It was almost two weeks ago that Derek Prime passed away, and I’ve been reflecting on my memories of him. I wrote this in our church email last week:
Derek Prime went to be with the Lord on Saturday. Derek was minister at Charlotte Chapel for 18 years and preached many times at BEC. He also wrote books for every age from children to the elderly, all of them containing clear explanations of Bible truth combined with practical wisdom.
All of that is absolutely true, but it now feels wholly inadequate. There’s much more that could be said about Derek’s life and work, but what I remember most, as do many others is his character. The comment I’ve heard repeatedly is “He was a lovely man.” Perhaps more accurately, he was a man who reflected the character of Jesus Christ as well as any I have known. For me, he epitomised Paul’s instruction to Christians in Philippi, “Let your gentleness be evident to all.” (Philippians 4:5)
One incident sticks in my mind. It was back in the 1990s, and I had booked Derek for the first time to speak at our Family Service (he’d already spoken on Sunday evenings). We’d asked him to speak on Zacchaeus, and a few days before the service Derek sent me a PowerPoint presentation.
The PowerPoint was a mess. There were lots of pictures which might have come from a children’s book. In themselves they were good, but they were all over the place on the slides, with accompanying text often only half-on the slide. Something had clearly gone badly wrong with the technology.
The sensible thing would have been to offer to sort the issues, and I can’t remember now why I didn’t. Perhaps I was under pressure at work and didn’t think I had time, or maybe I felt a PowerPoint would be more of a distraction than a help. Anyway, I phoned Derek and suggested he didn’t use it, saying he really didn’t need it to keep people’s attention (which was correct).
Derek was extremely gracious. It emerged during the call that it was the first time he’d done such a PowerPoint because he thought it was expected at our Family Service, and he’d clearly spent a great deal of time on it. He assured me that it had looked fine when it left him (there was no way he’d have sent it the way I got it) and we agreed the problem arose through different versions of PowerPoint. It now feels really cheeky of me to have suggested that we ditch the presentation rather than fix it, but this finest of preachers accepted the judgement of a (relatively) young man without question and with no impression at all that he was upset or offended by it. And, of course, his sermon was brilliant.
Every other contact I had with Derek demonstrated further his gentleness and his great desire to encourage and build up future generations of preachers (and others). It’s quite a few years since I last met him, but I read and refer to his books very regularly, and every time I do it refreshes my recollection of a man who embodied the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23).
A true Christian gentleman.
OneFiveThree 