Doug and Alison Davis – CCK Pioneers
Doug: We became Christians when we were very young. I was brought up in a Christian home. My father was a soldier in the Navy during World War 2. He wasn’t a Christian but when he was 20, he met a Scottish guy who led him to Jesus. That had an effect when he came home after the war. He was very excited and enthusiastic about what Jesus had done for him. He would go to the docks and share. After the war, he joined the police and was involved with Police Christian Association.
I learnt a lot of things about God but never experienced God till I was 15. I was in a Baptist church in Purley. At a youth weekend, someone shared their story about how they discovered Jesus as their God and suddenly I knew Jesus was God. My life changed. And then Alison arrived!
Alison: I wasn’t brought up in a Christian home. My father was in the Air Force and was killed during the war. When she was 40, my mother became a Christian and I was dragged along to church which I found thoroughly boring! A few years later, God spoke to me at a Billy Graham crusade meeting and a year later I became a Christian. At the same time a close friend of mine became a Christian too! So we decided to find a church together and that’s how we ended up at Purley Baptist church and I met Doug!
We went out for 5 years before we got married. Doug started walking me home after church every week. It was a chemical thing! I was 16 and getting interested in guys and I saw this guy and went “Wow! He’s a Christian guy, he must be good!” (laughs) and there was no turning back!
Doug: When I first saw Alison, she had a very nice skirt on! When I told my mother she said, “Not that girl with the short skirt.” (laughs) “Afraid so mum!.” I was a lively guy. Alison’s parents were from a higher class than us, but they learned to love me.
We were 21 when we got married. I was working with British Telecom. I worked with BT all my professional life – 40 years. Before we were married, we’d ride down to Brighton every weekend on my scooter, lie on the beach, have tanned bodies for the rest of the week and then come back the next weekend! We always loved Brighton and so we decided that when we were married we’d move down. We bought a bungalow in Portslade and we had Matt and Stephanie there.
Alison: When we first moved to Brighton, we weren’t too plugged in to a church. There wasn’t a sense of community there and we didn’t feel very settled or happy. So one day, we decided to pack up and move to Australia. We lived there for two and a half years
Doug: My advice to anyone considering a move is to really pray about it and seek God first. We didn’t do that. The
environment we were in wasn’t too good. The church we were in wasn’t teaching us how to live our lives and we weren’t enthusiastic about searching the Bible on how to either. I think we missed out on something over there.
We came back to Brighton and went to a church called Gloucester Place Baptist Church on London Road. Something extraordinary happened whilst we were there. A young girl had a liver problem and was on dialysis 3 times a week for a number of weeks. She had become seriously ill was about to be hospitalized. She went to pray with the Pastor and as she spoke to him, she said suddenly the Holy Spirit came on her and she was healed! The next day, she went in to Sussex Hospital was completely fine. Where earlier her face and skin were yellow and filled with marks from the injections, her skin was now clear and pink. The doctors decided to x-ray her and the doctors were stunned! The x-ray showed that she had 2 new kidneys and her notes were filed away with the heading ‘healed through prayer’. I still get emotional when I share this story 30 years after it happened.
I felt God say to me, “So what do you reckon of that then?”
She told people in church. Some were sceptical, but many shared her joy. This experience was a catalyst and a turning point for us. We decided to figure out what was going on. So we met a guy called Henry Tyler and joined up with him. And that was the beginning of CCK.
Terry Virgo then came over and we saw huge growth. Regularly, people were becoming followers of Jesus and growing in their knowledge of God. We’ve been so blessed to have been involved right from the beginning. We got totally involved. We’ve done house groups, area groups and every other kind of group. I was involved in leadership for a while. Terry guided us well and we’ve benefited so much from his wisdom over the years.
Watching our son Matt being set aside as an Elder was a special moment. We’re really for him and what he’s doing. He’s the fruit of prayer gone into his life. We’re just so happy for him and very, very proud.
I like how our church is setup with leaders who really look out for you, who are there to guide and instruct you. If you get into trouble you can always see them and they’ll try to help you out. It’s encouraging seeing young people who’ve grown in God in such a short period of time. When you’ve been around for a while, you go “Wow! Look how God’s growing them and bringing them along.” We have this young guy preaching, Joel, who I remember seeing first as a child at CCK! We’re really benefiting along with other people in the autumn of our life through how God’s developing him as our leader. These are guys God has chosen to lead us. There are always the smaller things we may not understand, but I like to look at the larger picture and see how God’s is touching and impacting people’s lives every week now.
Alison: A few years ago, I felt that I wanted to bring friends to a church that we were proud of. We’ve never felt like that about other churches we’ve been part of. We felt it wouldn’t be relevant or that religion was being preached. But CCK is so relevant to our neighbours, friends, family – it’s got everything we wouldn’t be ashamed of and would love them to be a part of. We’re so glad with what God is doing here and are so glad we have a part to play in such an exciting time as this!
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When: 21st – 23rd May. Friday evening till Sunday afternoon.
Roy: In Feb 1980, I had a break down. Before that I found that my mind was closing down and my performance at work was decreasing drastically. Yet in April that year, I met Jesus in the street! At 9:30 one night, I heard an audible voice saying “you could die tomorrow”. I knew that was true because of the drugs and alcohol that I was regularly consuming. I panicked but suddenly remembered something I had heard in Sunday School about hell. In my panic I phoned up a local pastor and asked if I could see him. It was 10:30 by then and he asked if it was a matter of life and death! Yes!…I met him and he spoke to me about Jesus Christ for an hour. I left his house and was walking home. It was like I was walking with a blanket draped around my head touching the ground when suddenly a great divine hand came down and lifted the blanket off. It was extraordinary! In that moment, I went from extreme depression to extreme elation. I was so excited I was helping old ladies cross the road, whether or not she wanted to!
