#317 - David Gibson - Minister @ Trinity Church - Living Life Backward, Ecclesiastes, Building a Church!

Chris Powers: David, welcome to the show. It is a true honor and pleasure to have you with me today.

David Gibson: Thanks so much, Chris. It's fantastic to be here. It's great to be able to talk to you.

Chris Powers: I think it would be essential to start with just a little bit of your background and how you, how life brought you to becoming the minister at Trinity Church out in Aberdeen.

David Gibson: Yeah, sure. Thank you, so your listeners listening will tell me I don't have an American accent. My accent's a mixture of Northern Irish, accent. I have a Northern Irish father and a Scottish accent. Throw it in there as well. I've lived in Aberdeen in the northeast of Scotland for 20 years, nearly 20 years, which is the longest I've ever lived in one place.

Before that, I had only lived somewhere in one place for a short time. I've done it all around the place. So, I have a U. S. passport. I'm one of you guys. I was born in Tennessee when my parents trained to be missionaries with a mission organization called MAF, Mission Aviation Fellowship. And it's a beautiful organization that flies light aircraft into remote areas, medical emergencies, and all sorts of things like that.

My dad's an aircraft engineer, so they were training; I came along in Tennessee, and then we went to Ethiopia for one year, then Tanzania until I was eight years old, and then back to Northern Ireland, where I spent about ten years before I then went back to Africa for a little bit. After studying in the United Kingdom, I kept doing more and more theological study. Ultimately, I ended up in Aberdeen for a doctorate in historical systematic theology. And the church family that we were in was such an amazing, fantastic place to be that we've never left. I've stayed, became the congregation's minister, and yeah, been with these people nearly 20 years, like I said.

Chris Powers: Was there a moment in your life where you remember receiving Christ? It sounds like you grew up in a family where it was prevalent, but is there a moment or a series of events or something that you draw on that you knew this was the life for you?

David Gibson: That's an excellent question; the way I would talk about that, the answer to the question is yes. But I have several moments like that. I asked in the language that we would use and understand. I asked Jesus into my heart about 20 times growing up.

I was in that kind of church tradition. That's what my mom and dad believed. They led me to Christ constantly, and I had several different conversion moments. The way that I would describe it now, looking back, is quite other than that I think I would say now, I don't know. When I came to faith, I had the fantastic privilege of Christian parents who, from the moment I was born, showed me who the Lord Jesus is and kept pointing me to him.

Were any of those moments the moments where I changed myself? I don't know. Hopefully, one of them at least was, but maybe it was before that. I don't know. You see, I'm now a Presbyterian minister. And so all four of my children were baptized as babies, as infants, which, you know, that theology is on a particular understanding of covenant belonging.

Children are born into the covenant, and it doesn't make them converted Christians, but it gives them privileges and rights as covenant people. And so yeah, the world in which I grew up was the world of living Christian faith. I only sometimes wanted to be a minister. I kept thinking I was going to be a school teacher, and I just kept putting that off year after year until eventually, a good friend who I worked with said, no, no, you need to put that aside and use your gifts and love for Christ in a way that is shepherding his people.

And that's how I've ended up doing what I'm doing.

Chris Powers: I'm happy he told you that because I don't know if we would have ever met and the impact that you've had just in the book that I've read that you wrote that we'd talk about a bit, maybe more just the contents of the book. But before we do all that, it would be necessary.

You and I had an opportunity to meet in January this year over in Dallas and spend the day together. You gave a talk, and I've thought about it a ton. And I think this will lead to talking about the church you're working on, but you painted a picture of what Christianity is like in Europe. You could distill it down to Scotland in particular, or you can talk broadly about how you see it in the United States and the comparisons and the contrasts. And I remember leaving that talk, one, feeling grateful for where Christianity was in America, but thinking, wow, I can't believe the picture that you painted in Europe. And so it would be good for you to regurgitate that or give, you know, the foundation of how you see the two, similarly and differently.

David Gibson: Sure. I mean, I know that, well, the way I would put it is that I think it's a commonly understood fact that your founding fathers, the United States, had strongly Christian beliefs, Christian principles, the gospel was there at the very beginning. And I would say in very many ways that both from the Reformation onwards in Europe and then the Pilgrim Fathers, the Founding Fathers in the United States, the gospel took root throughout Europe and the United States, the preaching of the gospel, the simple, clear message that I am not King, I am not Lord of my life. Still, Jesus Christ is Lord, and he has lived the life we all should have lived the death that we deserved.

He raised to the Father's right hand. He's now the world's universal Lord and King, whether people recognize and know him or not. That gospel message took root throughout Europe and the United States, and in both places, formed, for want of a better word, and I know this is controversial and all sorts of things that this may mean and not mean, developed Christian culture.

So, it led to the abolition of slavery. It led to Christian schools and Christian hospitals. It led to the concept of Christians in politics and a just, fair, free society, justice, freedom, and truth; all those things came from the soil where the gospel was rooted in the ground and was growing. And where I'm going with this is that I think in the United States. The observations I've had over the time I've been in the States in the last couple of years are that the gospel root that has led to Christian culture has continued to flourish in the United States in a way that it has died in Europe.

And in the United States, you have a far, far greater heritage at the minute of Christian schools, Christian colleges, and Christian ways of doing things. One of my excellent observations, particularly meeting folks in Dallas, you know, private equity firms and investment companies, all the rest of it, you can tell from reading the bios on the company website that these guys are Christians.

And it's not a Christian company; it's just doing business the same way as everyone else is, but Christians unashamedly run it, and that's out there in the public square. That does not exist in the United Kingdom at all or in Europe. And the Christianizing of the culture that we used to have, Christian schools, hospitals, all the rest of it, has died.

So, Christian education in the United Kingdom is almost, not completely, but nearly nonexistent. And so one of my main observations has been that in the United States, you still have the fruit of the gospel that has grown into Christian culture. And in Europe and in the United Kingdom and in Scotland, where we are, the Christian culture has weathered on the vine and has died.

And there are still magnificent, excellent churches. Still, we are right back, if I can put it like this, right back to the dark ages of preaching the gospel into massive secularism, preaching the gospel into a world where the terms of the gospel no longer make traction sense. You have to work hard to explain to people.

It's not that the gospel can't still make sense because I think that there's some recent work we've done. An English evangelist called Glenn Scrivener has written an excellent book called The Air We Breathe, where he argues things like freedom, compassion, justice, and equality. Those things came from a Christian body if you like.

The body has died, but the ghost is still there. Those things still matter in culture, but they're from the Christian worldview. And in our world, in Europe, in Scotland, what we're trying to say to people is those things that you, that matter, come from the heritage of the Christian faith, but it has long out of the mind of people.

So, where I live in Scotland, Scotland is the most secular country in the United Kingdom, and the city of Aberdeen where I live is the most secular city in Scotland, 1 percent of the population is Christian. So, that's a very long answer to your question, but the thing I say to folks is that in the United States, you often feel like you're fighting a losing battle; you're losing your Christian culture, and you might be. But you are still light years ahead of where we are.

Chris Powers: Is there a moment if we take it to Europe when things begin to shift? Is it recent? Is it within the last few decades? Or has this been a building for what might be centuries? And why?

David Gibson: You'd need better minds than me to answer that.

I'm not a historian. I don't know exactly. I know that there's an English author called Andrew Wilson who's just written a brand new book that is going to be well received and will be of interest to you on your side of the pond as well as here. It's called Remaking the World, how 1776 created the post-Christian West.

So, you know, the year of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Andrew Wilson argues, was a seismic shift that has shaped, that year has shaped where we are today. I have yet to read the book, but I know that in it, he argues that perhaps the most significant figure is David Hume, the Enlightenment philosopher. It may just be that somehow Hume's ideas of, you know, rationality and doing away with God. We're certainly, in Scotland and Europe, we are the unashamed children of the Enlightenment, and it has just impacted everything we can do away with God, and that the human subject is not sufficient to come up with everything.

Chris Powers: You were saying, you were saying when you preach the gospel in Aberdeen, you're often preaching it to folks that can't quite make sense of it. What do you mean by that, that they cannot make sense of the gospel? Like, where do you have to be as a person or a human to where when you're hearing it, you're not making sense of it? And maybe in America, Americans can make sense of it.

David Gibson: I mean, if you think about being in America, right, you grow up your national anthem, you sing about God. And I suppose you could say in the, you know, you pledge allegiance to the flag and God we trust and so on and so on people, your presidents and speeches by saying, God bless the United States of America.

In the United Kingdom, we have God save the Queen. People sing that, but no one's thinking about God when they're singing. You might say, well, no one's thinking really about God in the States either. In the United States, God is somehow still in the language substrata of your culture. Here, when you speak about God or Jesus, it's not increasingly the people we meet in our church family who come off the streets.

Those words mean nothing to them, so they don't have a bank of Bible stories that they learned as a kid. Oh yeah, Jesus, he did that. Increasingly, you meet people who've never even heard of him. So, you think of mission work, sending folks to parts of the world that are unreached people groups. Parts of the United Kingdom are increasingly unreached people groups, and partly, that's a reflection of cultural diversity and immigration.

So people arriving in the United Kingdom changing hugely the makeup of the United Kingdom, which, you know, whatever the correct policies that need to be there is a fantastic thing for the gospel. People are coming here. We don't just have to go there. There just isn't, you know, it's like learning a new language.

You're trying to teach people that there is a God who made us. You're not in charge of your life. Someone else is. He has the right to say what is good and right and proper. And people are like, hang on, no, that's not, that's not right.

Chris Powers: I would imagine being in that position when you see somebody come to Christ. I don't know if the answer or what I'm trying to say is it's like a more dramatic event, but it has to be incredibly inspiring.

To see someone who might not even have known who Jesus Christ was, even as an adult, come to see Jesus. That's a lot of the joy in your life.

David Gibson: Absolutely. It's a fantastic thing when it happens. I can think of it. You know, a handful of instances over the last couple of years where that's happened.

The main thing you would say about it is that even if there is a dramatic moment, even if there's a moment of decisive shift, the mess of conversion is enormous because this person is now thinking in a whole new way, leaving, perhaps, or introducing difficulties into family relationships, mainly where there are things like gender and sexuality decisions that are significantly going to change.

Discipleship becomes a long-term construction project, as it is for all of us, but you see it so clearly with somebody who's just come with no Christian background whatsoever. The joy is sundry with tears and the cost of following Christ in this environment.

Chris Powers: And one more, and then I want to talk about the church a little bit, but Can you give a little more color to it? You said Scotland is the most secular of all European countries, at least in the UK, and then within Scotland, Aberdeen is the most material.

It's like the 1 percent of the 1%. I mean, you're true; what is it like to be the 1 percent of the 1%? You've traveled all over the globe, but what's it like for maybe not you but the average person who is a Christian in Aberdeen?

David Gibson: I mean. I want to be clear that it's not like we're not living in North Korea or a person, you know, we're not actively persecuted every day for our faith, but then, if you liken it to like a frog is slowly boiled to death in water that's just, temperatures have just turned up slowly, on everything from questions of gender, sexuality, the legality of employment for Christians if you hold a particular view, certain beliefs about things, medical ethics that some of, I mean, our church family consists of people in education, oil, and education, oil, and medicine, and the type of issues that Christian medics are having to take a stand on and face with courage and boldness. It's more like death by a thousand cuts. It's not that there's one particular onslaught. You're just living in a culture where the powers that be, government powers, have no deference to the idea that they are not the ultimate power. There is no sense of a higher power they might have to answer to or that Christian people might have to answer to.

The conception of politics and what is good is entirely natural, with no sense of the transcendent. And that filters down in terms of being like a heavyweight, placed over your opposing vision of what life should be.

Chris Powers: Okay, then you had the brilliant idea that in this 1 percent of the 1 percent, you would buy a church.

And I think a crazy idea, you crazy guy. And one of the things that struck me was crazy was you were showing me also projects of what's happening to all these churches, and you were sending me beautiful buildings that had been set up, you know, for hundreds of years that are now one by one turning into nightclubs and entertainment and churches are, I guess they're following the way of kind of the 1%. They're also becoming the 1%, but you decided to buy one. Can you tell me that story?

David Gibson: Sure. So, our church family born in 2011 was natively homeless. We began with no property at all. We rented space in a hotel ballroom for seven years. And then, the opportunity to buy Aberdeen's largest traditional church building came up.

We weren't particularly looking for it, but this building from the national church came up for sale. And if you were looking at a church planning map of our city, how could we be strategic? Where's the best place in our town to plant a living gospel witness where there's no light on a Sunday or through the week in this part of time? Where would you drop a pin on the map?

This building was precisely in that place. It was; you couldn't have picked a better, more needy location on many levels. The building is on a fault line in the city. You come out the front doors of the building; you turn left, and you're into some of the city's most significant social needs. You go out the doors, and you turn right, and you're into the city's wealth, the economic and judicial heart of the city center.

The building straddles both areas, and then further up the road, there are vast numbers of student accommodation with the potential to reach a diverse sector in the city of both economic deprivation and need, but also the need that there is with wealth. People often forget that rich people are as needy as poor people and often a lot harder to reach because they don't need help; they've got everything.

We want to highlight the gospel in this location, and this building came up on the scene for us. It was built in 1904 and has been popular in every congregation that has been in it ever since, but because there has been no gospel over the last decades in that church, the numbers have dwindled, it's declined, and we were able to purchase it.

And to this day, Chris, still, it's the most fantastic thing that's ever happened to us as a church, and it's probably the stupidest thing I think I'll ever do in my lifetime. So, there we are, yeah.

Chris Powers: Why is it the most fantastic thing you've ever done?

David Gibson: It's the most fantastic thing because, by rights, we shouldn't have been able to buy this building. There were a lot of things stacked against us. The people selling it shouldn't have wanted to sell it to us, and they did. We, at the time, walked around it thinking, this is too big for us. Should we buy this? And then we bought it in 2018. And since then, over the five years since then, our church has grown, not necessarily massively in numbers. We're about 220 on a Sunday. We weren't that size when we bought this building. But we've seen growth in a way that we could use every corner of this building. We will use it; enough things are happening to use every part of this building.

And here is a fantastic thing: God has given us promises we can use like this. But one of the other things that I think is part of what's so unique about it is we've had a core belief in our church for several years. It is a principle called structures that tell stories. That is how we set up a thing, and you're in real estate. Hence, you guys, you know, you're, this is all over what you do, that the structure of something is always telling a story, you know, the way the building is, tells the story of what it's for, that the White House does not look like Grandma's cottage down the road because it's telling a story of greatness and grandeur. We believe our church service on a Sunday, the way the service is structured, is meant to tell a story, to tell the story of the gospel. So we open with a call to worship; God calls, and we respond. When we respond, we praise him; then we confess our sins. We do that every week because we're trying to tell the same gospel story every week.

And it's the same with physical buildings, that we construct the building to tell a story of a beautiful God and a great God. So it's the most majestic building. It's the most beautiful building in Aberdeen city center. You know, a gallery seats a thousand people, a high roof, a beautiful organ.

The space is majestic. And it was built like that to tell the gospel story. And in a world of what commercial real estate is like for you. Still, in a world of increasing what, you know, if you go back to David Hume in the Enlightenment, when you lose God, when you lose transcendence, you end up with the 1960s, brutalist, minimalist architecture. There's no; the human subject has turned in on himself, himself, and herself, and there's no more incredible story to tell. You will agree. I'm sure we don't build buildings like we used to. And as we do that. The structure reveals the story, tells the story that we think we're ultimate, and older buildings used to believe God was supreme.

So we feel that we have a building that has the potential to match the gospel story that we're trying to tell, that we can put the lights back on in this building, put people into it, our church family into it. We think the potential to tell our city about who God is from a facility like this is second to none.

Chris Powers: And that's a lot of what we met over was you had bought this church, and you're in the process of bringing this back to life. Where are you on the journey? What are the obstacles that you're facing, and what do you need to get this place open to be a light in Aberdeen? You know, to so many people.

David Gibson: The short, simple answer, Chris, is money is what we need. We have nearly everything else. We have a fantastic professional team in place. We've reached the point of phase one beginning. So we tried to conceptualize the whole thing in one go, just renovating the building from top to bottom in one shot. And the numbers, particularly after COVID, the project cost has doubled because of COVID and mainly the war in Ukraine.

That's what's hammered us, really, with steel prices increasing. We weren't able to afford to do it all in one go. So, we split it into two phases. Phase one, the exterior of the building, fixing the roof, putting new windows in, cleaning the granite and all external electrics. We've got all the money for that, and that's all underway, but we're in the process of trying to raise 2.3 million pounds to do the inside of the building, and we have about half a million towards that we're still trying to find the rest, and it's as simple as that. There's a team ready to go if we can. Phase one will run through till April 2024, and then we have to see where we are, whether we have to pause again or keep moving into phase two.

Chris Powers: If somebody here were listening and interested in learning more about it, how would they find how to know more about the church, maybe how to give, perhaps get more involved in one way or the other?

David Gibson: Well, thank you. Yeah, the two main ways are you could go to our church website, trinityaberdeen.org.uk.

Trinity aberdeen.org.uk has a section on the building project and transparent information about how to give both the UK and the United States. We also have a Trinity YouTube channel. If you look up Trinity Church, Aberdeen, on YouTube, that's where I would direct people. We have two videos on there.

One's a 10-minute film telling the story of our building and why we think this is worth doing. You'll see what you mentioned: some stunning examples of buildings that have become pubs and clubs. And here's this one building we're trying to keep as a church building should be.

That's a 10-minute film, but then we've also got a one-minute 30-second film showing the work is beginning. That's the exciting one for me that says it is happening. So, if someone wanted to get a feel for the building, and, you know, you can't quite believe me that this building is fantastic.

If you go to YouTube and take the time to watch the story, you'll see why it's captured and captured our hearts so much.

Chris Powers: This is a dumb question. It is coming straight from an American. I'm going to be in Ireland next August. How far am I away from the church?

David Gibson: Where in Ireland are you going to?

Chris Powers: That's an even better question. I just got it. I heard my wife and I are planning a trip for a buddy's birthday, and I have yet to look at the invitation, but I will be out there.

David Gibson: Well, let me give you an answer for an American then, that is, you're just next door. You pop across to us.

Your conception of distance is so vast that you could be in Aberdeen, but wherever, generally, wherever you are, you're most likely to be flying into Dublin or Belfast, you're, you're an hour from Aberdeen.

Chris Powers: I'm coming next August.

David Gibson: Come and do it. It would help if you did it.

Chris Powers: I have a funny story. I went to Asia, to Thailand with my wife.

Before, we had kids like ten years ago, and we had ten days to do it. And so I called the travel agent, and they said, well, where do you want to go? And I said I'd love to go to Japan. I'd love to go to Singapore. I'd love to go to Thailand. And we have to make all this work in 10 days. She emailed me back, and she said, sir, you realize most of these flights are 12 to 14-hour flights.

And in my head, I was flying from Texas to New York, so I needed to get my geography a little bit better.

David Gibson: Yeah, you're big flights to Ireland, but honestly, once you get to Ireland, you're right next door, everything's, you'll be amazed how small everything is once you, once you get there.

Chris Powers: Alright, I want to talk a little about how we found each other, a book you wrote called Living Life Backwards, or Living Life Backward. It was a book about the story of Ecclesiastes, and if anybody listening to this has yet to read that, it's sobering but also life-giving, so we could go back and forth on what all that means. And I decided to lead it out with how you would describe the book of Ecclesiastes.

David Gibson: So I would say the critical thing you need to know about Ecclesiastes, if you open a Bible and you find a book of Ecclesiastes, you need to know that it's a subset of a specific type of literature within the Bible.

It's wisdom literature. And when you locate it with its cousins or brothers and sisters in the Bible, it helps you make sense of it. So, the wisdom literature in the Bible is wise people who love God and who believe in the God of the Bible, looking at the world and telling you what they see in the light of knowing him and loving him. So there is the other wisdom literature in the Bible in the book of Proverbs and the book of Job, famously, you know, a well-known book because of the suffering that Job experienced. The best description I ever heard is that somebody said that Proverbs is about the perception of order in the world.

God created this to work in this way and that to work in that way. There is an order to the world. Proverbs is all about that. Being wise is knowing what the order of the world is. Job is about the hiddenness of order. Something terrible happens to Job, and he can't understand it, and he never really gets an answer to it.

But God tells him, I know what the order is to everything, but you'll have to trust me. And in that context, Ecclesiastes, you've got the perception of charge, the hiddenness of order. Ecclesiastes is about the confusion of demand that this world has to work in a certain way, and yet, oh, it's not.

I thought it would do differently. I've done all this work, and I'm still not happy. But how does that work? And that the right of Ecclesiastes is perplexed a lot of the time, scratching his head about how to make sense of life. And so Ecclesiastes is a book; if anybody listening or watching has ever wondered how life makes sense and thinks, well, I'm not interested in the Bible because everything's neat and cut and dried, black and white, open and read Ecclesiastes and there is your angst on the page for you and Bible of all places.

Another thing I'd say about how you would describe the book of Ecclesiastes is, and again, I think it's an attraction to the Bible; if you've ever thought of the Bible in a monochrome way, think of it like this. If you're going to write a book that says life is perplexing and bewildering, and life often slips through our fingers just as you think you've got hold of it, it disappears.

Wouldn't it be a fantastic skill to communicate that message by writing a book that leaves you scratching your head, and the book itself slips through your fingers? Ecclesiastes is a book where the form of the book mirrors the content of the book. It's a genius piece of writing that I'm going to show you that life leaves you scratching your head by giving you a book that leaves you scratching your head.

Chris Powers: Okay. So, if I say to you, which is a line in the book, life in God's world is a gift, not a gain. What does that mean?

David Gibson: So what Ecclesiastes does is it looks at human people. There's a tradition that King Solomon wrote the book. He may have done. We don't know for sure. He likely did.

There's a good case, but he did do that. But whoever it was wrote the book after a lifetime of looking at the world and realizing that the things that human beings try to hold on to and to stuff in our pockets to make us happy, successful, healthy, and wealthy, our bags aren't big enough that the more we press into them, the more we want.

And sometimes, we find ourselves with more than our hands. Ever thought we'd hold, and we're still left wondering, why am I empty on the inside? And so the book's message is that life is not about gain. It's about something other than how much stuff you can get and accumulate and hold and own and achieve and do. Instead, life is about realizing that the very world we live in and the things God has given us to do are all a gift.

It's undeserved, so the businessman thinks, how much money have I made today, and where's my business going? But Ecclesiastes says, have you stopped to realize that the very fact today you have breath in your body is undeserved? Lavish gift, and have you thanked God for it? And the meal that you had at breakfast with your wife and your kids was one of the most stunning things that's ever happened to you?

Or did you take it for granted and move on to the day? And Ecclesiastes is, to put it in tech terms, a kind of slow-motion book: slow down, stop, and reflect on what God's given you. And some of that comes from this idea of order, again, you know, perception of order, hiddenness of order, confusion of order.

The order that God has put into the world, Christians believe, is that we were born to work, rest, eat and drink, and enjoy relationships. That's what God gave Adam and Eve in the garden to do. Love each other, love the world, tend the earth. Turn the world into a park-like Eden is a garden and relate well to me and each other, and that's a life that's all there is. That's what creatures should do, and Ecclesiastes says yeah, but what we've done is taken all that and said that's a good starter for ten, but now what else can I achieve? And Ecclesiastes says the more you go down that road, the more pain ahead of you.

Chris Powers: All right, I got to keep going on this. It is for me and anybody else that cares, but another line is all are from dust and to dust all return and then there's the constant, you say life is but a vapor and when we're gone nobody will remember us. There are only very few people who remember us. And once they're gone, we disappear with the world.

David Gibson: It's a pleasing book. It's cheerful.

Chris Powers: But we'll get there because it gives you life, and you've already started on that path, but I'll work the conversation there. Why should I be in business, why should I care about my business's success, and why should I have any care about my business, knowing that nothing's going to matter in the long run? I'm just a speck of dust when it's all said and done.

David Gibson: So that's such a good question, Chris, because some people confuse the message of Ecclesiastes with the kind of nihilist, you know, epigram of eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow we die. Ecclesiastes is very close to that. Ecclesiastes says eat, drink, eat, drink, for tomorrow you will die.

But what's different about it is it doesn't say, and therefore, nothing matters. Ecclesiastes's message is to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you might die, and after that there is judgment. Ecclesiastes has a powerful sense that there is a good God in heaven who will bring everything to order and everything to account.

And what I think should Give the Christian businessman in the same way as the Christian pastor and the Christian studio tech guy or the, you know, whoever, whatever it is we're doing, what should give our temporal moments meaning is not just the temporal moment itself, but the reality of judgment. One day, I will give an account to God for what I've done.

And Ecclesiastes says, one of the things we will give an account to God for is, have you enjoyed the world that I gave you? So, some concepts here need to be bigger and more complex. Hopefully, they come out in the book in different ways. For the Christian businessman, Ecclesiastes says if you are in business to be known as the most giant dog in town and the most tremendous success in your field ever and for people to remember you for all time, well, you might get there. Still, very, very few people do.

And even the ones who do, do you remember them a hundred years later, 200 years later? You have your time on the stage, you are here, and you're gone. And the point of what you're doing is not to try and achieve that legacy for yourself. You are a creature, and the only one who deserves to live forever is God himself.

The point of all our work is to be, Ecclesiastes says, is meant to be for relationship. So there is a picture of a businessman in Ecclesiastes chapter four. You meet the top dog in town, and he's earned everything. He's won all the prizes. He's got all the accolades. He's got all the money, but Ecclesiastes says, here's the thing about him.

He's sitting on his own in the restaurant. There is no one with him. And here's the other thing about him that no one, it's not just that he's on his own. It's that no one wants to be with him. And he doesn't want anyone to be with him either. He has taken God's good gifts and used them to inflate himself and his empire.

And he has cut himself off from everyone and everything. And this is not just because I'm trying to raise money for a building project. It is genuinely the message of Ecclesiastes. And I said this in the book way before we had a building project: the point of business is human flourishing on a grand scale, which means if you want to be a happy Christian businessman, I would say you want to be a cheerful businessman or woman, period.

The point of it all is to give big, not to hold that the more you give away, the more richness life has because you realize this stuff isn't mine. It is God's and what, I mean, one of the illustrations I use a lot is, there's a book in the Bible, Romans chapter 11, you're going to have to stop me, Chris, if this is going on, I feel like I'm going in, I'm going into sermon mode, Romans chapter 11, describing God says, for him and from him and to him are all things.

Who has ever given God a gift that he might repay him? Okay, who is ever capable of repaying God in any way? So imagine, you heard me say this in Dallas, imagine the world's richest man; he's a trillionaire, whatever it is, he has so much money, this man can't count it, and he becomes a Christian. He learns about gospel giving, and he thinks I'm going to be radically generous; I'm going to give all of this away.

So he gives nearly every dollar away to Christian causes, to every world mission all over the world. Millions. Ministries transformed the world; the gospel is growing, and the kingdom is spreading through this one man's generosity. What has he given to God? Romans 11 says nothing, absolutely nothing, because It was all God's anyway, it's all his.

So we are like, when you're, you know, I've four kids, a littlest at home, little girl, amazingly spots mum's birthday coming up. You know, the boys are, I couldn't care less. The daughter spots mum's birthday coming up. Dad, can I buy Mum something for her birthday? And she's four, she's got no money. So I gave her mine and mum's money to purchase mum something for her birthday. She takes mum's purse to go and buy mum a present for her birthday. And mum knows it, and it's not thinking how awful that's not yours, that was my money, it's not yours. It's what a parent does. Here's what I have, I give you, and the love that comes back is priceless.

God is like that with us, so your business, every business, it's all God has given to you. It's not yours. And Ecclesiastes is just a book that says, you know, when you know that, it is astonishingly liberating. You can give and give, and you're not thinking I need all this stuff. I don't know. Does that make sense at all? Does that come out the right way?

Chris Powers: It makes sense. It makes a lot of sense because it's often the opposite of what you hear. So yeah, it makes sense. It's not the most accessible pill to swallow. When every waking moment in most people's lives, you just aren't getting this dose of wisdom constantly.

But yeah, it makes total sense. I remember you talking about the trillionaire, and I remember you saying the trillionaire has given God absolutely nothing.

David Gibson: It's essential to be clear that, of course, he is giving what he's done in that example; it's fantastic. What he's done is brilliant, but he's the correct phrase, I think, is he's not repaying God. You know, it's all God's anyway.

Chris Powers: Okay, then you go on to say, or Ecclesiastes says, if you want to enjoy life, it's something like death can radically enable us to enjoy life. So I think a lot of people are maybe scared to die, or death is not something we want to think about.

And while you're younger, probably more, you don't even consider. It's almost like this won't happen to me, or you go about your days as if death is not going to happen to me. Obviously, the older you make it through this life, the more you think about it. Let's start with, why do we not consider it.

And then maybe finish that on why considering death or embracing death brings joy to our life or should bring joy to our life?

David Gibson: Yeah, thank you. Those are great questions. Why do we not? Why do we not consider that? We're so experience-based, aren't we? Unless we've experienced something, we don't know what it is or how to think about it.

And we don't often think about things we haven't experienced. If you're alive, you haven't experienced death. So death is something that happens to other people; that's the kind of just basic observational level. I think at the deeper level, there's a profound fear. Death is the unknown. We know about horrible deaths.

We know about the pain of death and losing family members and close friends. Death is so awful, such an offense and an insult to us, that we drown it out and we push it away. We don't want to think about something so terrible in chapter one of the book. I called chapter one; let's pretend. And it's the idea that the way that we do the life as modern people. Pre-moderns didn't do this before the Enlightenment, but the way we do life as everyday people is on; let's pretend that death is never coming. The end is not happening to us. It'll happen to someone else, but not to me, and you had a second part to your question.

Chris Powers: Why do we, at whatever point you are in our lives, come to grips with mortality or death? It actually could bring joy to your life.

David Gibson: Yeah, so that gets to the heart of the genius of Ecclesiastes is not the depressing book some people think it is. So what Ecclesiastes does, it says, right, let's stop for a minute and think. In your life today, what is the only sure thing?

There is only one certainty about your life, and that is That one day you will die; it's true. If you think about it, that's what Ecclesiastes says: the same end overtakes all rich, young, poor, righteous, and unrighteous. The same fate is coming to them all. There is nothing else sure about your life.

So I'm sitting here in a studio with a good friend, and then when this is over, I'll get in the car and drive home. That's my plan, but will that happen? I hope so. We don't know, do we? The only thing you can know is that one day, you will die. Ecclesiastes takes long enough to stop and think about that and say, Huh, well, if that's true, should I then do with my life, and how should I then live?

And what Ecclesiastes does is shrink the distance that exists between where we are now and the one thing that is going to happen one day that we will die. Ecclesiastes is a book that shrinks that distance right down into the present. So, Ecclesiastes is the book in the Bible that says, now that you've got your head around the fact that one day you will die, imagine that that certain death was the end of this week.

Okay, so I'm recording this on a, what are we, Wednesday afternoon. Imagine that on Friday, you know for sure you will die. What will you now do the rest of Wednesday, the rest of Thursday, up until Friday? Okay. The Christian businessman says, well, I'm running a good company, so I'm going to keep still making money.

But suddenly, money does not become the end in itself. Does it all of a sudden, you think I've got 48 hours left? What will I do with my money that will bless my family and as many people as possible? How can I put as many good things in place as possible? Everybody knows that death is hours away, weeks away, months away; what happens to people the world over? They start running marathons, they climb mountains, they raise money for people, for relational things.

The reality of death brings everything into focus and the things that matter most you start living for the most in the time that you have left. And that, in a nutshell, is what Ecclesiastes does. Take the sure thing and shrink, shrink the timeframe to the present, and imagine it's coming. Because it was coming, it was soon. What would you do differently? How would you live differently? So, in chapter seven of Ecclesiastes. Here's one of the most stunning verses in the whole book. A good name is better than perfume. Okay? Like a proverb that makes sense. Reputation is everything. And the effect of a good reputation, like a pleasant smell in the room.

A good name is better than perfume. And the day of death is better than the day of birth. Now, as it happens, I've just been to visit a couple in church who've had a new baby today. Came a couple of hours ago in the maternity ward, and first baby, first child, I mean, they're clueless, they're on cloud nine.

They have yet to learn how worn out they're about to be in a couple of weeks. You know, they're just holding this precious bundle, and their hearts are bursting with joy. It's one of the most beautiful things I get to do to pray with them and hold this baby in my arms. How on earth is the day of death better than I've just witnessed? And Ecclesiastes says, here's how: because I held that baby girl in my arms, what can I say about her? Nothing. I mean, as I said, she looks like you, John, you know, she's got your hair, and he gets his phone out, and his mom had sent him a picture of him as a baby, and true enough.

She's identical like that's who she looks like. But what else is there to say about her? Nothing. She hasn't done anything. She's just here, and she's loved more than life itself, but she's done nothing. But Ecclesiastes says one day, 60, 70, 80 years, God willing from now, that baby will be in a coffin, in a crematorium, in a church, and it will be her funeral.

And in that moment, what will they say about her? What will people say about her life? One day, that will be me. One day, that will be you, everybody listening. When that moment comes, what will they say about us? So the next verse, after saying the day of death is better than the day of birth, is, it is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a place of feasting, for this is the end of all humanity, and the living should lay it to heart.

You get more wisdom in the crematorium than in the pub at night. It is better to go to the house of mourning than the house of feasting because in the crematorium, you sit and look at a box, and you realize one day that will be me. And when it's me, what will my life have amounted to? And that's why it's good to sit there in the crematorium.

It is the fool who says, this is awful. I need to get back to the pub. I need to get out in the evening. Blank this out. Ecclesiastes says that's foolish. That's why this is wisdom literature because that is coming to you. So, I hope you, I know you understand that you've read the book and you like the book; I hope for people listening for the first time, some of it's making sense that this Why Ecclesiastes is not a depressing book.

It's dealing with a depressing topic, death, but if you've got to blank it out and pretend that doesn't apply to you, well, one day, you're in for a shock, and the people who love you are in for a surprise. But if you accept it and you meet your death in advance, well in advance of your death. Oh, the blessings that can flow from that; the type of person you can become who lives fully is fantastic.

Chris Powers: And that was my next question, which you've touched on, and you started there even when you described having breakfast with your kids this morning as one of the most amazing things you've done rather than just kind of skipping past it. But something that some of the folks from Twitter wanted to know, and I, is just like, maybe you can relate it to you or just like practical things of how does your life begin to change once you do let this soak in and, you know, maybe I would start with what you already said, which is enjoying everything to a different degree than we currently think of it. But what do you think of it? What are some practical steps to take?

David Gibson: Yeah, it's a great question because it's the payoff, isn't we all want to know what difference it makes, and I want to commend the book of Ecclesiastes to everybody listening. Nothing has changed my life as much as Ecclesiastes, a set of sermons I preached, has had as little impact as Sermons on Ecclesiastes because this is where we all live. Ecclesiastes has the potential to free your grip on the things of this world and to let you hold items lightly.

It Ecclesiastes has helped me enjoy my glass of wine more fully, allowed me to enjoy my wife more completely, accepting that, realizing that God has given me this gift of this woman; I mean, let's be honest, what happens in all long term relationships, you take each other for granted, like, and men in particular, I think we do that, don't we, but we all do it, you know, they all say you don't realize what you've got until you lose it, why is that a human phenomenon?

It just is. Ecclesiastes is to slow down and take the time to enjoy those things. Years ago, when I had just finished preaching on Ecclesiastes, and this material was taking root in my heart, I was going off to speak somewhere for a weekend, and with X number of children, you know, crawling around the floor, my wife was doing all the work that weekend. I'm going off to speak for a weekend. And so I'm going out the door, and she says, and you know, we're a cheery, happy couple, she says, don't you dare die, you know, make sure you come back, please. And I said to her, though, I said, well, if I die, I'm ready. And Ecclesiastes had that effect on me. I am, and it's still true today. I'm 47, but I'm prepared to die. I don't have, so I'm doing this building project. And I want to see it done. And it's fantastic. And it matters. And it does not matter if I don't get to do it—God's in charge. God rules the world, not me. And, you know, I don't know if you know this, but, you know, you'll see the world you're in is cutthroat and ambitious, but Christian pastors can be some of the most ambitious people on earth.

And ambition takes, even if you're not ambitious, you can be too busy and overworked and, you know, all the rest of it. And it's because Christian ministry has its form of trying to leave a legacy behind. It's amazingly liberating as a pastor to think I don't have to be; I'm not my people's Messiah.

That's idolatry, and it harms them when I give them more of me instead of more of Christ. I have to be faithful every day. Maybe this church will get done. Perhaps it won't. And if it doesn't, God's on the throne. The world will not end. So you know, there's a kind of, I don't know if that's making sense, it's a kind of freedom to accept that God rules the world, not me. I am a creature, and I'm here; I'm like a breath, but that's what meaningless means in Ecclesiastes. Empty, meaningless, everything is pointless. It's not the word Hevel, the Hebrew word; it's not a philosophy student's first year at university coming home and telling his parents, you know, done a bit of Kant and Hume, and everything's meaningless.

It's not that the word meaningless is as breath, vapor, or mist; everything is a mist. And once you believe that about yourself, man, you stop worrying about many things and start focusing on the good things God has given you and the things that matter.

Chris Powers: When you said, I'm not Messiah of my people of the church. And then you painted the picture where there, there are churches or individuals. Whether they intended to be or they didn't intend to be, they end up in that role. How do you not become the Messiah? Is it just by your walk and your actions? Is it how you talk to people? How do you avoid becoming the Messiah of your church?

If a pastor is listening to this or even not a pastor, maybe you're the leader of a Bible study, or you're the leader of something where people are looking to you, and you are not the Messiah, or you're not trying to be.

David Gibson: That's an excellent question. And the irony is probably some of my, I was going to say some of my church family will be listening to this thing, you know, that's interesting.

Or my wife, that's the main one, you know, you said your wife here, she's just like, yeah. I remember preaching years ago on a Sunday and look, I try not to look at my wife and preach, but I remember I said something, and I looked across at her, and she was sitting down with her Bible, and I saw her, she just went, you know, that little raise of the eyebrows.

Oh, yeah, we're going to talk about that over lunch, aren't we? I think what it practically looks like is saying no to people and not being; Stanley Horowitz, an American theologian, has a phrase that talks about a pastor who becomes a quivering mass of availability, a quivering wreck of availability.

You know, the ability, not being your people's Messiah means showing them that your natural family needs to come first sometimes, not your church family, that you're not always working, that you have a day off, you take holidays, that I don't know. I need to think about that more.

Chris Powers: When I think of Jesus, even in the Bible, He wasn't available to everybody. And I read something the other day that said if Jesus were on earth today with 7 billion people and all the media and iPhones we have, everybody would know He was here. And so even if He was here, the opportunity for you to probably ever get to see Him anyway is so limited.

If we were living within a kind of earthly realm, I thought about that because I've thought, Oh, if Jesus were here, I would fly and see him like that. That isn't practical. And so, as I think about what you just said with that not being available, I think a lot of times people can take that in the context of, Oh, this person's kind of a jerk, or they're just not, you know, available to me.

But when I think of Jesus, I believe in reading the Bible; I mean, he was away praying by himself for a lot of the time. He was only available to some.

David Gibson: Yeah, exactly. I remember reading as well years ago and using Peterson, a well-known pastor in the States. He had an autobiography called the pastor.

He tells about the time when his ministry, in his words, became infected with what he calls the messianic virus. He was trying to do too many things, trying to be everything to his people in every possible way, and He said what helped him was realizing that his Job as a pastor in every encounter with people is to think to himself And with them what is God doing in your life right now rather than?

What can I help you with? When the pastor builds a bit of distance or not distance, Puts God in between himself and the people, it is beneficial that I, yes, I'm, you know, you wanted me for coffee and coming around for coffee fine. Still, you might want to have wanted me for the hour in the coffee, But the best that I can give you is not me. It is God; where are you with God right now?

So a pastor's Job is to, I think, constantly keep Christ in front of people, and you're giving people Christ, not yourself. You give people Christ through the medium of yourself, yes, but when you have that fixed, it's a lot easier to say, you don't need me, and my ministry doesn't depend on me being with you right now today, in this moment, something like that, I think.

Chris Powers: I want to bring it home on a topic that's important to me, but it's important to you, too. We both have young kids. I have a six-year-old, a four-year-old, and a one-year-old. It would be weird for me to walk in and tell my six-year-old, The one sure thing is you're going to die. They're at a period of their life where they're just starting to see the world and are excited, and they're coming into their own.

And so the question is, really, as someone who probably understood the book as well as anybody on this planet, What are ways that you can relay those messages to kids without demoralizing them? I can't tell my six-year-old, you know, you're going to die one day, and it's easier to talk to an adult about that. How do you think about it in the realm of kids?

David Gibson: Yeah, it's so important because, and I've thought about this a lot recently, it's so crucial because Ecclesiastes is a book for young people, that chapter 12, the famous verse, remember your creator in the days of your youth. You know, if that is as clear as day, isn't it, who is this focus on?

And I think parts of the Bible are like that. I think parts of the Bible are age-specific. You get it in the epistles often: older men, younger men, women are addressed. Details of the Bible are gender specific. I think Proverbs is a book for boys. It's a father speaking to young men, the wrong type of money, and the wrong type of sex.

Song of Songs is a book for women to women about not awakening love. That doesn't mean all the other genders shouldn't read the books, but it is sometimes peculiar. And Ecclesiastes, this is what I've wrestled with. Here is a book for young people. I cannot get this message across to young people because there's a man called William Hazlett who said that to be young is to feel immortal.

It is the essence of youth that you feel you'll live forever, and I've wrestled with that load. How do I get my kids to know what I now know about how fleeting life is? My eldest son is an excellent soccer player. He played at a high level, and I remember one day dropping him off for training.

You know, I'm wrestling with all this stuff. And my main thing to my son is, look, Archie, I parked the car, and he's sitting beside me, about to run off. I say you enjoy this; love every minute of it. Just grab it with both hands. And I was so earnest. I was like this. And I looked around, and he'd gone.

He wasn't even in the car. He was like, another sermon from Dad. And, I'm just going to play football, whatever, older man, you know. So, well, that's a long way of saying, here's what I think; I think you're entirely right, Chris, that to be young is to feel immortal, at a certain age, thinking about death in the way that you and I have talked about here today is upsetting for a child, and I don't think that's the way to do it.

I don't think the message you, please ask is to sit your small child down and terrify them with the fact that they're going to die. They do not yet understand that. And here's the best that I can come up with the best way to help our kids understand this is for you and me as dads to be dads who understand it.

So, will your kids grow up to say Dad was a successful businessman, but we don't know him, and we never spent time with him? Or, yeah, Dad was great at what he did, but he put Mum first, and he put us first, and we got all of him? As well as, he made it, you know, fantastic Job with his business.

Will my kids say church came first, Trinity and family? Gibson's family second, and at the same time, all he ever did was talk about that old church building because that's what they make fun of me for talking about wood and windows and all sorts of all these architectural things they roll their eyes at.

When it comes to our kids, what we want as parents is, what can I teach them? Please give me a tip, a book, a way of communicating this information. And that is easier than the challenging task of being the kind of person who understands this material and lives it out. And if I am the kind of dad that says to my kids, I can go under a bus tomorrow, and Trinity Church will be just fine, but I want you to know the Lord Jesus the way that I do, and your mum does with all my heart.

That's harder. But that's the real challenge. We will teach our kids the message of Ecclesiastes by living the message of Ecclesiastes. Do they see that I am radically generous? Or do they see me give lip service to that but build, you know, my securities in the vault? Or am I open-handedly giving and sharing in a way that they're amazed at?

And am I treasuring the good things in life? Or am I left as a child to get on with them myself because Dad's too busy working? Those are the ways to do it.

Chris Powers: David, that's a perfect way to end.

David Gibson: I say all this thinking right now, my kids are going to watch this, and I'm really in for it.

Chris Powers: Well, then, I'll ask you one more question. And this isn't necessarily in Ecclesiastes, but it's something that I think about a lot. I believe it's in Mark, and it's in Matthew as well, but I know it's in Mark, where they talk about how sometimes the most demanding people for you to reach are the people closest to you.

And you kind of just made that joke about my kids listening, and there's often on this podcast, I'll say something, and then I'll walk out and be like, Oh, if only my kids are, thank God they're young. Why is it that sometimes the most complex people to reach are in your backyard?

David Gibson: I wonder, like everything I need to, my best answer will come when I'm driving home half an hour.

It must be something to do, mustn't it, with the people closest to, you know, Andy Crouch has a lovely book called The TechWise Family, and he says that the gift of the family is that our families. See us for the fools that we are like all pretenses die. You're not playing a role anymore. You're, you know, you're home warts and all, and your family sees it when you're tired, and your wife knows when you're irritated, and our family sees the real us. They see the sin that's there, and that creates friction and barrier, and we retreat from that into other forms of, you know, keeping each other at a distance.

I don't know; there's just something about the family being God's most significant mechanism for sanctification. That's what marriage is for. The point of marriage is for us to learn the gospel that even though we were this ugly, Christ loved us and died for us and that the family asks that of us in a way, that the family asks for sacrificial love in a way that no other setting does ask.

Chris Powers: David, this was a great way. I'm just getting my day started—your days. You're heading to dinner, but this was fantastic. And I appreciate your time today.

David Gibson: Real pleasure. I've enjoyed talking to you. Chris, this has been fantastic. Thanks so much for having me.