Hot and flustered, my cheeks flushed with embarrassment and I suddenly felt awkward in my seat. It was agonisingly obvious that David and Pierce were equally uncomfortable. Not much else was said for the remainder of my visit. It’s difficult to change a conversation from devils and satanic possession to the latest sports news and local gossip. I left soon afterwards, feeling as though I had carelessly damaged something very old and precious.
After that night, I gradually saw less and less of David and Pierce, until the time came we rarely met at all. When I became a Christian and especially after I joined my church and became immersed in activities and programmes there, many people and places seemed to be phased out of my life quite naturally. In the truest sense I had made the transition from an old life to a brand new one. Of all that has passed away with that old life and ceased to feature in the new, I miss only those two brothers. In the fondest memories I have of my first twenty-one years, David and Pierce are almost always in there somewhere. I never intended for my Christian faith to cause the separation between us that it has and I hope that they don’t look at it that way, but I am on a path taking me in a very different direction now and losing touch with David and Pierce has been the undesired result.
I miss them.
I went to church for the first time a fortnight after I was born again. The Kwangas had not been involved in a church fellowship for a while, having their own Bible studies each Sunday at home instead, but Auntie Margaret suggested that as a new Christian it was important for me to begin attending church soon and that my conversion was a great opportunity for her and her girls to return to their old fellowship as well – Oxford Bible Church.
“Where’s Oxford Bible Church?” I whispered in Deb’s ear. “I’ve never heard of it.”
Debbie said, “They meet in the assembly hall at Cheney School.”
I looked at her in disbelief: My old school.
At the age of sixteen I cursed that place to the lowest hell and vowed never to set foot near it again. Now, more than five years later, I was preparing to go back there with the Holy Bible in my hands to worship Jesus. God does have a sense of humour.
Sunday soon arrived and there were butterflies in my stomach as Debbie and I walked the short distance to church together. Despite my nerves, a smile spread across my face. I was going to church and actually looking forward to it. Entering the school grounds, I thought Cheney looked relatively unchanged from my days as a student. We were met by a progression of folding signs directing us inside the building, which read: OXFORD BIBLE CHURCH.
Passing through the main doors I drew in a deep breath and followed Debbie through to the assembly hall, where we were greeted right away by a very friendly senior lady who introduced herself as Sheila. This dear woman had such a gentle demeanour and was so warm-hearted, it was as if she were greeting a friend she had known for years. She couldn’t have been more loving if I had been her own son. Sheila beamed with great joy when Debbie mentioned my recent conversion and encouraged me that the best days of my life lay ahead. Meeting Sheila at the door put me much more at ease, but the small hall was rapidly filling up with people and I still felt as if a bright neon sign was blinking above my head with the words: NEW CHRISTIAN.
Debbie and I took our seats on the far side of the hall and I looked back towards the entrance, watching other worshippers as they came through the doors. What I saw was a revelation: It looked like all nations of the world were gathering at Cheney School – not only whites, but Africans, Asians, Indians; I never imagined seeing anything like it, as every race of man walked through the door.
The service began with lively praise and worship and I was thrown right from the start. People were actually clapping their hands in church. I had no idea such was even allowed. Some in the congregation were really going for it too, bouncing up and down on their toes as the music played. The words for each song were projected onto a large screen on the wall ahead. The rhythms were all very simple, so even though I had never heard any of the songs before, once I had the tune and with the words before me, singing along was straight forward enough. I was expecting the dusty old hymns from the hatches and matches, so the zippy, exuberant anthems were a pleasant surprise. Stirred by the music and the effervescent atmosphere, I felt braver and even tried a bit of clapping myself. Just when I was beginning to feel like part of the crowd, the music slowed and my eyes bulged as I saw men and women raising their hands in the air. There were open palms lifted to head height and some arms stretched right up toward the ceiling. What on earth was this? That wasn’t all either; some men and women even closed their eyes while they sang. Wow, I said to myself. These people really love Jesus. They love to worship God and don’t even care if they look weird doing it! I felt a pang of envy at the freedom the crowd had to worship their Saviour unashamedly in front of others.
After all I had been through, I loved Jesus and my heart grew closer to Him with each day that passed – but this experience was so new, this environment of devotion and heart-sacrifice was unlike anything I had ever known or could have imagined before. I was overwhelmed. My spirit urged me to raise my hands aloft in surrender, with my brothers and sisters, but my head yelled at me to keep my hands still. Do you want to look like an idiot? My hands remained glued to my sides and I hated them for it. I was full of zeal in telling others about Jesus, though I couldn’t even lift my hands to honour Him in church. I wanted God to take hold of the pride in me and tear it right out of my heart.
“Dear Lord,” I prayed silently. “Please help me worship You someday like these people do. I don’t want to be ashamed of You.”
That morning, Pastor Derek Walker preached a Christmas message on the greatest gift ever given: Jesus Christ, God’s Son, given to a lost world in order to save it. After the service the congregation mingled and fellowshipped with one another and Debbie introduced me around. “Would you like to meet Pastor Derek?” she asked. I nodded and together we crossed the hall to find him. Certain that the preacher would know the Bible upside down and inside out, I quickly tried to recall every verse of scripture I had ever read. Feeling the pressure and unable to remember a single line of the Bible, I prayed I wouldn’t say something stupid in front of the man of God. Pastor Derek’s eyes brightened with recognition upon seeing Debbie. “Hi!” he said with a smile. “Welcome back! It’s so good to see you again, how are you?”
The two of them caught up for a moment and then Deb gestured to me. “Pastor, this is my friend, Pete. He gave his life to Jesus two weeks ago.”
The same bright smile came at me now and with it, an extended hand. “Praise God! That’s wonderful! It’s great to meet you, Pete.” As we shook hands I felt at ease and immediately all pressure lifted from me. The Pastor asked if I liked the service and I responded that I did, explaining that it was my first ever Sunday service and how enjoyable it had been.
While Pastor Derek and I continued talking, a familiar voice sounded from behind me and I turned to see Auntie Margaret, smiling. I had not even realised that Auntie was in church and I was surprised further when she pointed across the hall and I saw Becky, Sharon and Esther too. They had all arrived in the car shortly after Debbie and I. After greeting the Pastor, Auntie mentioned to him that I had experienced a powerful conversion to Christ and there and then it was decided that I should meet with the Pastors at their house and share my testimony with them.
A few nights later, I sat with the Kwangas around a table in Pastor Derek’s home and carefully recalled, once again, the events that led to my salvation. Unlike the evening with David and Pierce, I spoke slowly, calmly and made a conscious effort to keep my voice level. Pastor Derek and his wife, Hilary, sat patiently and listened intently as I told them everything. Whereas David and Pierce were left shocked and confused by my story, the Pastors believed right away. As Christians and as ministers they were all too familiar with the work of demons. Pastor Hilary explained how she had once been involved in the occult, new age spirituality and something
called Transcendental Meditation, before she was born again. She appreciated my experience with personal understanding and as I spoke I noticed that, repeatedly, Pastor Hilary closed her eyes and whispered a quiet word of prayer under her breath. As someone who had been where I had, and having been rescued from the danger by Christ also, my testimony touched her deeply.
At the end of the evening we prayed together as a group and the Pastors also prayed a special prayer for me. Right before I left, Pastor Derek suggested that I should share my testimony with the congregation at Oxford Bible Church. Without hesitation, despite no public speaking experience, I gladly agreed.
My colleagues at St Anne’s College barely recognised me when I returned to work. The swearing and cursing was gone and so were all the dirty jokes I used to make. In their place were praises, Bible verses and the latest news from church. In my old life, I started work each day with a stop at the newsagent to buy a filthy rag of a newspaper called the Daily Sport. Not that the paper contained much in the way of sports stories, rather it was filled, cover to cover, with photographs of glamour models and topless women. There were news articles all right, useless stories and bloke-ish humour, only these were nothing more than sidebars around the full-page pictures of surgically-enhanced women posing bare-chested. The paper was pornography disguised as news, designed and marketed to inspire lust and I bought my copy every day. Even some of the guys at St Anne’s, who were by no means prudish and certainly not afraid to speak with crude vulgarity, said they admired the bravery it took to carry the Daily Sport to the shop counter, but I just didn’t care. Since confessing Christ, however, all had become different. Now, when I sat in the staff room on a break, multiple pairs of eyes watched in disbelief as I pulled a Bible from my bag. There were a few workers who made sport of my new faith, but my Christianity was like a warm blanket that wrapped me so securely it sheltered me and made me completely immune to their mockery. Nothing could be said that would make me turn back now.
December passed and gave way to New Year. One afternoon, Debbie and I were sat in the dining hall at St Anne’s College with an Antiguan waitress called Dionne. The same age as Becky and a friend of hers from school, Dionne had seen the remarkable transformation in me and wanted to know what it was that changed me so much. I told the young woman, plainly, that it was Jesus Christ who saved me from the evil within myself and filled my empty heart with joy, hope and most crucially: love. I shared some of my story and Debbie chipped in too, testifying about God’s goodness in her own life. I could see something in Dionne begin to break. Her heart was pricked as she recognised a similar emptiness in herself and clearly considered that what she lacked may well have been the Saviour Debbie and I spoke of. Three nights later, at home, I received a phone call from Debbie. In the background I heard laughter and cheerful voices. Dionne was at the Kwanga house. The Antiguan had told the family that whatever it was Christ was offering, she needed it. Debbie told me that Dionne had prayed with Auntie Margaret and the girls and given her life to Jesus.
The day after Dionne received Christ was Sunday. A guest minister was in town to preach at Oxford Bible Church. The speaker, a New Zealander named Ian McCormack, was due to tell his story of a near-death experience twenty years earlier that led him to Christianity. He was scheduled to preach a sermon in the morning service and save the near-death story for the evening meeting. I had someone with me when I went to church that day: my cousin James.
Within days of my conversion, James paid a visit to my house, curious about the rumour that was already rippling through the family about me. After hearing my testimony, James was intrigued and agreed to come with me to hear McCormack. Though he didn’t tell me so, James was also unwilling to enter a church without some kind of backup and secretly invited another cousin, Tracy, who duly arrived before the meeting began.
The New Zealander was a gifted speaker. With a calm, gentle manner and a soothing, measured style of delivery, all who were present at Oxford Bible Church that morning received Ian McCormack’s words gladly. Winding up his message, the man of God called certain individuals forward to pray for them. I was sat several rows from the front when I suddenly felt the same prickly heat I first experienced at Debbie’s house on the night I was saved. It began in my fingertips and, while McCormack prayed for others, the sensation quickly washed over my entire upper body. It was as though heaven itself was being poured over me and I felt such peace and comfort, I never wanted it to end. My eyes were closed and I was lost in this wonderful state of worship. I was only half aware of the preacher’s voice, it sounded distant, but I knew for certain he was going to call me forward. Barely a moment after thinking it, I heard the man describe my clothes and call me out of my seat to join him at the front. The moment Ian McCormack laid his hands on me at the altar I was so overwhelmed by shuddering waves of heat and the very power of God Almighty it was incredible I stayed upright. “God is calling you, Brother,” McCormack whispered to me softly. “You’re going to preach His Gospel. He’s calling you to the preaching ministry.”
I remained at the altar, praying and praising God, while my body felt like it was on fire. From a long way away, I heard McCormack invite those in the congregation who were not Christians to step forward and receive Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. My eyes were closed and the warmth of the Holy Spirit was still on me, when the joy of that morning was made complete. Tears streamed down my cheeks as the voices of both James and Tracy came over my shoulder, led by Ian McCormack in quiet prayer: “Dear Lord Jesus, forgive my sins and come into my heart.”
I shared my testimony at Oxford Bible Church on Sunday 9th February 2003, two short months after my conversion and three days before I was baptised in water, along with Dionne from St. Anne’s and my cousins James and Tracy. I entered church that evening to a packed assembly hall. I had been given twenty minutes to speak and, stepping up to the pulpit, I looked out at the crowd and spotted both cousins among the faces there. They were smiling at me and, in a moment, any remaining nerves melted away. My mind was sharp as I spoke and every detail of the account was crystal clear. I even found myself quoting Bible verses that seemed to pop up inside of me just at the right time, reinforcing some of my points. When I returned to my seat, amid a generous round of applause, I leaned close to Debbie in the chair next to mine and whispered in her ear. “How did I do? I think I went over my twenty minutes.”
Debbie’s mouth hung wide open, before a smile came. “Pete, you talked for an hour and ten minutes!”
To this day, I don’t know if Pastor Derek intended to follow my testimony with a message – I have never had the nerve to ask him. Whether he did or not, he remained in his seat, even as I went well over my allotted time.
Following that evening at Oxford Bible Church, tremendous doors of opportunity began opening for me to tell my testimony elsewhere. I was amazed by the continuous stream of invitations I received from all sorts of people and groups. The first open door was a special meeting for teenagers, organised by the church. A few of the youths who attended were already Christians but most were not. At the end of the talk, I asked anyone who wanted me to pray for them to come forward and I was stunned when nearly everyone got out of their seats.
A fortnight later, I was invited to speak to a class of American students visiting Oxford from Wheaton University in Illinois. Later in the summer I travelled fifty miles to London, where I testified in a small Baptist church. Even though there were literally record-breaking temperatures that Sunday morning, and all of us in the building were sweating bullets, the congregation was transfixed when I told them how Christ saved me from the devil. It was in that service that I truly discovered my love of preaching. Stepping out from behind the pulpit and its microphone, I was bursting with energy and my voice boomed without amplification. I felt so comfortable on that platform in front of the crowd – it was as though I had been preaching all my life. When the meeting ended an older Indian man approached me and, as he shook my hand enthusiastically, he as
ked if I was a pastor. I nearly choked with startled surprise, as did he when I explained I had only been a Christian for seven months.
There were also opportunities to testify on the radio. One interview was for a hospital radio station, broadcasting a live Sunday morning Christian show to Oxfordshire’s main hospitals and patients who were unable to make it to church. Things were made more interesting when the radio host revealed he wasn’t a Christian. In fact, he said before the show began, he couldn’t be sure he even believed in the existence of God. By the end of the broadcast the man was left open-mouthed. “I’ve never heard anything like it,” he told me off-air. He was still shaking his head in astonishment when I left the station.
I wasn’t even going out of my way to make these things happen, it just seemed to be the case that every few weeks someone else had heard about my experience and wanted me to come and speak at some particular meeting.
I received an invitation to testify at a meeting of the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship and also made an appearance on Christian television. The TV event was an interview on an hour-long, live lunchtime broadcast and the response was phenomenal. The programme was repeated more than once and for the next month my phone rang almost every day with all kinds of people on the line. Christians called to thank and encourage me; other believers, who were struggling with their faith, rang wanting prayer and words of support. Non-Christians phoned to say they were shaken by what they had heard and asked how they could know more about this Jesus, who seemed much more real to them now.
Aside from the public speaking events there were many occasions when I shared the story in more informal settings: with colleagues during breaks at work; with old drinking buddies I met in passing, who were left stunned when I told them why I no longer went nightclubbing or drank alcohol with them; with small groups meeting in someone’s living room, or Christians who wanted me to talk to a friend or relative involved in the occult.
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