As some of you may know, I am a Christian (it's fairly obvious). This page basically explains why. If you have any questions or want to know more then don't hesitate to e-mail me.

My earliest memory of church would be shortly before we stopped going as a family. I remember grudgingly being dragged away from watching Alf on TV for something that never interested me in any way at all. In fact, I don't even remember what church was actually like, just remember the badness of having to go in the first place. Alf rocked. We stopped going because my little sister cried during meetings and we were asked to leave. Not a good church, really.

Fast forward a few years to year 7 at Queen Mary's Grammar School in Walsall, when Mike Flower invited me along to a junior Christian Union meeting. I thought the people were nice and had no great objection to the teachings as I recall, so I kept going, mainly because Mike and some other friends of mine went and they were cool. I wasn't a Christian at this point, didn't really believe anything one way or another but continued to make up my own theories about things and even had my own religion at one point (granted, it lasted about an afternoon and nobody joined). I went with the Christian Union to various things and stayed with it right up until I finished school. I came away from it all with a vague understanding of what Christianity was about, which I mostly gained from the odd testimony someone gave about when they'd gone away somewhere. I particularly remember one from a girl called Joy who went away overseas and people collapsed speaking in tongues and stuff. This fascinated me at the time.

During my time in sixth form I started going out with a girl who many of you will have heard of. Funny thing was, she lived in Dymchurch (little seaside town in the south, not far from Hythe and Folkestone) and I lived in Walsall (West Midlands, my living room was 107 miles from hers if I recall correctly). I'd spend many a weekend with her and we were together for quite some time, intending to get married eventually. She was my focus for the time we were together, she got all my attention; even though I believed in God, He didn't really come first in any sense. I considered myself Christian about this point, now I'm not so sure I was.

She wasn't Christian, but she was the first person I ever really prayed with. Once, there was a little mishap and she was really scared that she might be pregnant. Anyone who's had an active sexual relationship knows that pregnancy scares suck and are really quite scary, especially since we were only about 17 at the time and not especially worldly. So I prayed passionately with her and held her close. During this I saw a bright light and a sort of shiny crystal in my head. She told me later that not only did she see the same, but also some of the things I prayed with her were exactly (word for word) things she'd prayed out to "whoever or whatever would listen" some years ago in her own search for something before I'd even met her. Of course, we were both in tears and it's one of the things that's really stuck with me from my relationship with her.

Since we were committed to staying together, we once spent some time looking at universities together. I was a year above her so I'd be going to university a year before her, so a place not far from her would be ideal. Of course, we were lead to look at Canterbury. I pretty much forgot about this afterwards, particularly after I cheated on her and we broke up. But later on in that summer, my mum came to my room while I was sitting doing very little (all I really did at the time) and asked what I was going to do next year. I had planned to try a gap year or something but never sorted anything out, and I hadn't applied to any universities because I just hated the UCAS system and forms and such. So, my mum said "Why not go to unversity?". My reply, literally, was "Yeah, okay then, might as well." and I applied in my standard blase fashion to places I could remember the name of at the time.

Hmm. Canterbury.

Turned out it was my best option from an academic sense out of the other places I could think of that wanted me, so I went. I was bundled into a house with random people I didn't get on with and got started on my Computer Science degree. By this point I'd pretty much forgotten about God, he'd been out of the picture after I broke up with the aforementioned girlfriend pretty much, but I realise now that His hand was still on my life even though I'd forgotten Him.

Once registered on the public PCs on campus I found my way onto ukc.misc then UKCIRC and #cs. Since I wasn't the best person ever socially (I'm not perfect now by any means but I used to be much worse) I decided that I'd remain anonymous and just chat online until I was sure these people would just like me based on my personality online. That didn't work, turns out one of the fisrt time I IRC'd I was in the same room as Rorschach, who I ended up promptly meeting after " Mortuus47 are you wearing a black t-shirt?". So I decided not to bother being anonymous anymore.

I met Ducttape, Amberholic and Scumbag pretty early on in Origins where we spoke of several IRCers. Being the sort of person I was at the time, my focus was on getting a girlfriend. They mentioned Clarie, saying that she'd only go out with a Christian, at which point I remembered "hang on, I'm Christian". I later went with Rorschach to meet Clarie while she was working in the library, when I said I was Christian she said she was surprised and I didn't look like it. She invited me to her church and I said I'd go. This was in October, I finally went in December just before disappearing for Christmas.

I caught the minibus to church from where it stopped fairly near to my house. At the stop I waited for some time but didn't speak to anyone, didn't talk to anyone en route either and I don't think anyone tried to talk to me. So I wandered into the church meeting place at Simon Langton Boys School on my own, wearing denim jeans, black t-shirt, full length black leather trench coat and my eyes firmly fixed on my trainers. I looked like I was in exactly the wrong place. Then Tom Shaw came over and introduced himself to me and invited me to sit next to him. I thought the church was weird and not like anything I'd seen before. I won't say I enjoyed it, but I suppose it intrigued me and I resolved to go again in January. I don't remember much of that first meeting besides being greeted by Tom, God didn't really speak to me and it didn't feel like it was all that productive. But, like I say, I was intrigued.

When I went back in January (a few meetings in, I think) I had the most amazing experience of my life, topping the aforementioned one. Everyone was standing up and worshipping, the songs the band were playing had descended into just music, not songs anymore but beautiful improvised melodies. People sung out in languages I'd never heard, praying out in tongues with more passion than I'd ever seen anyone have for anything. Some spoke up in their own languages and brought words of encouragement from God. I sat down in my chair, thought for a moment, and then I put my head down and said something along the lines of "I want to be a part of this". I looked up. Out of the window in front of me I saw a bird fall from a gutter. It wobbled around a bit in the air, not quite touching the ground, before righting itself and pointing right up towards the sky where it flew into a gap between the clouds. After seeing this, I felt a voice say "you're accepted". I was still in the trench coat but I felt all of a sudden like I was where I was meant to be. I stood up and sang and really praised for the first time.

Later on that day I went to the students meeting in the evening, still buzzing from the morning. On the way home a man asked me the time, I told him and then he started threatening me. He started saying he was going to come and beat me up, asking if I was being smart with him, bad language, etc. This was really my first experience of this but I wasn't at all scared, nothing was going to bring me down. I shouted out "Goodnight, God bless" and turned into my road. I said a quick prayer for him and went home to bed. This was, to date, the most amazing day of my life, and things didn't slow down.

That was nearly two years ago now, the last two years have been such a blur, a rollercoaster of sorts. I joined a cell, which really scared me at first because I still wasn't good at all with people, but I perservered with it. People at cell prayed for me and I met my discipler Steve who's brought so much encouragement into my life since. And once, I was walking Clarie home I think, and she said to me "Why don't you get baptised?". Knowing Clarie as well as I did, I just agreed to it and went for it. When the baptism came I still didn't know anyone in the church besides the odd few, who mostly couldn't make it to my actual baptism weirdly. I gave a vague testimony, bits of what's typed above here, and got dunked. By my mum, no less. Pooka and Creature and Sophie and Ducttape also came to watch my baptism, as did my dad, and I think they were kind of surprised by the whole thing. Until recently people still only knew me from my baptism speech, which I opened with "I hope you can hear me over my shirt." Things like that stick in peoples' minds, it'd seem.

I went along to the church weekend away. Bearing in mind I didn't really know anyone and I was away for a weekend with all these people I didn't know. It was scary, but I felt really refreshed by the prescence of God in the meetings and He made the whole experience so worthwhile for me. Later on I got vaguely involved with youth work in the church before becoming the youth worker I am now. I was never in the "popular" crowds at church, still not, but I have a lot of good friends there now. Took a good few months to make them but it's been so worth it. I got involved with Something 4 Nothing outreach, helped out at cell and really went full on into this new and exciting life. Not a common thing for me, I'm usually so laid back and lethargic.

It's hard to pick events, since mostly it's been a period of steady but somewhat rapid growth in me spiritually and emotionally. I guess the only other big event that really sticks was the Brighton Leaders Conference, and my first prophetic vision. We were in a prayer meeting where we were staying after hours, myself and a few people I'd just met, when God gave me a picture of our nation sliding down a steep hill into fire. This frightened me, but then I saw huge hooks being thrown down with millions of ropes tied around them. These five hooks represented five gifts which God gives people for evangelism: People skills, healing, prophecy, confidence and His word in the Bible. The ropes were Christians, thousands/millions of them, more and more appearing as they're being slung down. These hooks will soon grab our nation and lift it up away from the fire, and the amazing part is that the hooks had just started going faster than the sliding nation. The winds of change are upon us, and this image fitted so much with other prophecies coming up in meetings at the time.

Another thing was I was in a meeting at the conference lead by Terry Virgo and I mostly got bored, didn't feel anything. Now, this is somewhat hard to admit but I feel it's worthwhile, and this is the first time I've really presented it publicly and how it affected me, but the next day Dave Devenish was preaching. I wasn't listening at all, I was playing with my PDA, much to the annoyance of Emily who was sitting next to me. After some badgering from her I stopped at one point and looked up. The moment I did, Dave said something like "There are some men in here who are addicted to Internet pornography, and that's acting as a barrier that stopped them from feeling anything in the meeting yesterday. You have to break it."

Needless to say, this was me, and I was stunned.

One more amazing thing came towards the end of that same meeting (I think, anyway). The preacher said at one point "If you're called to suffer for the cross, maybe in overseas ministry, I want you to run to the front... NOW." And I ran. Once there at the front I held out my arms and started shaking and crying because in my mind I had a picture. It was dark and I saw a woman standing looking at me. I was on the floor, it was a fuzzy picture and I felt a lot of pain. She was stunned, too much so to cry but she clearly wanted to. The setting was a dusty ground outside with what I think were wooden huts around. Aside from that, I saw vague images of fires, prison and other such things. You know what? This didn't really scare me as much as it excited me, God had given me a purposeful calling which is still on my life today. I told someone this later and he said "Do you know when?" I said "Four years." I said it with some conviction, it just popped into my head at that moment, but it felt somehow just right.

That was a little while ago. Fast forward to late 2004, I was back at City Church after being away for some time, and the whole meeting was about me. Every word that was brought, every prophecy, every song, it just spoke to me about my situation. I was down and in a bad place, but what I took from the meeting was that I had to keep going and keep my head up. I won't go into more detail on this now, but God spoke to me through many different people.

And my life has continued to be amazing since then. I've been attending the Impact course and learning more about theology, I've heard more prophetic words from people, I've continued to grow in many ways and things have shown no sign of slowing down. I've had times when I've felt bad but God's always picked me up at the end. More miracles have happened, at least one friend has been saved by God through me and his life quickly started to change for the better. I saw three boys in the same family healed and saved in my youth group. I've even known friends who've legs have grown while being prayed for, which is pretty crazy.

He's still doing things in my life. He's still watching me. Even when I don't pay Him anything like the attention He deserves, He's very much there. He's watching me type this as a worship to Him and He's proud of what I've become and what I'm becoming.

So I present to God and to myself in the future and whoever else wants to read it, a summary of the last few chapters.

And I can't wait to find out what happens next.

back