Fred Drummond
Fred has been an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland for more than 20 years. He has led both traditional and new churches and has a postgraduate degree in missional leadership and a diploma in pastoral theology. Fred is passionate about storytelling, the power of prayer, the gospel, and unity for extending the kingdom of God. He is an author and writer and has led conferences on new church in various countries. Fred seeks to give focus to the prayer support that is so vital to the work of the Evangelical Alliance.
Living the prayer
7 August 2020In the famous Morecambe and Wise sketch with Andre Previn, Morecambe utters the brilliant line, “I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order.” So it is with those Isaiah challenges: they are doing a lot of the right things but not necessarily with the right motive. Their lives don’t back up their expressions of piety. They are proud, manipulative and abusive. They give the impression that they are close to God, but their lives are not being lived in a Godly manner…
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Values or praxis?
23 July 2020Everything on the list sounded great, and some were extremely important to us as a faith community. However, we soon realised that many of us could not remember why certain programmes and activities had started. This didn’t mean they were bad things, just that we had been doing them for so long that people had forgotten their original purpose. Often, I think these activities had been the passion of someone in leadership in the past. They had gone well as programmes or ideas at the start and…
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Taking good care of yourself
15 July 2020Many of us are exhausted. We have faced challenges that we never expected to face, and without warning or preparation, we were thrown into a blizzard of change. It has been draining. Leaders across the country are starting to feel the strain. There are times when the calling of leadership can leave us feeling like we have been placed in a vice, squeezed from both sides and stuck in the middle of expectation and reality. None of this denies God has been faithful or that amazing things have…
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Living in liminal leadership
13 July 2020We are living through a very interesting time. Many of the things we previously took for granted as ‘normal’ have been swept away. This pandemic, and the future beyond it, has thrust us into uncharted territory. Huge changes can lead us into periods of doubt and inertia, or we can choose to view them as a season of new opportunity where we can think differently, form new collaborations, and do some spiritual and missional exploration. In times of change and upheaval, the certainties of praxis…
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The transformative power of imagination
9 July 2020The Oxford Dictionary defines imagination as “mental faculty for forming images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses,” and “the ability of the mind to be creative and resourceful.” Imagination involves taking time to be creative, to develop unknown worlds. It is forming in our minds external objects which we can’t see, hear, touch, and so on. I suggest it is going to a place where we seek to discern ‘what might be’ rather than living always in the ‘what is’. If we spend a…
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Prayer for evangelism
12 November 2019Fred Drummond, director of Evangelical Alliance Scotland, has written this prayer for you or your church to use, as we celebrate all that God has done over the past year and anticipate all that’s to come this year. Lord, we look back to last year.Thank you for every sign of your grace.For every life transformed.For every broken life healed.Every lost person found.Every one far off brought near.Every sinner saved. Lord it is all about youYour grace,Your love,Your mercy,Your glory.Only you can…
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Inside out
27 December 2018I identify with Richard Foster in his book Prayer, when he wrote: “We believe prayer is something we should do, even something we want to do; but it seems as if a chasm stands between us and actually praying.” So, here I share practices that I have found helpful as I have grown in intimacy with Jesus – practices that have helped shape me as a believer and kept me in the presence of God as I go about my life. 1. Being relational Sometimes I talk too much. I have been married for more than 30…
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The kingdom of the Father’s love
26 April 2018Perhaps the most basic but clearest description of what the kingdom means comes from pastor and author John Piper on his website Desiring God:
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Creating an evangelistic culture
30 May 2017If we are to see our nations changed by local congregations, we must all grow in confidence in sharing our stories of what Jesus has done for us. We must create a culture of confidence in the gospel. We must be disciples who make disciples. And I believe that prayer has a key role in developing such a culture. I would like to make a couple of suggestions that we can all put in place that I think can help move us all forward.Firstly - praying in our community One of the most beneficial things…
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Go - a reflection on the great commission
19 October 2016All the words of Jesus are important. He said nothing by chance, and in the power of the Holy Spirit the words of Jesus are transformative. Perhaps some of the most well-known of Jesus’ words take place as the resurrected Lord meets the disciples on a mountain he had told them to go to. They are recorded at the end of Matthew’s gospel."All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the…
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