pleased with what others say about him!

Fifty years of ordained ministry, and such ministry, is a special gift to the church, and one to be celebrated. I am very happy to be personally included amongst those whose memories and experiences help to celebrate the gift of such a ministry. Shalom, and thank you