Testimony of Conversion
I was brought up in a Christian family and was taken to church from when I was born. My Mum and Dad told me the gospel from as early as I can remember. I always believed that the Lord was real and that I was a sinner, but didn’t really do anything about it. I remember praying a prayer to trust Jesus when I was 7 or 8 and there were certainly some changes in me in the years afterwards.
However, I would say that the real change came when I was about 17. I met a friend who was a Christian. His commitment to Jesus was completely different to mine and you could tell from his life and speech that hie really loved the Lord. Through getting to know him, I slowly became more convinced that Jesus was my Saviour and I had to give all to him. I can’t point to a specific day or time where I trusted Jesus, but others saw a definite change in me over this period. I knew that Jesus had died to save me, and just before my 18th birthday I was baptized upon profession of this faith in the church I grew up in.
Call to Ministry
After I was saved I served in lots of youth related ministries – running the youth club at church, leading United Beach Mission teams etc. As a history teacher, I would go back to school every September for quite a few years wondering if I should be spending the main bulk of my time telling young people about Jesus rather than Hitler. I remember telling a colleague that I couldn’t imagine being a teacher until I retired and assumed I would be eventually move to working in some kind of Christian youth work.
Then, in the summer of 2010, a pastor’s wife from a church which supported the Beach Mission team we were on told my wife that we really should stop putting it off and seriously consider ministry. This prompted us to spend time thinking, praying, and talking to the Elders of the church we were members of as we sought the Lord’s will. At this time, a new church plant was starting in my home town and, with the blessing of the church we were in, the planter offered me the chance to have a year or two to test a call to ministry through doing a Ministry Apprenticeship there.
I did two years at Hope Church Huddersfield as a Ministry Apprentice, whilst studying on the Christian Ministry Training Course as well, and over that time we were continually seeking the Lord as to what he was calling us to. Towards the end of the second year we were convinced that the Lord was calling me to pastoral ministry. The Elders of the church agreed, and the church confirmed that by calling me to be the Assistant Pastor at Hope. I was Assistant Pastor there for four years from 2013-2017, before planting Spen Valley Church in September 2017.