​James MacIver: From pig farmer to leading light of the church

​Like every other weekend throughout the year, Sunday observance is still largely adhered to, so most of the commercial premises are closed.

But on this special weekend, a welcome sanctuary is provided, somewhere for a hot drink and the sustenance of a breakfast roll. And it’s in a setting that would take most people by surprise – the Free Church of Scotland on Kenneth Street.

It would have been unthinkable a generation or two ago – the doors of the church being thrown open on the Holy Day for crowds of bleary-eyed revellers, some still bedecked in their colourful festival attire, the very antithesis of “Sunday best”.

But this is a church that’s today very much changed in terms of how it engages with the wider community.

And one individual who has been central to that, certainly in terms of public profile, has been the Reverend James MacIver, who has retired this year.

For the last eight years, he has been the minister at Kenneth Street and it was on his “watch”, for want of a better phrase, that they began offering breakfasts on the Sunday morning to the HebCelt visitors.

“The initiative came from someone within the congregation actually,” he said. “They approached me and the elders to ask if we could provide breakfast for those who were waiting for the ferry. But also to invite them to the service if they wanted to come, which is at 11am. We discussed it and very quickly came to the conclusion that it was a very good idea.

“There wasn’t actually much opposition but those that did we managed to persuade them that the Bible emphasises that it’s lawful to do good on the Lord’s Day.

“Gradually over the years - it’s been going now for six or seven years - people got to know this was available. They were absolutely amazed, most of them. They would come to pay and we would say: ‘No, this is a free service; this is a service the church is providing to you’. They would say, ‘no, no that can’t be right’ and try to pay, but not we would say, ‘’no charge; it’s something we want to do out of kindness.

“It helped with two things. Firstly with the profile of the church, that it was genuinely interested in people and people’s welfare as well as in preaching the gospel. But also it gave incomers to the island an insight into what we as islanders do, that people care about others and people in need.”

That central message is, or at least should be, a central tenet of Christianity. And in Rev MacIver the church had someone who was able to communicate it consummately, as adept at dealing with the media and the church’s detractors – of which there are many – as he was preaching from the pulpit. He embodied the kind of minister who was approachable and relatable, the human face of Christianity and the Free Church.

In which case it is rather surprising to find out that he was far from a natural communicator in his younger days.

“I was never somebody that was at all confident in public speaking. The very opposite in fact. I was quite a good singer in my younger days and when people would come to visit my mother she would ask me to sing them a Gaelic song, but I never sang in front of them, I would have to go behind the door or something. So I was naturally reticent in public.

“That ability (to communicate) might have been latent and waiting to be brought out but it certainly wasn’t something that was natural for myself. My pre-disposition was not to do anything in public.

“But when I realised what was happening in my life and where the Lord was pointing me I had to reckon with the fact that you needed to speak in front of people and even to the extent of preaching, which then developed naturally.

“Once I started I found it was something I really relished in many ways. But when the Lord calls you to preach the gospel you expect He will give you the ability to do that, whatever your background.”

James was born and brought up on a croft in the village of Tong in Lewis, and today stays just a few doors down from the old family home. He was a practising Chistian from a young age, but at the start of his professional life had a job which, it’s fair to say, will not be typical of a Free Church Minister, or indeed any man of the cloth – a pig farmer, no less, something he “absolutely loved”.

“I was keen on agriculture because I had been brought up with my father working the croft. Every day after school you had some duties, taking the cows out, watering the animals, whatever. That was my background and that’s what I intended pursuing as a career.

“I went off to study at the North of Scotland College in Aberdeen. After I finished that diploma I got work at a farm near Inverurie. It was a mixed farm and my part of it was looking after a large pig unit. I spent three years there and the two older children were born at that time.”

His wife, Donna, was nursing in Aberdeen and they were members of the Free Church of Scotland in the city. But then tragedy was to strike which necessitated a move back home to Lewis.

“Donna’s father was a fisherman and he was lost in the harbour. Her late brother had drowned four years before that; he was also on a fishing boat. So that’s what brought us back. I got work with the council as a costings clerk down in the Labour Depot, which was in Parkend then. That depot was basically responsible for all the council house work and there was a large store. I was the clerk, keeping tabs on all the ins and outs. I was there for a couple of years before deciding that I had to follow this urge to study for the ministry.”

So, how did that come about, how did the realisation that he should become a minister of the pulpit manifest itself?

“It’s hard to explain because it’s very subjective. Everyone has a different set of circumstances through which that comes about, but ultimately it comes from the Lord himself laying this upon your heart. It’s an urge that is not of yourself.

“I was greatly helped by people, two men who worked in the store in Parkend, in particular: the late Norman Campbell and Alasdair Graham (Alasdair Ruaireagan). They were both prominent, experienced elders.

“Alasdair actually broke down in front of me with tears on his face when I told him. He said that from the very first time he met me he thought he should start praying that God would put me into the ministry.

“I found that hugely helpful. I was looking for confirmation, as you do all the time in these situations, and when you find a man who was as experienced as Alasdair was and who had been used to preachers all his life… to have that sort of view of you was really helpful and confirmatory that this was the right thing I was doing.”

So it was a move off the island again to renew his studies, this time to Glasgow and then onto the Free Church College in Edinburgh to complete his training.

“I graduated in 1987 and my first congregation was East Kilbride Free Church. It was a very small congregation, very fragile in many ways. In fact, nowadays they wouldn’t have been allowed to call a minister because financially they weren’t fully able to support one, they were dependent on outside support.

“I spent 10 years there. It was a very steep learning curve for me but a very rewarding one. The congregation had to be built up from a very small base. One of things we did start was Gaelic services and that brought folk along.

“We had 14 communicant members and 14 adherents when I started and by the time my ten years were up we had over 43 communicants, and attendances on Sunday would be between 50 and 70. That was a fairly sizable increase. They were very rewarding years and very formative in terms of your thinking.”

In 1997, Knock Free Church in Lewis came calling and he spent 19 years there before going on to the Free Church’s largest congregation, in Stornoway, in 2014, serving as church Moderator in 2011.

Over that time his profile grew – and not just within the church. He became well regarded for his ability to communicate to the wider world the church’s position on various aspects, and in terms of general community engagement on the island.

“Essentially the church hasn’t changed, but its methodology has in terms of presenting the gospel and involvement in community matters. When I was in Point I was asked if I would come to the Point Show and do a prayer. I was very glad to and it’s a practice that continues to this day, I understand.

“If you went back sufficient years that would have been much more difficult to agree to. As a minister then you just didn’t get involved in everyday things like an agricultural show. I’m not sure that giving a prayer would have been objected to, but getting involved in community matters, unless it was specifically Christian, tended not to be done.

“I wanted to get round that and get across to people that the Bible says ‘salt and light’ for a reason; that you are salt and light in your community. People have to see your Christianity in practice. By and large there are very few things in the community that you can’t, as a Christian, be involved in whole-heartedly.”

A number of years ago, Rev Maciver found himself at the centre of a major media story when plans were announced for the building of a mosque in Stornoway. You could almost sense that the more sensationalist sections of the press were salivating at the prospect, the old tropes ready to be re-hashed, along with the stereotypes and prejudices: “wee frees up in arms at mosque”, the headlines and quotes already written, just waiting for some “hardline” minister to happily oblige.

Only they were completely wrong-footed. What they found instead in Rev Maciver was the embodiment of religious tolerance, someone who was able to communicate a message of religious freedoms, while pointing out that Muslims have happily co-existed in this community for years.

It didn’t completely stop the negative headlines, of course, as others were only too happy to deliver a less enlightened message, but it certainly helped quell a media onslaught, while also portraying a positive image of the island.

“It helped me hugely that the local media here were keen to get our genuine view of things. In the old days you wouldn’t have had that media engagement, but, while making it clear that my view of Islam is that it is utterly contrary to the Christian faith, I found it essential to present the whole thing in terms of freedom: freedom of conscience; freedom of religion; freedom of speech. They are essential ingredients in any democratic society and we have to maintain that.

“I know some people say that it’s going too far to say you can have a mosque beside your church, but Muslims have a conscience too and you can’t actually look at Muslims and say the more volatile and militant Muslim is the typical Muslim because they're not. As I said at the time we’ve had Muslims running businesses here in the islands for many generations. They are very well respected and they respect us. But freedom of religion was the key ingredient.”

There was, of course, "some opposition" from other Christians to his public stance, but that “mostly came from other denominations”.

“I found it quite easy to go back in history and look at the founding fathers of the Free Church, who faced hostility from landowners for wanting a place of worship.

“I remember coming across a speech in the House of Commons from Thomas Guthrie who was one of the main founding fathers. His view was that no-one has a right to come between a man and his conscience, or from a man and his God if it is different. I might want to convert him to my religion, and do it in a civil way, but I’ve no right to deny him freedom.

“The Free Church fathers had a very strong view of freedom of religion so I was able to draw from that and show people that merely denouncing this as non Christian and that it shouldn’t be here is not compatible with what the church's traditional view has been, ever since it was founded.”

That last exchange demonstrates why, even in retirement, it would be a shame for him to slip quietly into the background. He has been too much of an asset: highly regarded as a preacher, but also in terms of providing a more positive image of the Free Church.

He laughs when asked what it is that ministers do in retirement anyway, the inference being that they never truly do so, only just get older. But, he says he will be able to devote more time to other pressing matters.

“At the moment I’m just busy doing all sorts of DIY stuff. It’s also important to keep up one’s activity of mind, at least in terms of reading or studying, and not just stop that all together. There are always opportunities to preach which I’ve always loved since becoming a minister.

“But one of the things I’m looking forward to, God willing, is being able to spend more time with family and not have to work round church commitments.”