The Very Rev. Dr. Martin Fair

Denomination: The Church of Scotland (CS)

Martin was born and bred in Glasgow, Scotland, and earlier this year (2024) celebrated his sixtieth birthday. He is married to his childhood sweetheart, Elaine, and together they have three sons, all in their 20s.

Following his schooling, he went to the University of Strathclyde and left with a joint honours-degree in political and geography. His first steps into the world of work took him to the northern English city of Leeds where he worked for a Church of England congregation, serving as a youth outreach worker in urban priority housing projects.

It was during that time that Martin responded to the call to Ministry of Word and Sacrament, being accepted as a Church of Scotland candidate in the spring of 1986, aged 22. His ministerial formation took place at Trinity College, University of Glasgow from where he graduated Batchelor of Divinity in 1989. His first post was as Associate Pastor at Christ Church (of Scotland) Bermuda. He maintains to this day that it was tough but that somebody had to go!

After two years, Martin and Elaine returned to Scotland where, after a short spell at St. Mary’s Church in Dundee, he was ordained and inducted to the Church of Scotland charge of Arbroath St. Andrew’s on Scotland’s rugged north-east coast.
Arbroath is a historically-significant town of some 25,000 people, centred around its famous Abbey which was founded in 1178 by King William the Lion and where, in 1320, the landmark Declaration of Arbroath was signed by King Robert the Bruce and the Scottish nobles. The Declaration, which was sent to Pope John XXII, sets out the grounds for Scottish independence and contains the stirring line, ‘While a hundred of us remain alive, we will not submit in the slightest measure, to the domination of the English.’

Martin’s ministry in the town was built around dynamic worship, engaging preaching and the mobilisation of the whole congregation in missional endeavour, not least to address the pressing needs of the by-now socially and economically disadvantaged town.
In these years he gained his Dmin from Princeton Theological Seminary (2004) and, for 2020-2021, was elected to serve as Moderator of the General Assembly of The Church of Scotland – the only minister from Arbroath to have done so since the birth of the Church of Scotland in 1560. He will forever be known as the ‘Covid Moderator’.

Martin left the parish in 2023, after 31 years serving the same congregation. He now works in a central role and is responsible for overseeing recruitment to ministry and the support of ministers in their first five years. Though no longer in his own congregation, he preaches most weeks in pulpits across Scotland.