CCK Life blog

Yohaan: Matt, your sermon at the Men’s Weekend on the Sunday morning was spoken of very highly. Thanks for being with us! Can you tell me how you became a Christian?

Matt : I was born in to a strong Christian family. My parents, John (who was an elder at CCK till he retired last year) and Sue, brought us up teaching us about Jesus from the Bible. At a young age I decided to become a follower of Jesus and accepted Him as my Lord and Saviour.

When I was in my teens, we moved to Brighton. That was my undoing! At our previous church the youth group had been small and I was one of the few who was serious about pursuing Christ – I think having to take a stand like that made me stronger. But when we moved to Brighton there was this massive youth group in which loads of people seemed to be passionate for Jesus but in reality a whole load of us just drifted into partying instead. That inevitably lead to living like everyone else did. At 17, I began to backslide, and made a complete hash of my A levels, as well as other things. I was desperate to join the army but my parents insisted I went to uni first.

After school, I wanted to have a year out and go to either India or Africa. I ended up in Swaziland in Africa working on a farm there. It was a bit disastrous and 3 months later I got kicked off after a massive clash with the man in charge of the farm. I decided to hitch hike down to Cape Town.

I was pretty miserable at this time and knew I had to sort myself out. Somewhat ironically, I was more aware of God through this period of backsliding. My rebellion made me more conscious of His presence! I met another English guy and so we hitched hiked to Cape Town from Swaziland. He was very interested in Christianity and wanted to quiz me all about it. I didn’t really want to talk about it and it made me increasingly uncomfortable. I remember being about halfway through the journey at a place called Oribi Gorge near Durban which is a very amazing natural feature and I suddenly realized that I was miserable and needed to get right with God. So by the time I got to Cape Town I had decided I wanted to get right with God.

Dave Holden was preaching in Jubilee church the weekend I got to Cape Town. And it was at that sermon that I came back to Christ. And the English guy I was travelling with became a Christian at that meeting as well!

Yohaan: Fantastic! You joined Dave Holden in Sidcup later?

Matt: It was January 1989 then and I ended up staying on in Cape Town till September. I came back and went to university in Newcastle then went back to Brighton for a year and worked at the Natural History Museum in London during that period. I went to Canterbury to do a PhD in zoology which was a disaster! I married Grace whilst in Canterbury. My supervisor for the PhD was spookily reminiscent of the man in Swaziland, who I had such a major clash with! In every way physically and personality-wise he was almost the same person. And I just couldn’t get any results going from the research I was meant to be doing. So I knew it wasn’t going anywhere. At Stoneleigh that year (1994), Dave Holden prophesied over me and that led me to chuck in my PhD and go to Sidcup to join Dave.

Yohaan: Men align themselves to men who they regard highly and respect. What about Dave Holden made you move to Sidcup?

Matt: I would never have gone to Sidcup in a million years had it not been for Dave! When Grace and I left to move there, people would say that Sidcup was a great place to live in because it’s so easy to get out of!

There was lot’s about Dave that caused me to move to Sidcup. There was this connection we had – he had been at the church in 1989 when I came back to Jesus and then 5 years later in 1994 he prophesied over me. It just seemed a great opportunity to be with him. The plan was that I was to be with him for 2 years and then go off church planting. But things changed when I got there and I stayed on for 13 years.

Yohaan: And now you lead Gateway Church in Poole. What are some of the core values around which you want your church to be built?

Matt: Generosity. A prayerful people who how know how to pray and who believe in the power of prayer. A culture which is family in the fullest sense – a place where there’s real faithfulness and trust. Our culture is very faithless and we see that in all kinds of personal relationships which is then reflected legislatively. We have so many rules and regulations in place basically because we don’t trust people. I want to build a culture where there is real faithfulness and reliability and that’s reflected in the church family and then in the biological family. Men are fathers even if they’re not literal fathers. Paul says to the Corinthians, ‘imitate me. I’m your father in Christ.’ I want to build a church full of men who can make such claims.

Something else we’re working hard on is that we’re called to be missionaries. We don’t just send missionaries to foreign countries and send them a bit of money every so often but we’re missionaries in the place where we live. I’m trying to model that myself to some degree by working hard at being with unbelievers. Having unbelieving friends should be a priority in your life.

I want to help build a church where adventure, purity and compassion are seen in our people. People who are adventurous in exercising faith and expect God to break in. A pure people who take holiness and discipline seriously. A people compassionate who reach out to the poor and needy. I want to build a church like that.

Yohaan: And lastly Matt, what do you want your legacy to be?

Matt: I have four beautiful daughters and I want to see them all faithfully following Jesus and pursuing whatever it is God has called them to with the gifts and talents they have got. I don’t want to constrain them by things I want to see them doing but I want them to know freedom to choose the path they feel God leading them into. I want them to be adventurous, bold girls who are too hot to handle by some slacker bloke!

Yohaan: It’s been great having you with us at CCK this weekend Rory. I’m sure there are some very fired up men who would like to know more about you!

Rory: I grew up in a Christian home. My first encounter with the living God was when I was 5. I had meningitis and nearly died. My grandfather who was an Anglican vicar at the time prayed for me and the power of God touched me and I was left with marks on my face. I woke up the next day out of a coma without a trace of the meningitis. I knew that God was powerful and alive and I was living with a second chance.

But I got too busy playing sport to be Christian.

I had a rugby injury when I was at school which resulted in a brain tumour. After a great sport and school career I couldn’t make this pain go away. I felt like I wasn’t in control of my body. I started having black outs and incredible pain. At the time I didn’t know that there was something wrong with my head. One day I walked into an Anglican church and knelt down at the front saying God either I want to die and be with You or if I live I’ll spend the rest of my life serving You. A week later they diagnosed the brain tumour and so I had an operation to have it taken out. But I became very sick and spent the next 18 months in and out of bed at home pretty ill.

At the time I joined the Glenridge Church International, Durban, which I now lead. Before joining Glenridge, I wanted to know that you could serve God radically and be free and live a meaningful life. I was told that Christianity was about ‘don’t do things’ but I didn’t have the power not to do them. I wanted to live a righteous life with my girlfriend and yet I didn’t know where the power came to do that.

So I met a man called Chris Wienand who led Glendridge church where I saw a true expression of Christianity – A freedom and a faith. I saw young people serving God radically and walking righteously because of Jesus. I love to see the church working. So that’s how I joined the church.

My first Sunday I was completely freaked out by the freedom and the worship so I walked out. A man caught me at the back just as I was about to step out and engaged with me and invited me back which I did.

I’ve been at Glenridge for the past 22 years now.

Yohaan: 2 things that noticeably stand out about you are your heart of compassion and generosity. How has that developed?

Rory: The description of Jesus in the Song of Solomon and in Revelation really gripped my heart. It describes Jesus as One having ‘eyes like doves’ and ‘eyes like blazing fire’. Jesus was so profoundly authoritative and yet so profoundly compassionate. At different times, Jesus did both.

In Exodus 34 God proclaims His name as ‘the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.’

To me when the church represents both the compassion and authority of God, we make an impact on the world.

The generosity comes from John 3:16, ‘For God so loved the world that He GAVE’

I see very gracious people who are not generous. If you look at 2 Cor. 8, it says make sure you ‘bring to completion the act of grace.’ I believe giving is an act of grace which impacts the world. I don’t think there is a supply problem in the world. There is a distribution problem. When people say ‘where is God because of the hungry and the poor?’ it’s not because God hasn’t provided. It says in Malachi that ‘the storehouses of Heaven are full.’ I think men are blocking the doors of these storehouses by there selfishness. We need to learn generosity to unblock the storehouses of heaven and earth to reach out to the poor and needy.

Yohaan: So in what ways are you generous?

Rory: I think it’s like a stone that drops in water. The ripples go outward. First we’ve got to be generous to God. The moon has no energy but it reflects the light of the sun. Similarly as the Father blesses much, just reflect that back. Then my family must be the next to benefit. The Bible says the man must labour for his family. So I make sure that as soon as I get my salary I make sure my wife and kids benefit from that. Then to the elders and my closest friends and it carries forward from there and I believe that ripples its way outwards.

Yohaan: Brilliant. You’ve really provoked me to rethink my money! And I’ve heard others say the same too. So how’s your CCK experience been?

Rory: I’ve absolutely loved it. I’ve seen the evidence of God’s grace in amazing ways. You are a people of prayer. I came to the early morning prayer meeting and watched when the guys there prayed for one another. I found that very intriguing and wonderful. I see this amazing brotherhood and I like that. The Bible says that ‘when brothers dwell together in unity, God commands a blessing.’

I think your future is exciting. I think God is speaking. In Deut 29 it says ‘the secret things belong to God but what I reveal to you belong to you and your children.’ Being at CCK, you’re living in the incredible blessing of 25 – 30 years of revelation that God showed your fathers but God is speaking again now and you’re going to take this 25-30 years blessing to administer this season well and pass it on to the next generation. Many people are going to get blessed through you.

Preaching at CCK and the Men’s Weekend has been a great privilege for me. I love the partnership we are forging. We’d love to have Joel and your team with us. I think our partnership is going to be productive.

I love your graciousness. I love the multi generational make up of the church. Keep going and hold the line. I think to take it to the next level of effectiveness in Brighton is a very exciting thing to be watching.

Yohaan: Thanks Rory. Lastly, what do you want your legacy to be?

Rory: I want, through the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the finished work of Jesus Christ, to get people to the Father so that they can understand an inheritance of protection and care.

In the same way that the Father sent the Son in to the world through the power of the Holy Spirit, we would be sent into the world as missionaries to go and impact the world and reconnect a broken, lost, hurt dying world with a Father who really loves them and cares for them through the finished work of His Son.

Pete and Jacqui Jarvis: A Tale of Restoration

Jacqui’s bit:

From the moment I became a follower of Jesus as a teenager, it’s always been about people. God is about people, and it seems that whatever any of us feel we should do for Jesus, whatever we think the remit is, it’s going to involve lots of people! That goes pretty much against my natural grain, as I come from a family who would happily ‘recluse’ – so it seems that God just knew that this natural grain needed some genetic modification!!

Salvation for me was a bit of a supernatural event at 17 – I wasn’t that engaged with the nuances of eternal life, but something happened when a pastor I was listening to on my first visit to a little Pentecostal church in Brighton threw out a simple question to the congregation, “do you want to be saved and go to heaven?” I was suddenly aware that my hand was in the air – It was as if there was some unidentified someone behind me holding my arm up and it wouldn’t go down again. I’d heard bits of gospel before at the ‘Way Inn’ Coffee Bar in Brighton, often frequented by such muso’s as the hippy-styled Ishmael in the 70’s, but have to say life had shaped me into a rather cynical and hardened teen, so maybe this was God’s way of showing me who was going to be in control from now on!

Life was a patchwork of learning about God at the same time as dealing with many painful life issues. I’d grown up very fast from mid teens, including homelessness, living below the poverty line, and handling difficult relationships. By 21 I was navigating my way through an unhappy divorce, but then determined to make life work with my two lovely and lively kids to raise. In my years as a solo parent I always knew that God was looking after us and despite the challenges we had a peaceful home, the rent was paid, and my church friends encouraged me – I really knew His hand on us and I was grateful. I don’t think all my decisions in life were great and I was certain that I had to pray for wisdom like a crazy woman, (still do today) but I always knew that I was thoroughly God’s whatever happened. I recall that 1 Timothy 4 was my teacher – ‘Don’t be despised for youth, but set an example, don’t neglect the gift in me, and keep a close watch on myself’.

One day a group photo caught my attention – standing a head above everyone else was the son of a friend from the church – I was curious as I hadn’t seen him in the regular crowd. He worked away, but it so happened that he was visiting his mum a couple of weekends later, and that’s where I first met Pete Jarvis. I had no clue at that point about romance as I sat on the floor at his mum’s house and talked to him about God. I told him that God wanted Pete to know Him better and was just waiting, so why not talk to Him? Not your usual conversation I suppose, but it seemed very natural at the time. I was intrigued and apparently so was he.

Pete takes up the story:

I was in an Anglican Church choir from the age of eight but I had never heard about having a personal relationship with Jesus. The God I’d been taught about was distant and authoritarian – hardly attractive to a young lad who wanted to have fun.

My dad had TB and mum worked hard to bring up her 4 children and care for him, then at 17 I left home to work away. Ten years on in October 1977 when I was in a very demanding job and drinking a bit too much I had come to the end of my resources. It was at this point that Jacqui told me of the changing power of the Lord Jesus. I was soon led to Christ by an Anglican charismatic vicar in his study, repented of my sin and accepted Jesus as my personal saviour.

Around Christmas time Jacqui and I dated and we soon realised that we were in love and wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, so with God’s promises on us we embarked on the most exciting of adventures. Over the next thirty+ years we have laughed & cried as we tried to raise our family in the best way we were able.

Back to Jaq:

We married and Pete bravely took on the challenge of step-family life. Later my old pastors told us of their utter amazement when they saw Pete for the first time – apparently they had agreed together and prayed that God would bring along a big strong man (Pete is broad and 6’2”) who loved God and would protect this little family – we were stunned again and laughed at God’s manoeuvring. It was a brilliant encouragement which has bolstered our commitment through all the years.

In 1978 we joined Hangleton Valley Church with Henry Tyler – the man who preached a sermon about mercy & grace which cut straight to our hearts. We knew this was our journey now, and so in the October with Henry and some wonderful others we began life with the Brighton & Hove Christian Fellowship at the Connaught Centre in Hove. Would you ever credit that I played guitar with a fresh faced 12 year old Matt Davis for our worship times in the earliest days (years before he morphed into James May??) And so, with Terry Virgo in the daddy seat, those early months saw us join hands with Dave Fellingham and many others with the same vision so that very soon we were taking up residence at Clarendon Villas, and the rest you know.

At home we tried to parent our kids through all those tricky stages as well as we knew how, stumbling here and there but taking bits of wisdom from sensible others, and now we have grandkids to love – that’s priceless. We’ve always had an open door, fostering lots of kids in the early years, then, having fab people living with us who became part of our family – some still are! There is often a language student or guests at our table.

Fostering new family is something straight from God’s heart we believe – it’s in the weave of scripture and fits so well for us since we were adopted by Him too. Thank Goodness! Hospitality is pretty easy as long as you keep it simple and stay unfazed when your home starts to feel like Piccadilly Circus once in a while, and God always provides enough – do try it if you haven’t yet.

Pete again:

It never ceases to amaze me that God can get a hold of two humble council estate kids and change our lives so radically and it’s such an encouragement for us that Jesus came from humble Nazareth.

One question I’m sometimes asked is ‘Do you not get bored being in one Church for over thirty years?’ and my response is always “Not one single day!” because whatever God wants us to do we do with all our hearts and whatever the future holds we will have the same attitude, to serve the Lord with all our strength. We are certain that with our current eldership we will see many, many hundreds come to Christ, who will bring many more hundreds behind them, brick upon brick, what a legacy!

While the battle of The Somme was raging in France a little girl was born ina small terraced house in the Welsh village of Loughor.   Olive Emma Howellswas born on 9 November 1916,  the daughter of William Howells, who was a gas man at the steel works, and Minnie Mardon, a migrant from Devon.  Olive was brought up in a home where prayer and the Bible and Sunday worship were important. She had early memories of going with her father to the nearby Welsh chapel on Sunday mornings.

As she grew up dark clouds of the great depression were hovering over the industrial south Wales and Will was for many years out of work.  In order to try and raise some income they scratched for cockles in the beds of the Loughor river estuary.  It was a difficult period but they found that Jesus provided for their needs.
Although Olive was brought up in a Christian family she started to be rebellious and began to drink and smoke and swear and live a life far from her Christian upbringing.  But God had his hand on her life.  During a meeting at the Salvation Army when she was 16  the Holy Spirit convicted her of her rebellion and she trusted Jesus as her Saviour. Her life was changed.

Four years later Olive left the security of her South Wales community to travel to Denmark Hill in south London to enter the Salvation Army Training College. The 1937 – 1938 session was called the Enthusiasts which reflected her keenness and desire to make Jesus known.  Her first appointment as a Salvation Army officer was to Alysbury, then to Chelsea and to Portslade where she learnt to play tenor horn and also got engaged to Ben Fellingham. They married in Gorseinon on 26 May 1943.   In 1945 David was born and Christine in 1949.
By this time Ben and Olive were not full-time SA officers but were fully involved in the Salvation Army at Aldershot where Olive led a very successful children’s and youth work.  Their home was filled with young people and young soldiers on national service in Aldershot.  39 Grange Road, Tongham was a place of hospitality. In her 40s Olive took over running the women’s work (Home League) in which many ladies came to know Jesus as their Saviour.  At the same time she used to go out speaking at various women’s fellowship, often going off on her bike to remote Surrey villages.

As time went on David married Rosie and Christine married Michael and grandsons Luke, Nathan, John, Simeon, Timothy and James came along.  She delighted in all her family and was a great encouragement to them all.  It was a lovely sight to see Olive reading to her great grandchildren Lucy, Jesse, Poppy and Ella at her 91st birthday party.  And three days before Olive went to her Lord her fifth great grandchild Audrey Mae was born.
Even though she missed Ben a lot when he died in 1993, Olive never lost her joy and continued to show love and hospitality to many of her friends at CCK.
In the last three years she has been wonderfully cared for at The Pilgrim Home in Brighton. And while her memory was dim and her joints were sore she never forgot her Saviour.  Her tambourine playing and Welsh singing entertained many. As a child Olive sang. On the street corners Olive sang.In the Salvation Army Songsters Olive sang.  And in her last weeks she would sing and pray in her bed. The singing has not stopped, for Olive is now singing among the millions worshipping at the throne of our Redeemer Jesus.

The CCKlife blog celebrated it’s 1 year anniversary earlier this month! For over a year now we’ve worked hard to glorify Jesus and serve Church of Christ the King and Brighton. The blog has far exceeded expectations in terms of ‘hits’ and feedback. A big thank you if you’ve contributed to the blog in any way and we look forward to many more engaging posts over the years to come.

These are a few of the most viewed posts on the site over the last year.

Reflections on 40 years in Christian Leadership by John Hosier

One on One with Simon Virgo

One on One with Mike Pilavachi

One on One with Andrew Wilson

One on One with the Lyndons

Men and Women of Honour: David and Gillian Moss

Men and Women of Honour: Doug and Alison Davis

Review – Phatfish album: In Jesus

One on One with Annie Waller

Ron and Chris Marchant – Servant Leaders

Ron and Chris Marchant have been members at CCK since 1991. You often see Ron welcoming people into the church building for the morning services and Chris behind the bookstore till. These pioneers at CCK are legendary servers in the church. This is their story..

Ron:

I was brought up in a disciplined family and went to Sunday School but had no real interest in Jesus. After school, I joined the Air Force  and served in Pakistan. We used to transfer refugees from Pakistan to Bangladesh and vice versa. They had all their sheep and goats in the plane and there used to be quite a stench! Mountbatten was there at the time.

I got married in 1946 but got shipped off to India 3 months later. I came back to England in 1947 and went into engineering.

I started attending a church in Southwick even though I wasn’t much of a Christian and after 2-3 years of being disillusioned, I spoke to the vicar and he said, “You need to be saved and receive the Holy Spirit”. So I went to his vicarage and he prayed for me and all my confusions went! I got very involved with church after that and eventually became an elder in the Anglican church that I was part of but things got messed up within the church. Eventually I moved out and got involved in a small group lead by a man called Henry Tyler from CCK.

My wife died shortly afterwards in the 1980’s because of a blood condition. It left me wondering why God allowed that but in hindsight, God was doing a work in me. I felt God had given me a ‘Job ‘like character, from the Bible. My story helped lead a friend to Jesus.

I was part of an Ecumenical choir lead by Heather Cowell and it was there that I met Chris and and God confirmed to us that we should get married.

We’ve now been married for 28 years and it’s like a second lifetime! God has greatly blessed us with our son Tim and our daughter Becky and grandchildren.

Ten years later I joined CCK because I saw there was great potential in all that they were doing. I didn’t take any baggage with me of eldership credentials but just felt secure and challenged in that place.

Now we’re firmly part of the CCK family, serving, being involved and being blessed.

Chris:

I was brought up in a Christian family and went to Sunday school, youth groups etc but it wasn’t until I went to college in Portsmouth that I realized I needed a personal relationship with God. I became a follower of Jesus and He’s most important to me now.

After college, I came back to Hove and joined Holland Road Baptist Church . I got baptized there and received a very firm grounding in scripture. One of the traditions we had was an annual missionary week and it was during one of those that I felt God speak to me about serving Him in another country. Some time later, a friend who was a missionary from Nepal mentioned about a vacancy in a school in Nepal . I prayed about this and knew almost instantly that God was telling me ‘to go’. I was a bit nervous and my parents were apprehensive but supportive. So I went out to fill a year’s gap but 6 weeks in to the time there I felt God wanted me to stay on and ended up staying there for 3 years 4 months!

On my return and after a year’s diploma course, I went back to Holland Road Baptist Church . I was single then and that wasn’t easy at  times but God had to get me to a place where I would be prepared to stay single.There were largely women missionaries in Nepal so I thought it would be good to get amongst some mixed company so I joined a Christian choir and it was there that I met Ron!

Ron:

When you consider the various strategies CCK has gone through, circumstances have shown we can do it better. Now we have an outward look – earlier we were building up the troops! We find the high priority is getting into the community. CCK’s a flagship in ushering change in the community. We’ve seen more of it happen as people no longer sit on the fence but get involved.

Chris:

One of the things that struck me when I went to CCK was the very visible accountability amongst the leadership team  which made me feel very secure. It is good to see them checking things out with each other. We’re not just  relying on one man. Change hasn’t always been easy but the security we have with the leadership has helped.

Ron:

Having been involved with management I’ve always had a leadership element. When I joined CCK, I went through a number of courses to equip for ministry. I was keen on being involved with leadership but I suddenly realized I was doing it for the wrong reasons! It’s a complete reversal now and I serve rather than being the leader and I thoroughly enjoy it.

For more remarkable stories of extraordinary people at CCK, please click here.

A beautiful spring afternoon on Sunday 18^th April 2010 saw a stream of determined runners cross the finish line of the first ever Brighton Marathon after a day of sun, sweat and support on the streets of Brighton and Hove. Following months of planning and preparation, the resounding success of this event was summed up by one Tweet from our very own Matt Simmonds who was posting from the Brighton Marathon Headquarters throughout the day: “7589 started (7426 finished), 1700 volunteered and an estimated 80,000 were out on the streets cheering everyone on.”

This official BM Twitter account was just one way in which CCK played an active role, both in the build up to and on the day of the race. For the first time since we launched the 3-service Sunday back in September, both the 9.15 and 11.30am meetings were cancelled to release church goers to participate in the marathon: – to run, to serve, and to support. The Clarendon Centre itself served as Headquarters for Zones 1 and 2, and Centre manager, Dan Sweetman and his team were at the centre from 5am to prepare kits for the hundreds of stewards and security that would come through the doors during the course of the day. CCK member Andy Ferrett, who was responsible for developing the BM iphone app, spent the day uploading finishing times to the app.

The Centre had also been put to use prior to the actual event as the Brighton Base for marathon volunteers, in which the BM Team, supported by CCK staff and members, conducted hours of training. Some extra training was necessary, however, for those CCK-ers who went the distance and completed the 26 mile course from Preston Park to Madeira Drive. Fastest of our dedicated bunch was Dave Andrews, who finished in an amazing 3 hours 9mins (the winner of the race did it in 2 hours, 19mins).

The sense of camaraderie, excitement, and community was particularly tangible along the sunny seafront, where the usual traffic jam was replaced by thousands of Brightonians eager to see and to shout their support to the runners.

“On such a hot day, it was a hard run, but from Preston Park, through town, and even all the way out to the power station, members of CCK did not stop shouting encouragement,” says Marathon finisher Dave Fahrer. “When I hit the 19^th mile I was feeling spent, but a friend from church actually walked and jogged alongside me, giving me the encouragement to carry on. It was just awesome.” Likewise, Steve Horne, who stood to close the 6.30 meeting at CCK wearing his Marathon T-shirt and a big smile, reflects on the power of encouragement. “I am certain I would not have kept running in the last three miles if I had not been cheered on by the friends and family in the crowd.”

Among the causes sponsored by CCK runners were The Supported Housing Unit (Friends First); Multiple Sclerosis Society; Brighton and Hove YMCA; Hands for Hope; and Cystic Fibrosis.  The positive impact of this event, not only for numerous national and international charities, but for Brighton and Hove itself, makes it particularly exciting that the Race is going ahead again for 2011.

Chris and Christine Kidger – Strong Marriages: What a strong nation needs

Chris and Christine have been at CCK for 15 years now. Together they’re involved with the team responsible for marriage and counselling. They teach on the marriage course conducted at CCK. They do this because they believe that strong marriages help to produce strong families which in turn help to produce strong societies which in turn help to produce strong nations!

Chris is also partly retired as well as a practice manager with oversight of social workers involved in Child Protection.

Chris: I come from a non Christian background and had an agnostic step father. I was 10 when we moved to a small village in Essex and started going to Sunday School in a Baptist church there. My brother and I became Christians in our teen years. After school, I went off to London to do a hotel management course and spent the next 11 years in the hotel industry. In 1965, I was living in North London and going to a local church. One Sunday evening, I was at the door welcoming people (something I very rarely did!) and who should walk in but this attractive blonde who caught my eye!

Christine: I was brought up in a Christian home along with 4 brothers and 2 sisters. I became a follower of Jesus when I was 4. At 18, I began nursing training in the east end of London with a view to going to Africa. Chris and I met when I was 19 and we married in 1967!

Chris: What was funny was we took our honeymoon in Tunisia and in 1967 that was quite an adventure! We thought we would never travel again but God had different ideas! We were going to settle down and start a Christian guest house. But that all changed in 1970 when I was filled with the Holy Spirit. God led me to change careers and I switched to social work.

Christine: Whilst doing my midwifery training, a baby was born into difficult circumstances. That was pre-abortion time and people didn’t want babies. I discussed this with Chris and we prayed about it. I felt God saying don’t pray unless you want to be involved in the answer. To cut a long story short, Chris found him in a foster home and we adopted him when he was 2 years old.

Chris: Going through the adoption process led me to become a social worker. In 1973, God intervened again and we joined YWAM and packed up our belongings in a VW van and with our 4 children we went to Morocco to work with hippies and drug addicts who were on the drug trail.

In Morocco we had mice, rats, leeches, things stolen, sickness, make shift toilets but through it all we saw people come to know Jesus.

Christine: We moved quite a lot after that. In the first 15 years we made about 20 different moves! We had babies on the day we moved and had babies two days after we moved! It was all great!

But the last 27 years, we haven’t moved at all. The children were in their teens so we stayed in Brighton whilst they did their education.

In 1978, I woke up in the night and felt God say to write down what he showed me. It was about Nehemiah’s wall. Areas of the wall were different areas of church life that needed to be built. Bricks were individuals and families built together and the mortar that bound them together was love and trust. When Joel came with the vision of rebuilding walls, we were very excited because of the picture God had given me. We’ve had previous prophecies over our life about feeding God’s sheep which is about building the pastoral side of the church. So it all fits in to God’s plan for our lives.

Chris: In hindsight, we’ve seen God take care of us over the various seasons of our lives. We’ve had situations wherewe’ve had very little and situations where we’ve had a bit more. Finance, healing, personal family problems, stressful situations – through them all God has been faithful.

My experience is God takes you and puts you into circumstances that you wouldn’t have chosen, but He gives you strength to do so.

I love counselling and I think its one of the powerful ways in which God brings wholeness and healing to people to enable them to enjoy the plans and purposes he has for them.

Whatever our background, God uses us to serve his kingdom!

Christine: It says in the Bible that those ‘planted in the house of the Lord, they will bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green’.  I find it interesting watching long distance runs in the Olympics. A whistle is blown at the last lap and trained runners will sprint as hard as they can for the last lap.

And it’s like God uses your training to help you run with all your might in the end even if it may not be as fast.

Chris: It’s a good thing we don’t know the end from the beginning or we might not have started!

Dave Edwards – From Rags to Riches to Christ

In 1994, I was on a crowded beach in Rio de Janeiro. There were some kids body boarding on waves that were over 10 feet high and very powerful. There were 7 or 8 breakers but beyond the waves the sea was calm and I thought if I could get through the breakers, I could swim in the calm sea. So I managed that and felt quite proud of myself as there was no one else there. However, it took me quite an effort and so was feeling very tired. So I decided to come back in but I couldn’t. The harder I tried the further I kept getting dragged out. Panic set in. I was miles away from land on either side. Then I remembered the kids body boarding and so I stiffened my body and rode the first wave which led me to the second wave and to cut a long story short I landed on the beach exhausted but very grateful. It gave me a new respect for the sea. That was one of the many times I almost died!

A few years later God revealed to me that it was He who had plucked me out of the sea and placed me on solid ground. It helped me a draw parallel with the messed up life, from which I had no way out. God had pulled me out and placed me on solid ground.

I was born into abject poverty in Ireland. 3 of my 4 siblings including me were put in an orphanage because my parents couldn’t afford to look after us. I know what poverty is and being in that situation I vowed that I’d never be poor again. At a young age I started working in hotels ON  the catering side. It gave me free food, free accommodation and a wage and tips! So it was quite good. And my story of discovering Jesus really begins when I was working as a hotel manager in Jersey in 1975. This hotel happened to be a Christian hotel where they served non alcoholic wine and I found that very weird! But it was my job and the owner’s beliefs didn’t really bother me. Anyway, a young church leader, Graham Topping, and his wife and 9 month daughter, came to stay at the hotel. One day as I was sitting by the pool, he came up to me and I knew what was coming next! He asked me, “David, are you happy with life?” I laughed at him and replied, “Look around, I have the sun and the pool, money and a healthy body! Why shouldn’t I be happy with life?!” After talking a while, he left, but before checking out, he gave me a book instead of a tip, which was a bit disappointing! It was called The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey. It was a book about the prophecies in the Bible especially about the Jews and Israel. It talked about a prophecy that God would disperse the Jews among the world for their disobedience but He was not going to completely forsake them and He would bring them back in the end times, just before Jesus the Messiah was to come back. This happened in 1948 when Israel was re-established as a homeland for the Jews. I thought it was all very interesting but didn’t pay much heed to it.

25 years later, I was successful in the antiques business. I had made loads of money and travelled all over the world. I had all the trappings of a rich man. I got divorced in 1993 and from there on I was free to go and do all the things I shouldn’t be doing but I did. I did drugs and alcohol and women. I mixed with a crowd that also had lots of money. But when it came down to it, they turned out to not be genuine friends.

One Sunday morning after a night of very heavy cocaine and alcohol, I put the TV on and the first channel that came on was the God channel. There was no way after my hangover that I was going to get up and change the channel. So I listened to the programme and strangely enough, they were talking about the biblical prophecy about the Jews returning to Israel. I was interested immediately. But I thought this couldn’t be real because if it was they would be shouting it from the rooftops. Anyway, the show ended and they said if you have anymore questions, you should call the number shown on the screen. So sure enough I called the number and they said there was an Alpha course starting in Brighton at a place called Church of Christ the King. I thought to myself I’ve done everything in my life and I owe it to myself to have a look at this. I wasn’t going to tell my friends because they would have thought that I had lost the plot. I was determined that they wouldn’t get me or my money but I would look at the Alpha course very carefully. I was too street wise for them and I would find the mistake. I never did!

So I went along. This was the year 2000. I met some very interesting people there. I was told that there was a church that met in the building we had the Alpha course in. I was surprised because this building didn’t look anything like any idea of a church I had in mind from a catholic point of view. I thought I’d sneak up one Sunday and mingle with the crowd and see what it was all about. So I went along and I saw people worshipping in a way that you never do in a catholic church. They had a peaceful look about them and I thought this was very unreal. But I was really intrigued so I went back again. Everyone looked as peaceful, like angels. So I made quite an irreverent prayer, “God if you’re real and here, I want some of this. I want loads of this.” I didn’t even recognize that it was a prayer at that time.

5 weeks later in to the Alpha course, I suddenly encountered the Holy Spirit and I committed my life to Jesus. Here was this big cheese with loads of money, drugs and girlfriends who was giving his life to Jesus. I was amazed at myself. I had never thought I’d do something like this but I knew this was real and I knew that there was nothing more I wanted in life than Jesus. Everything else could fall away for all I care. From that point on God has answered my first prayer – He has given me loads of it. He has given me a joy and a peace that goes beyond all understanding. I can’t explain it. I have a fulfilment now which I never had before. I understand where it’s come from but I don’t have words good enough to relate what God has done in my life for me. I deserved nothing. I can’t stop telling people enough how grateful I am. I can’t stop telling God enough how grateful I am!

The day I became a Christian, I had an excessive amount of cocaine with me. I had a bag which was probably worth about 600 quid. I was trying to justify to myself that nowhere in the bible did it say ‘thou shall not do cocaine’ but I knew in my spirit that it was wrong for me to have this. So I decided to give it away and tell my friends that I had stopped doing it and that would be a good testimony of me becoming a Christian. But I felt God tell me that He did not want me to do that. So then I thought that maybe I could sell it and give the money to the church or some charity and some good would come out of this. But God said no, I want you to flush it down the toilet. I argued with God for a bit but then I just did it and from that moment on I’ve never taken cocaine nor had the urge to do so.

A lot of wonderful things have happened to me since. One of the first things I did after becoming a follower of Jesus was to pray for my family to come to know the Lord. And from one miraculous story to another, all 4 of my children came to know Jesus and love Him with all their hearts. Seeing their love for Jesus makes me a very grateful and proud father.

I hope my testimony gives you hope if you’re praying for family members or friends. I was far far away from God, but He has brought me home.

Tony and Claire Coggan: A Family that loves Jesus.. Radically

Tony: I became a Christian in 1972. Before I allowed God to take control of my life, I would have said that I was a conservative, God fearing, hardworking person but who could always do better! I thought that with more effort and more self-discipline I would succeed. But I never seemed to until someone showed me that Christ, by dying on the cross, had done all the hard work for me.

One of the most exciting things I did immediately after that was to go to the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972 with YWAM. We talked to people about Jesus and after the dramatic moment of the shootings we were involved in comforting people and organising a peace march.

Then I met Claire in 1979…

Claire: I became a Christian in 1973. I was adopted at 6 weeks and grew up in Surrey. My parents were good people but I struggled to feel loved.

I was pretty messed up by the time I was a young teenager and got expelled from school at 13. When I was 16, a girl from a Brethren missionary family befriended me. She introduced me to her family and to her church. As a hippie, I stood out, but the Church drew me in and loved me unconditionally in a way I had not experienced before. This is what led me to Jesus.

Sadly, as my job required I work shifts, I found it difficult to get to Church and slowly I began to drift from God. I began to doubt God’s love for me. After a lot of tireless loving and support from some very godly people, God broke in and drew me back to himself. God healed a lot of hurts and filled me with the Holy Spirit.

I met Tony at a small Church in Horsham in 1979. Having been engaged twice before I was quite cautious about getting into a relationship. On a church weekend away, I asked God to speak to me about him. To my surprise, Tony turned up at the weekend and told me he was attracted to me! Very quickly we knew God had brought us together.

We lived in a caravan for the first year and a half of being married. We prayed for a flat and when I was 9 months pregnant with my daughter Hannah, God provided at the last moment!

When we left YWAM we were then made homeless but we trusted God and as we had a baby, the council provided us with a brand new house. It was God’s amazing provision again!

Tony:By this time we were both part of a new church that had been started in Crawley. It was a time of God laying foundations in both the Church and in our lives through excellent teaching from the Bible.

In 1989 whilst at a Church conference, I felt God say to me He was sending us to serve a Church for 6 months. After many confirmations and with three young children in tow, we set off for Pretoria, South Africa.

We didn’t have much money with us but daily we saw God provide for us and often in quite miraculous ways. One Sunday we didn’t even have money to buy milk but, by the end of the church service that day, we were invited to lunch, someone had filled the boot of our car with food and someone had written us a cheque for all our rent for the next month. That was just one of the many times God has provided for us.

Claire: Another time, our eldest son, Sam asked us for a pair of gloves. We had no money so we encouraged him to pray. The next evening, someone came for dinner and without knowing Sam’s prayer produced two sets of gloves! It was amazing to see how God demonstrated His provision to our children so personally. God used our love for the Church and our desire to pass that on to others whilst in SA.

Tony: When we came back to the UK in 1994, we began to hear God say that it was ‘time to move to a bigger church’. So we joined CCK. Initially, we knew just a few people but we felt more involved as we became part of small group life and began serving on Alpha and Beta courses. We love welcoming new people to CCK. Currently we are living in Hangleton and are part of a great small group on the Knoll Estate and have just recently been invited to join the North Hove Zone core team.

We know God has called us to serve the vision of CCK which is to be a church in the city that is affecting Brighton with the gospel.

Claire: Family means a lot to us (and now we have two grandsons; Jude and Alfie who we adore!) In the early days of being a mum I asked God to teach me to be ‘His kind’ of a mother. I was passionate about being a mum, about teaching our children about God and His word.

It was such a joy to hear my daughter tell me recently that she had prayed the same prayer that I had prayed, and to know that I had passed on something valuable.

One Sunday, many years ago, when our children were still small, we were singing a song based on a passage from the Bible about being a royal priesthood and a holy nation, I started to think of the Coggan family line and I believed that as we committed ourselves to pray for our children, the Coggans would be men and women of God! We are so grateful to God for his grace and mercy as we see each of our children and their wives loving God and walking with Him.