I grew up with a pretty standard 'English' understanding of God for a child of the 80's. I never questioned the existence of God, to be honest I never really thought much about it. Christmas was about Jesus being born, Easter was about Jesus dying, and that was it. Some people went to church but that was because they were a bit over enthusiastic, but if that's what they wanted to do it was fine by me. My family didn't go to church apart from the standard weddings and funerals.
Everything changed when I was about 13. My eldest brother (at this point he would've been about 22) started going to the local Baptist Church. This was wierd. Why would he suddenly start going to Church? It turned out his best friend had invited him to his own baptism and my brother wanted to find out more after attending that service. He started to make friends and church became a regular part of his week. To his 13 year old sister this was all a bit strange.
Eventually he started telling me about the youth group and encouraging me to go. I was not interested, the last thing I wanted to do was go to church. After much persuasion I started to attend the Friday night social stuff the church put on for young people. I found out it wasn't actually that bad and I became a regular attender of anything social. Occasionally they would sneak in something about Jesus (this is how I saw it anyway) and me and my friends would laugh and jeer and pretend like we didn't care - I just couldn't work out why these people were so bothered about Jesus, they seemed almost obsessed with Him, like He really mattered to them.
I continued to enjoy the social aspects of the youth group but cringed every time God or Jesus was mentioned. I'd happily mock the Christians, laugh at their songs and dismiss everything they said, I liked that the leaders were fun and made an effort to get to know me, but I didn't like them pushing their beliefs on me. I wasn't interested.
The summer after I turned 14 the youth leaders announced they were taking the youth on two camps, one was a weekend 'Christian' music festival down the road in Ringwood, the other was much further away in Shropshire for a whole 7 days. Both would be lots of fun, and would have some sort of Christian content. I decided to go to both, I'd been avoiding anything Christian so far and was well up for a weekend and a week away with my youth group friends - plenty of fun to be had!
The music festival was a disaster. It's fair to say I hated it. A friend and I tried our hardest not to say 'Oh my God' or 'Jesus' as swear words the whole weekend as we felt pretty un-Christian amongst all the Christian people. We didn't do very well. We stayed on our camp site and avoided any of the celebrations and gigs, there was way to much Jesus stuff going on for our liking. One evening we decided to go down to the main meeting and sit on the very outside, but unfortunately from the front the worship leader told people to get into prayer groups, myself and a friend were pulled (quite innocently) into a prayer group and didn't have a clue what was going on. My friend and I felt scared and confused so ran back to the camp, packed down our tent and demanded to be taken home. I told the youth leader I hated him and all his happy clappy friends.
In his wisdom the youth leader didn't let us go home, he tried to explain what had happen at the main session, we calmed down and spent the rest of the weekend on the campsite, not venturing anywhere near anymore Christian stuff. In my head I had decided never to go to anything to do with the Church again after that weekend, I would survive the rest of the weekend and leave the youth group forever - God had other plans!
After returning from the music festival my parents picked up I wasn't right. I told them I didn't want to go on the next camp (called 'MCV') but they had paid the full amount for me to go and weren't exactly excited by loosing the fee they'd paid. So although I didn't want to go I knew I had to go on ANOTHER camp with church people in a few weeks time. I put it to the back of my mind and enjoyed a few weeks without anything Church-y. No-one mentioning Jesus, I could blaspheme without offending anyone and most of all I didn't feel awkward.
Mid August arrived and I was all packed, my older brother was also going on the same camp - he was more enthusiastic than me! I moaned the whole way there, I didn't want to get to know anymore 'Bible bashers' I wouldn't listen to what they say and I certainly wasn't going to join their wierd little gang.
Something changed the minute I started to meet the leaders on this camp. Most of them were unknown to me. They had different accents and they seemed to behave in a very odd way. They were nice, they were friendly, they didn't hate me for my bad attitude and they seemed so happy to be alive. I couldn't match what I thought about Christians and how these people were acting. In hindsight I can only say that the Holy Spirit was opening my eyes up to the difference Jesus made in their lives, and the truth was I wanted it.
I didn't want to admit that I was finding this Christian stuff a bit more interesting. I couldn't work out why my thoughts were beginning to change towards Jesus and why I had so many questions that I wanted answers to. Previously I hadn't cared - but now I did. Every evening and morning there was a short service, suddenly I liked the singing and was really interested to hear what the preacher had to say. I loved watching the leaders worship - what was it they were so passionate about, and why wasn't I?
I decided to speak to my room mate who was a bit older than me. I knew she was a Christian, but I didn't find her wierd - just the right person! I wanted to know what it sounded like when God spoke, I wanted to know how I would know if God spoke to me. Why was everyone so bothered about Jesus? What's all this talk about sin? We stayed up chatting 'til about 3am, me firing questions and her faithfully answering.
That morning I knew I had to do something about the heat I could feel in my heart. I knew I was about to change. I felt nervous and excited, I knew I wanted to know Jesus for myself, I knew I was about to 'become' the thing that I had thought was so stupid for so long. I didn't really understand what being a Christian meant, but I knew I wanted to be one!
After almost speaking to one of the leaders about 4 times that day eventually by mid afternoon I managed to grab one of the leaders and say 'I think I want to become a Christian' we spoke for a bit and then we prayed. That was it. Everything had changed, yet nothing was different. I felt like a weight had been lifted and I couldn't stop smiling. I remember going to see my brother and saying 'I've become a Christian' his response was 'but you don't like them' I responded 'I am one now.' I remember going to see the couple who had so faithfully led the youth group back at home - they were as shocked as I was, but I knew it was the right thing to do.
At the time I would've said I had chosen to give my life to Christ, and to an extent that's true - but what really happened is that for whatever reason (GRACE alone) God chose me before the foundation of the world - that week in August 1996 the Holy Spirit revealed the wonder of the Gospel to me and I responded to the call that was tugging on my heart from the minute we drove through the gates of that conference centre.
It's not surprising really that God has called me into the work that was so significant in my salvation. I will forever be grateful for the faithful witness of youth workers who loved Jesus and loved me as a young person, they loved me enough to let me work it out for myself and they showed me the difference Jesus makes.
So Rog, Ali, Jen, Hayley, Helen and Andy - thank you for showing me Jesus and leading me to him.
