My journey

It’s only 33 years long and when you’re hanging around for ever then I guess that’s not a very long time. It all kind of started for me back in 1975, just when the Vietnam War was coming to an end, and the hippie movement was all going away (thankfully).

The start of things: I was born into a Scottish farming family, with a self-employed Dad and a mother who interspersed her life with bursts of librarian employment - which is partly where I got a passion for books for (and possibly the need to organise all my bookcases….). I have 3 brothers and a sister, with a nice 17 years between us all (I’m the middle kid). Out of all of the 7 of us, as far as I know, only my mum has a heart for Jesus, and tries walking with Him on her journey. Her passion for Jesus must have shown me so much over the years, and it was her who made it possible for me to get to meet so many of the people that helped my own first few steps.

It was a family thing: But I have a Dad who taught me about the country, and the importance of being loyal, and honest, and doing the right thing even if it was tough. I have an eldest brother, with a great family, who has the most amazing IQ and a passion for nature, as well as this ability to start up successful businesses in next to no time. My next eldest brother, who we rarely hear from anymore (which is gutting for all of us), is a fantastic guitarist and singer. He was actually the youngest guy ever to be accepted into the Royal Marines (at 15) but decided not to go. Tough as nails but he’s my bro and I love him. My younger brother could take a piece of metal and a piece of wood, and turn it into a piece of machinery in an hour, or so it seems, such is his craftmanship. He works on the farm with my dad and around the local area. My sister, a graduate in Criminology, has emigrated to Australia and just got married. It’s gutting for us all but we’re all really excited about the opportunities this can throw up. So that’s my family………….. 

The School years - primary school in the local village (75 pupils), was a good kid but with bad handwriting (where were laptops then), secondary school 10 miles away (got bullied, had glandular fever, got ok grades, left at 17 to go Uni). Went to my village church for first 12 years of my life (my name’s in that book in the church so if you’re ever there, look it up! The church goes back to the 12th century, it’s got a lot of history). I stopped going around then because it wasn’t “cool“ to be seen hanging out there anymore. Around 14 at a Tearfund lunch, which our parents often took us to (these consisted in not much food but paying a fair amount so that others could then eat elsewhere in the world), I met a new friend called Peter. We got chatting about everything bar church and got on really well. Anyway, turns out my mum knew his family, he went to Dumfries Baptist Church, and so I started heading along to their youth group, and then to church (as well as to the arcades for some shoot ‘em ups sometimes when ’Tony and I got bored). So I listened to these people talk about God and Jesus and it made sense to me, in a simple sort of way. I actually came at it from a whole different perspective than most though - I saw a lot of nature and I found it hard to believe it was all just there, and just had come from a big bang. So when they introduced me to Genesis, I was like “yeah, that so makes sense with what I see out there”. And because I believed that, I was pretty sure the rest of the stuff was right too. (I bet they don’t ever teach you that way for apologetics in bible college do they?  ) So one night I actually turned round my life and started to walk a different way, the way of Jesus. (I even said that prayer a few different times along the way, just to make sure, and went forward at a Billy Graham Livelink meeting (so 1950’s) but I’ll come back to that later on……) 

 Very slowly at first.

The Uni Years: So I headed off to Uni in Edinburgh at 17, having been told by my school that I was too young and I’d drop out. Nice way to be encouraged lol. I thought about going to study in Aberdeen (Economics & International Relations) or St Andrews (same course, world leading course for the study of terrorism) but headed for Edinburgh for 3 reasons - I knew it, it was only 75 miles away and Hearts play there which meant I could study AND watch footie. Met some Christians early doors (can’t even remember how now) and we got hooked up with a church. First year was a ‘mare for me in many ways - that boy to man phase started to kick in. Made a lot of mistakes and was down on my knees ‘fessin up to a lot. One older wiser man at the church (albeit he was about the age I am now and that’s v.scary) began to talk to me and guide me in my faith, my life and everything. God used him greatly to teach me many things, a blessing that did nothing less than truly change my life. Avoided CU at Uni, albeit I played for their footie team, and eventually learned that I should be drinking less and praying more. The church I went to was a major city centre evangelical bible teaching church, which was great because I kind of didn’t know my bible that much. Used to go out clubbing a lot with the guys from my prayer triplet (yeah well? and Kathy as well - as she says on Facebook “we hooked up and it was wonderful”. We graduated 2 days apart - I was heading off to London to work in Investment Management for a company in the midst of a merger, she was thinking of teacher training in Edinburgh. But on her birthday we got engaged after having been together for ohIcan’trememberhowmanymonths - sorrykathyitwasn’tlong and she upped and moved to London, landing a place to live just down the road from me in East Finchley. My faith grew massively in Edinburgh, but I kind of largely put that down to God and that guy, as well as a bit from the church. Bill Hybels‘ books were a big influence on me at the time - particularly Dare To Be Different. I walked away from uni with £3.5k of debt (c.$5k at the time) but through my dad being very generous with his cash and also me learning to budget, that was as bad as it got. Quite ironic as I was heading to be an equity analyst for an investment management firm and about to experience losing a whole lot more at times…….

The London years:  I wonder what the worst day in London was. Was it losing £120m ($240m) in a day (stock market crash - was only an 8% swing) or a $4m hit to my profit and loss in 15 mins one morning? Or the day I was in at 5.30am and left to go home at 12.30am the next day, going home for 4 hours sleep? I actually remember many tough times from London but there were many many great times, and I see it as part of my life where God taught me several things 1) I can find out about God in the bible 2) Unity is something God is passionate about 3) marriage needs to be worked at 4) you can’t live a stressed out life for a long period 5) there really is more to life than work!

I was a member of Enfield Evangelical (meaning bible teaching) Free (meaning non denominational) Church for 10 years. Our pastor was and is a Godly man and had a real heart for helping people coming to know God better, and to understand His word. That helped me to see about context, about studying scriptures, about accuracy, about themes through the bible, about the dangers of mis-interpretation.

I struggled with life at times in London, largely work related. My first job was with a fund manager that ran £65bn ($100bn) of assets. Hours were reasonable and travel was light. Stress was low, but so was the challenge and I was still your everyday “i’llshowyoualli’velearnedissomuchbetterthanallyourexperience.”

So I left there in late 1999 and went on a secondment for a few months, to look at creating dotcom startups, with £150m capital behind us. I bailed out when it moved from vision to execution and we changed consultants from Ernst & Young to AT Kearney - it was like moving from brainstorming to gant charts overnight. This job was the best and worst of times. The best because the companies I had access to (Doubleclick, Salesforce.com, Sun, IBM, QXL, various Venture Capitalists in the Valley, a futurist) were at an amazing point of creating the future. But it was the worst of times for personal reasons. Kathy and I really struggled with this, solely down to my selfishness and lack of discipline and drinking, as well as me being in California or Boston or NYC or just flying trans-atlantic a lot of the time, sometimes just for a weekend. Hours were very long, but it was good to get out. Just after I left, the dotcom boom imploded.

Which was good. But not good. Because I had gone to work for an American Investment Bank as an equity research analyst, analysing Sofware and IT Services companies. Frying pan and fires anyone?

I experienced a lot of travel during the period, visiting California, New York, Orlando, Tokyo, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal and Ireland. A lot of the trips to Continental Europe were the nice 4.30am starts, with an 11.30pm return the same day, only to up and do the same the next day. Fun :-)…….

 I probably got pretty close to depression at this time, feeling pretty swamped by the job, the hours, the stress, the travel and lack of real genuine relationships. Kathy kept me going a lot of the time, and was a real rock. God hung onto me then, even when I was lashing out at everyone to blame them for the struggles I was having. Not the finest hour and one I regret deeply. We decided I should move, but it took a year to do it, before being blessed by an unexpected out of the blue offer to go back to my old job at the fund management company. Uhhh, yeah I think that might be a good idea………

The two years meant I missed a load of groups at church, I never felt I fitted in to a suburban non-commuting non-city church - because of my own problems and propensity to blame others for my problems, I probably wasn’t much fun to be friends with back then. I learned a lot about myself during these two years. My health deteriorated significantly during the period, which is not a surprise given how I felt.

The next 2 years were great from a work perspective, and being happier and healthier made a major difference for those around me. Kathy and I began a small group that met in our house monthly, for people who struggled to get home in time for other small groups. We met Sunday lunchtimes and ate together, studied together, prayed together, laughed, cried and mourned together, rejoiced together, played together and learned together. It was a great group, and could have gone on to be awesome. It carried on pretty much until we moved back to Edinburgh.

After 2 years, just when I had my application ready to send off (literally) to do an MBA at London Business School part-time, my employer got taken over. I thought they were canning our team and so sought some new offers (almost ending up in Dublin at one point), eventually moving to work for a West End based Equity long/short hedge fund with >$2.5bn of assets under management on the fund I worked on. This was earlier starts, but earlier finishes, so worked out almost ok.

Problem was the job was a real challenge, with decisions made in seconds, and consequences felt in $millions and in minutes, not days or weeks. The job was simple - make the fund money. Nothing else, nothing more.

God taught me so much through the London years - on unity, on His goodness, on His passion for His Name, on His grace, on His word, on His church, on small groups, on people, on me and it was a time I had to go through. It wasn’t always fun and it wasn’t always bad - it was life.

But when Kathy and I decided to move back north, it wasn’t too difficult a decision. I think I left part of my heart here anyway. Or maybe that was Hearts, as I’d been flying north fortnightly to watch home games for the year before we moved up here.

The Edinburgh Years:

In the last year before we moved up, we started trying to find somewhere to live. We’d decided to move without jobs and so were radically re-assessing budgets etc, on the assumption we’d have to work for a lot less money than we got paid in London. We were both blessed with jobs - I got a job with Bank of Scotland and Kathy got one in her field. I also got 8 weeks off between jobs, which was just awesome, spending 3 weeks of that in Vancouver, Hawai’i and Vancouver Island.

We checked out quite a few churches when we came back - we knew things had moved on in our lives since we were last here, and our heart was for a local church that had a passion for its community, and believed in engaging with other churches and getting involved in what we then called social justice issues. We wanted to find one quickly and throw ourselves into it.

Meanwhile, God was doing an amazing work in me, using the “free” time I had between jobs to fill my mind with new writers (Michael Frost, Shane Claiborne, Mark Driscoll, Brian McLaren, Rob Bell) as well as introducing me to podcasts of Mars Hill (both of them!) and some great blogs - not least Jamie, Rick, John and John and Jerry.

Despite starting a new job, and both of us loving being in Edinburgh for the great city this is, the lifestyle we can now lead with reduced hours, and for getting to see family more often, the greatest joy has been the amazing journey we’ve both continued since we came here. God has opened our eyes to so much more of Him:

- that His good news started in creation, goes through fall & redemption & finishes in restoration of ALL things.

- that He cares for the poor, the oppressed and the marginalised and that means WE help

- that being FOR God is so much better than just knowing OF God

- that God is a creator, we were made in His image and so we are called to co-create, to cultivate what is good.

It’s a journey, not a destination, that I’m experiencing right now. Our God truly is an awesome God.