The Road Less Traveled

A year before Eric Liddell stepped onto an Olympic track in front of thousands of spectators in Paris, he faced another crowd he found almost as daunting. A few dozen unchurched men in a small Scottish town called Armadale. Liddell was a student at the University of Edinburgh. He was winning national running competitions and headed toward the 1924 Olympics. After graduation, he was headed to the mission field in China, but in some ways he had never really been tested himself. He was a faithful believer, but he’d never stepped onto a mission field at home. When a minister asked Liddell to speak at an evangelistic meeting for a group of industrial workers in a nearby town, Liddell felt hesitant, maybe even a bit afraid, but he did it anyway.

On April 6th, 1923, he stood in front of a small group of men, perhaps curious to see a local athlete they’d read about in the papers. They probably weren’t that interested in theology, but Liddell simply talked about his own life of faith, and he saw it as a turning point. Serving Christ close to home helped confirm his sense of calling to serve Christ far away. He started accepting similar invitations, developing a gift he didn’t even know he had. The minister who asked Liddell to speak at that first event said the evening started for Liddell, a life of dedicated service that only death could end. For Liddell, that’s exactly where he was headed in China. But the road started in Scotland.

A century later, there are even more unchurched Scots who need to hear the gospel. Many are still in unseen places most people don’t notice, but in some of the communities where the gospel has been most absent in Scotland, seeds have started to sprout. In places of soul darkness, there are glimpses of gospel light. The question isn’t whether it’s possible to pierce more darkness, it’s whether there are enough believers willing to try.

I’m Jamie Dean and from the team at Radical, this is Glory Road.

The Gateway to the Highlands

Scotland’s unseen places aren’t just in small towns around Edinburgh. Sometimes they’re as far away as the Scottish Highlands. Now, no doubt, plenty of people do visit the highlands. Northern Scotland is famous for the legend of the Loch Ness Monster, glimpses of the Northern Lights and fantastic scenery. It’s rugged, it’s green, it’s almost ethereal. In the winter, it’s also foggy and cold and dark, which is a decent description of the spiritual climate as well, especially in the spots most people don’t visit in the Highlands. But that’s slowly changing.

Chris Davidson: This is the most beautiful scheme in Scotland, but maybe I’m boasting in that you’re probably like, “Nah, Chris, it’s pretty bleak.”

Chris Davidson is a Scottish pastor at Merkinch Free Church in Inverness, a small city known as the Gateway to the Highlands. It’s also a city where you’ll find what the Scottish call a scheme. That’s basically an area with a substantial amount of government housing. Some families have lived in schemes for generations, but over the years, urban blight set in. Local governments let houses decay, drugs and gangs followed.

Government dependency grew and for many, the schemes became very tough places to live. In some of the most disadvantaged parts of Scotland today, the healthy life expectancy for a male is just 46 years. Merkinch is the scheme where Chris moved to plant a church six years ago. The government has classified Merkinch as the eighth most deprived area in Scotland. Pastor Chris loves it here.

Chris Davidson: It’s no Edinburgh. That’s true. It’s not got the people of Glasgow, but it’s got its own beauty.

The church is part of a network called 20schemes. That’s a ministry that aims to plant or revitalize churches in Scotland’s poorest neighborhoods. That’s strategic because most schemes have very few gospel preaching churches.

Chris Davidson: This building here, the one with the shutters down, that was the Church of Scotland. It was built in 1937. It shut down just in the early 2000s and when it closed, some of the older guys in the scheme said that their parents said, “Even God’s given up in this area.” So, that was kind of the view because the church is leaving the area, so hopefully we can undo that damage a wee bit with our wee church. You know?

Thirsty Souls

Chris’s church meets in a little mission hall built in 1847. Inside, the building has wood paneling and old carpeting and ceilings that need repair, but it also has people interested in the gospel. Unbelievers outnumber believers on Sunday. That brings opportunities and challenges in a community with significant needs.

Church members have learned what to do if someone stops breathing. That’s because the drug fentanyl has finally hit the scheme. Chris recently had to call police when a visitor disrupted a sermon and wouldn’t calm down. Now, most Sundays aren’t like that and other interruptions aren’t so bad. One Sunday, Chris was preaching about Jesus offering living water to the woman at the well.

Chris Davidson: And one of the boys who had his eyes closed for most of the service shouted out, “Chris!” And I was like, “Yeah.” And he says, “Are you telling me my soul is thirsty?” And he had been listening to every word and you wouldn’t have thought because he looked like he’d just come into a warm hall to fall asleep. And I was like, “Bud, that’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

That kind of preaching is different from what many may have heard in the past. If liberalism is a problem that creeped into Scottish churches, Chris says moralism has been a problem as well. Christianity as a list of rules detached from the gospel. Other times, people with no church background just don’t understand what they’re hearing.

Chris Davidson: So, Paul says in Corinthians, “Be aware of the outsider. Be thoughtful for them.” We’re not preaching for them, but we need to be aware that they’re going to be in the service. I think Scottish church has kind of lost that view wee bit, and they would use a Christian shorthand and people would be like, “This is so not… I don’t understand this at all.” I go to some churches in the Highlands and they use the KGV, which is an old translation of the Bible and it’s good, but for a guy in my context, you might as well just give him a Quran because it is as inaccessible to him.

Making the Scriptures accessible takes good preaching, but it also takes a lot of time and effort and discipleship outside of Sundays.

Mary: From a pretty young age, I read a lot of sort of missionary biographies and things like that, and I just assumed from I think the age of maybe six, seven, I’d go to Africa and then South America. I was planning all sorts of places where I’d go and do mission work, and I just think it never crossed my mind to see Scotland as somewhere where mission work was needed, really.

Mary leads the women’s ministry here in Merkinch. She’s from the Highlands, but she didn’t grow up in a scheme and she didn’t expect to serve in one, but she discovered there were neighborhoods in Scotland that needed the gospel too. So, she moved here, to a place that at least for her, might as well have been a world away.

Mary: I had never seen… Sorry, I’ve seen fights on the street here. The police come around every hour of the day to patrol the area and people tell me stories that to them are so ordinary and they just shock me so much. So, I’m trying to perfect my poker face a little bit more.

It’s been an adjustment, but Mary has seen how God can use her gifts and her weaknesses. She’s also seen how he can transform anyone. She thinks about the moment a woman with no church background and significant disabilities expressed a clear understanding of what Jesus did for sinners at the cross.

Mary: My mind right now, just seeing her pray for the first time, to see her confidence in the gospel grow and to see it transforming her life. I’m sure there’ll be many sort of battles and challenges along the way in that, but I just don’t think there’s a greater joy than seeing the gospel transform a person and seeing people who just had no hope, having hope for the first time. I think that is such a beautiful thing.

Chris says, one of the biggest challenges for ministry in Merkinch and other schemes is mobilizing enough mature Christians to head to the places with the most need. It’s a battle, especially in a country with so few Christians to begin with. But even with a small team, the church is growing and it’s trying to reach more of its community.

The Gateway to the Gospel

Chris Davidson: So, this here is a real work in progress, but we’re hoping this could be used for God’s glory and our scheme.

We’re at Lighthouse Centre for Biblical Counseling. It’s a little office space on one of the main streets through Merkinch. A small trained staff offers biblical counseling at a low cost for those who need it. That’s potentially a lot of people.

In 2022, police responded to 203 calls about potential harm or suicide threats at a nearby bridge. In fact, the Highlands have one of the highest suicide rates in Scotland, and the waiting list for a mental healthcare appointment through the government funded system can stretch for months. Chris hopes the counseling center can help bridge that gap, not just with faster appointments, but as a doorway to the church and a gateway to the gospel.

Chris Davidson: Because we’re told the big narrative in Scotland, yes, is the church is declining, but actually there’s these growths of shoots of new life. And it’s really exciting to see what the Lord might do with those wee shoots, because he may make them mighty oaks that turn around the tide of decline. And I hope, and I pray that our wee church plant could be part of that for the north of Scotland. That what is weak can fragile here, the Lord will build up to help other church plants in the north.

The model for this kind of scheme-based church started about 150 miles south in Edinburgh in a scheme called Niddrie. Niddrie Community Church became the first congregation in 20schemes, the church planting ministry founded in 2012. On Sunday mornings, it’s buzzing.

Speaker: A very warm welcome to anyone who’s visiting with us for the first time. Niddrie Community Church, we exist to glorify God.

Now, plenty of Christian organizations have offered help in Scotland schemes, but it rarely translates into local church planting. That’s missing a huge opportunity because while many wealthier Scots have grown deeply secular, less wealthy Scots often remain deeply spiritual. They’re just worshiping the wrong things.

Locals tell me that Niddrie itself has witchcraft covens and spiritists, but that’s not new. Even in Eric Liddell’s day in the aftermath of World War I, many of the grieving turned to seances and mediums in an attempt to communicate with the dead. All of that is spiritual darkness to be sure, but it can open the door to spiritual conversations about Christ.

“If you are real, you need to show me.”

Katie: Everybody’s got struggles. When you have something like me in your path, you want to avoid them. They don’t know Jesus, so they don’t have hope. They’re putting their trust and hope in materialistic things and things that just do not last. So, I’ve always stayed in schemes and Niddrie’s always been the base scheme that we always came back.

This is Katie. She’s the fourth generation of her family to live in Niddrie. Her childhood was chaotic. By the time she was an adult, she had two young children and a drug and alcohol addiction. She dabbled in new age spiritualism, but on a Sunday in 2017, she told God, “If you’re real, you need to show me.” The next Sunday morning, she headed out for a local Catholic Church. She stopped to buy a bottle of dry Schnapps to steady her nerves. Suddenly she realized she was running late, but she remembered there was another church around the corner. It was Niddrie Community Church.

She went inside and told someone, “I just need to repent.” She was looking for absolution. She was introduced to Jesus. It began a gradual process for Katie. The people were kind. She kept coming back. She began clearing tables at the church cafe during the week, having conversations with believers about Christ. And she finally realized she didn’t need to just do better in her life. She needed Jesus to save her from her sin. So, she asked him. Katie was baptized and joined the church in 2018, and the church was a lifeline.

Katie: So, it’s like when I was trying to get sober and trying to get straight and trying to come away from the drugs, the minute you look at what you’ve done, you want to numb it again. You want to escape it. And the love and the care that I’ve received from my church family through that and the way that they helped me process that, I can look at where I’ve been and be like, “That was my choices that caused that. It was me.”

But you know what? I’m not that person that done that anymore. I’m born again. I’m a new creation. I’m a daughter of the most High King, and I need to live a life that honors that. We’ve been looking at Philippians recently in church, and it’s just that saying, living a life that’s honorable to the calling we’ve been called by.

Today, Katie helps lead the children’s ministry at church and she’s hopeful for her own children as well.

Katie: And I look at my own kids now and I’m like, Jesus broke the generational cycle in addiction, mental health issues. He just transformed our lives inside out. Don’t get me wrong, I struggle every day. There’s still parts of my personality that rear up. I’m like, “Lord, please save me from myself. No for my glory, but for your glory because of who you are.” But I look at my kids and I know that there’s a generational shift. Not because anything I’ve done, it’s simply because Jesus saved me and his perfect timing.

Saved to Serve

Hang around Niddrie and you’ll hear other stories of God saving people in his perfect timing. There’s Tasha, a Niddrie native who went from abusing alcohol and getting kicked out of youth group to faith in Christ and leading the youth group. She’s a seasoned staff member and a key part of life and ministry at the church.

There’s Sam, a man who’s gone from organizing crime to organizing a church plant in a nearby scheme called Gorgie. They’re extraordinary stories, but they have a common thread. Ordinary discipleship, not only Bible studies and other programs, but countless dinners with Christian friends and families. Hanging out with church members on Friday nights, not just Sunday mornings. Serving, not just being served. Mez McConnell the founder of 20schemes and a church elder at Niddrie says that’s critical from the beginning.

Mez McConnell: We are saved to serve. The job of the pastor is to prepare all God’s people for works of service. The church is not just another caregiver or social worker or psychologist in your life. You’re saved by Christ, you’re saved for a specific purpose. You will have been gifted by his Spirit in order to strengthen a local body and be a light to the world. And so my job as the pastor and our job as leaders is to encourage you, teach you, and to help fan into flame the spiritual gifting you have, which rings true, whether you are a high-powered lawyer or whether you never finished high school and can barely read.

If the Lord has gone to all that trouble to save your soul, then he’s got a cheeky job for you to do. And so yeah, we’re very keen on that, that the church isn’t just here to serve you. We’re here to serve one another for the good of the kingdom.

Of course, that isn’t easy. Following Christ sometimes strains relationships with tight-knit friends and family who don’t understand a new commitment. Addictions and other sins can be brutal to overcome for anyone. For every one person who sticks around, another 10 might drift away, no matter how much the church tries to help. It can be heartbreaking. But heaven does rejoice over one sinner who repents, and so does Jesus. By Sunday morning, this gathering of his people in this scheme is ready to worship him.

The Road Less Traveled

Niddrie is only a few miles away from where Eric Liddell studied at the University of Edinburgh. By the fall of 1923, Liddell was a senior at university and a contender for a spot in the 1924 Paris Olympics. When Olympic officials announced the dates and times for the Olympic heats, Liddell saw a problem. The heat for the 100 meters, his best event, was on a Sunday. Liddell didn’t find out about the Sunday heat just days before the Paris Olympics. The schedule came out months in advance, and from the beginning, he stuck by his long held conviction. The Lord’s Day was for worship and rest. He wouldn’t run on a Sunday.

Many people didn’t understand. Some pleaded with him to relent. Others mocked him. Liddell was undeterred. He would run a different race and trust in God’s providence. So, he kept training. And in the summer of 1924, he headed to the City of Lights. A city that a century later still dazzles visitors with its iconic beauty, but sits in the spiritual darkness of its own. But it’s also a city where true beauty might lead it back to true light. Paris is the next stop for Liddell and for us. That’s next time on Glory Road.