DP Thomson

Early life and career

Born on 17 May 1896 in Dundee, Scotland, D.P. Thomson first led evangelistic services while serving as a lieutenant of the Army Service Corps in the British Salonika Army during the First World War. On return to Britain he continued to preach, first as an itinerant evangelist and then as a student for the ministry of the United Free Church of Scotland.

In 1917 and 1918 Thomson was the representative in Scotland of the Heart of Africa Mission (now WEC International) led in Africa by Charles Studd and in the UK by Mrs Priscilla Studd.

As a student at Glasgow University 'DP' (as he was often known, "never with disrespect if not always with affection") created the Glasgow Students Evangelistic Union and led many campaigns, 1922–28, being responsible for encouraging Eric Liddell, the Scottish international rugby player and Olympic gold-medalist athlete, to speak publicly of his faith in Christ.

Thomson graduated M.A. at Glasgow in 1922.

As a publisher, editor and author

While training for the ministry, Thomson founded the Thomson & Cowan trading company and published a series of books entitled Handbooks of Modern Evangelism. As he acknowledged later in life, these were edited by himself and his brother Robert under the pseudonym 'Two University Men'. Copies of the series held in the National Library of Scotland are: Evangelism in the Modern World, Modern Evangelistic Movements, Winning the Children for Christ and The Modern Evangelistic Address.

Thomson edited and/or wrote a substantial number of books and pamphlets on evangelism and on Scottish church history. These were often self-published, a matter of regret to his first biographer, Rev. Dr Ian Doyle. Thomson's three autobiographical works were: The Road to Dunfermline: The Story of a Thirty-Five Years' Quest, Why I Believe and Personal Encounters.

In the 1930s, while Warden of the St Ninian's Centre, Lassodie, Thomson created The Lassodie Press and published further Christian titles edited by him, including Scottish Pulpit: Sermons by representative Scottish preachers, Professor as Preacher: Sermons by Scottish Theological Professors, and Women in the Pulpit: Sermons and Addresses by Representative Women Preachers.

Four of Thomson's books attracted more commercial publishers and a wider readership: these were Men Christ Wants: Evangelistic Addresses, How I found Christ. Personal Narratives Of Conversion, and two books containing stories of missionary adventures, intended for a younger readership: Labrador To Savage Island - Stories Of The Ships Of Christ - Maritime Missionary Adventure Throughout The World, and Goodwin Sands to Solomon Islands: More Stories of the Ships of Christ.

Many of Thomson's pamphlets were on Scottish church history. George Wishart: The Man Who Roused Scotland was commissioned by the Wishart Quarter-Centenary Committee for the commemoration held that year at St Andrews. Other pamphlets were produced in connection with campaigns in particular areas: for example, It Happened in Kintyre supported the campaign in the Kintyre peninsula of 1949.

Adult ministry - first phase

Ordained in 1928, 'DP' served first as minister of Dunfermline: Gillespie Memorial congregation. In 1934 he was appointed to the staff of the Home Board of the Church of Scotland as an evangelist, leading Seaside Missions in the summer and local campaigns in the winter months. During this period he also founded the St Ninian’s, Lassodie, Training Centre (in Fife) and the Lassodie Press.

D.P. Thomson married Miss Mary Rothnie in 1939: she was the daughter of Rev. Douglas Rothnie, minister at Lucea, Jamaica. They had no children.

During the Second World War he was minister at Cambuslang: Trinity Church of Scotland and founded ‘The Church of Scotland Fellowship in Evangelism’.

Many members of the congregation were called up for war-service and at the end of the war the Service Personnel Committee of Trinity Church published a duplicated volume, Letters To The Manse From Members And Adherent Of Trinity Church, Cambuslang, On Service With The Navy, The Army, The Air Forces, The WMS The ATS, The WAAF, The Mercantile Marine, The Land Army And The Nursing Services 1939-1945, on behalf of its funds.

Learning that his friend Eric Liddell had died in a Japanese Internment Camp on 21 February 1945, D.P. Thomson became Secretary to the Eric Liddell Memorial Committee. Funds were raised to assist Liddell's widow and for the education of their children and also to endow an Eric Liddell Memorial Trophy for the best boys’ performance at the Scottish Schools Athletic Championships. To support the Fund, 'DP' wrote a short biographical pamphlet: Eric Liddell: The Making Of An Athlete And The Training Of A Missionary, which was published in Glasgow by the Committee in 1946. The archives of Eric Liddell Memorial Fund are [2014] held by the Lloyds Banking Group Archives (Edinburgh).

Later, Thomson wrote a full-length biography of Eric Liddell: Scotland's Greatest Athlete: The Eric Liddell Story, republished in hardback as Eric H. Liddell: Athlete and Missionary.

Adult ministry - second phase

From January 1946 'DP' was again appointed by the Home Board as organiser for seaside mission and summer camp work, a post which also allowed him to lead evangelistic campaigns. One of these, in Glasgow: North Kelvinside, the parish of one of his seaside mission leaders, Rev. Tom Allan, caught public attention for its use of intensive visiting of the parish by congregational members and volunteers from outside. Thomson came to specialize in Visitation Campaigns, which in their developed form involved teams visiting all homes in the target area as well as most places of work, cinemas, pubs, football matches etc. - the worlds of home, work and leisure. In order to concentrate on this work, he secured Tom Allan's secondment from North Kelvinside to organize the seaside mission programme of 1949.

D.P. Thomson had a supporting role in the Tell Scotland Movement and also in the Edinburgh events of the Billy Graham All-Scotland Campaign of spring 1955.

To coordinate the volunteers Thomson recruited from congregations across Scotland he founded the Work & Witness Movement and, 1955–58, led geographically ambitious campaigns in the Western and Northern Islands. These campaigns were not without their critics. Some thought that the use of volunteers from outside undercut mission by church members living in the area, that the missions were "perfunctory and superficial".

In 1958 ‘DP’ founded his second Residential Centre for Lay Training at St Ninian’s, Crieff, and was its Warden until retirement in 1966 - after which he continued writing from what he described as ‘The Research Unit', his own home at Barnoak, Crieff.

D.P. Thomson was awarded an honorary D.D. by the University of Glasgow in 1962. He died on 16 March 1974.

The Council on Mission and Discipleship of the Church of Scotland is D.P. Thomson's literary executor, and they retain his remaining archive of papers, including his multi-volume 'Diary of My Life'.

Theology

D.P. Thomson, in his autobiographical The Road to Dunfermline, claimed to have learned most from the American evangelist, Dwight L. Moody. He also admired Henry Sloane Coffin and claimed that as an adult his own trajectory was away from the fundamentalism of his youth. Within British evangelicalism Bebbington held the broad or open evangelical approach he described as "centrist" ... "was probably most successful in Scotland, where D.P. Thomson and Tom Allan were leaders of an effective movement of co-ordinated lay evangelism."

As he was not primarily a theologian, Thomson's approach could also be described as "pragmatic".

Evangelism, D.P. Thomson believed, was an imperative: "Evangelism is at once the primary work of the Church and the most urgent need of the hour. It is hardly possible to exaggerate its urgency or to overestimate its importance.... If [the Church] fails to display a living and vigorous evangelism, she has failed in her essential and ultimate mission, and the days of her influence are numbered."

Significance

Although after 1947 Thomson sought primarily to utilize the "sleeping giant of the lay forces of the Church", his ministry was also said to be responsible for "a steady stream of men and women for the whole-time service of the Church, as ministers, missionaries, deaconesses, lay missionaries and teachers".

Thomson emphazised the contribution offered by women to the ministries of the church, publishing pamphlets on Women as Elders: The Verdict of Experience, Women Ministers in Scotland: Personal Records of Experience and Discovery and The Elder’s Wife: her place in the life and work of the Church He supported the Order of Deaconesses.

After 1955 'DP' diverged from both Tom Allan and Billy Graham, preferring to emphasize the significance of the personal approach rather than the mass meeting as means of outreach, publishing his findings in Dr Billy Graham And The Pattern Of Modern Evangelism, Crieff: St Ninian's Training Centre 1966.

Thomson's influence in the Scottish Churches of the period following the Second World War has been compared to that of Rev. George MacLeod, whose biographer wrote: "Church people often divided themselves into Thomson men or MacLeod men".

Not all appreciated Thomson: in a memorial tribute, Ian Doyle acknowledged that Thomson could be thought "a difficult man to work with", "off-hand and ungracious", with an "arrogance and loudness of his manner"; "he gave offense to some by the sheer vehemence of his enthusiasms". Yet he also admired Thomson's deeper humility, loyalty, capacity for affection and commitment.