Rock around the f lock... DJ who is now a minister
HE has worked as a DJ, car salesman and nightclub owner, trying hard not to follow in his father’s footsteps as a Church of Scotland minister.
For years Scott McCrum felt going into the ministry was ‘the last thing he wanted to do’ – until one day he heard the call and bowed to the inevitable.
Now the new minister at Old Kilpatrick Bowling Parish Church in Dunbartonshire is on a mission to bring the Church of Scotland into the modern era.
The 36-year-old Porschedriving cleric who has turned a church hall into an under 18s nightclub and run a ‘Funday Club’ in place of Sunday school says: ‘My dad is a minister and I grew up with the stigma of being a minister’s son. Being a minister was actually the last thing I wanted to do.
‘I looked at other traditional ministers like my dad and I thought I wasn’t anything like them, so how could I do it?’
Before answering the call to the ministry, Mr McCrum suffered from depression and anxiety and in 2012 spent £12,500 on a specialist hair-restoring operation.
But after being ordained in 2015, he felt able to set up a depression and anxiety support group to help others at his first church in Glenrothes, Fife.
The following year he felt confident enough to audition for ITV’s The X Factor, performing for the show’s executive producer after sending in a video of himself singing a hymn.
Unsuccessful at first, he now says: ‘I think I will go for it again. The first time I was really nervous in front of the camera. I don’t think I would be as nervous the second time around.’
Mr McCrum says being a minister is very similar to working as a DJ: ‘It’s the same as being a minister because you’ve got to play to your crowds.
‘There are two options. I can do what I’m called to do as a minister and take weddings, funerals, baptisms and the services – some people would be happy with that. The second option is to try to build the church and drive it into the modern era.’
Although he has given up fulltime DJ-ing after more than 2,000 gigs, he is planning to spin the discs at a 90s retro night and a church charity fete.
‘I think it will be funny for people from the congregation to see me in that capacity,’ he says. ‘I’ll be wearing my dog collar while I am up there, so it should be a good laugh.’
Old Kilpatrick session clerk Joyce Dornan said: ‘We have a lot of traditional people in the church, but also people geared for change. It’s good for our youth organisations to have a nice young minister.’