Simon Virgo is presently on the leadership team at New Life Church (formerly known as Biggin Hill Christian Fellowship), Biggin Hill, Kent. He is married to Caroline. They are soon to move to Kingston where Simon will lead King’s Church there. Simon was born and brought up in Brighton and studied Intellectual History at Sussex University. He supports Liverpool Football Club. Yohaan Philip, chief editor of the ccklife blog, had the joy of hearing from Simon the amazing story of God’s hand on his life and writes:
Simon’s a dear friend, one of my closest. His father, Terry, introduced us way back in January 08 whilst I was still in India. We exchanged a few emails and in September 09 when I moved to Brighton, I finally had the privilege of finally meeting this mighty man of God. Simon has been one of the most inspiring figures in my life ever since. One of the most prominent features of this humble young man is his passion for God and commitment to prayer. There is never a time when he’s not up for praying – be it in the middle of a cold winter night (when he has dragged me out of bed!) or a hot summer afternoon (as we’ve sat by the sea!). In spite of this, Simon doesn’t come across as “super spiritual” with his head in the clouds! His cheeky sense of humor always has me in splits! This interview has really blessed me and I pray it has a similar effect on you as you read it. To Christ Eternal be all glory for His gracious, saving work.
YP: Simon Virgo – one of the founding members of Church of Christ the King! Always good talking to you my friend! Tell us a bit about yourself.
SV: Yes, I was there when the church was started, all of 3 years I think. I now herd goats as a pass time. At the moment I also work at the church in Biggin Hill, Kent. I am married to Caroline and we have no children yet. But, we do have a pet badger and a very small monkey.
I warned you about his cheeky sense of humour! On to more serious stuff now..
YP: You do have quite a remarkable story about your relationship with Jesus. Tell me a bit more about your story:
SV: I grew up in a Christian family with my mum and dad very involved here. I was very happy and there were no particular problems in that. I was happy in church, happy in a good school – everything was fine. I appreciated that my parents lived out their faith with real integrity. From a young age, I experienced listening to the preaching of the gospel and was captivated by it. I remember as a 9 year old listening to my dad preach through the book of Romans and being very captivated by the gospel and by preaching under the power of the Holy Spirit. I felt God call me to leadership when I was 9 at Downs ‘88 when Ray Lowe preached four messages on four different world changers across history.
When I was 14, we moved to America for two years, and that was when everything really changed for me. I didn’t really want to go and rebelled at that stage. I turned my back on God and became really bitter and angry. We came back from America when I was 16 and I pursued that rebellion for a few years. I had radically changed and even my non Christian friends noticed how bitter I had become. I started getting into soft drugs and drinking a lot. I was very anti God, very anti Church, very anti any form of authority really. I was bitter towards my parents and my family. I kept getting into more drugs – worse and worse drugs. By the end of 1998 I was taking LSD and ecstasy regularly. I was beginning to experiment with other drugs. I was smoking dope all the time. I was running from God and getting swallowed up in a drug induced lifestyle. I’d read a lot of philosophers such as Nietzsche, Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus and felt everything in the world was pretty bankrupt. I was in a relationship that ended in heart break. It seemed that after five years of running away from God, life was beginning to disintegrate. I felt I had no hope. For two years I was severely depressed. Life was really going down the toilet.
And then my mum felt God saying to her, “spend a week praying and fasting, seeking Me for Simon”. My dad had gone to America, but she felt she was not to go and instead to stay back and really fight for her son. So she did that and it was during that week that everything really changed. I went from the beginning of the week having no interest in God, running away from Him as fast as I could to being completely transformed. On the Thursday night, I was in a night club and I felt God saying to me, “you could be happy and know peace if you stopped running away from me.” That night I opened up a bible and suddenly all the arguments about what truth could and couldn’t be died down. All the different voices that I’d listened to and read and thought about suddenly had to be quiet as if the teacher had walked into the class. I read what Jesus said in the gospels and I suddenly knew that this was it. This was the truth. By the end of the night, I knelt down and submitted my life to God. The following day at work I had an incredible encounter with God’s love as I sang a song that ends with “you delight in me”. All my emptiness was filled in that moment and I knew that God was claiming my life back for Himself. I took a long time to get out of the lifestyle I was in. It was messy and prolonged. I went through some terrible seasons and it was by no means easy. But, God was faithful throughout the whole thing. That was the beginning of 1999, so it’s been 10 years now. I’ve been through some tough times and had to make some tough decisions, but God has been faithful.
YP: I remember your mum saying that she almost fell off the chair when you said “Whatever you’re doing, I think you’re winning” during that week she prayed and fasted for you. She had tears in her eyes as she narrated the story. The memory was still so vivid to her. I love it when God demonstrates how real He is.
SV: It was an encounter with God which totally changed my life.
YP: For a lot of us who have grown up in Church and known the joy of salvation from an early age, we have sometimes struggled and walked away. What advice would you give your son to help him find his own personal relationship with God and not end up making some of the mistakes that you made in your teenage years?
SV: Firstly, I would need to demonstrate an example in front of him of one who is evidently satisfied in God. I think he would need to know that I am following God not out of some obligation, but because I am finding my satisfaction in Him. He shouldn’t feel the need to turn away from God to find satisfaction. It’s much like how in Jeremiah 2:13, God talks about the two sins that His people, the Israelites, have committed – they’ve turned away from Him and turned to broken cisterns.
When young guys tell me that they wish they had a crazy testimony like me, I tend to tell them that you don’t need to taste dog excrement to realize that it’s not going to be pleasant experience. Sometimes people feel the need to go out there and experiment. I would say that the pleasures of the world are very shallow. There is pleasure though. If you sleep around, you will enjoy some pleasure. If you take drugs, there will be some pleasure. You wouldn’t do them otherwise. But it’s ultimately such a shallow pleasure – it’s really the bait on the end of the hook that drags you into bondage and guilt and regrets. It’s like the neon lights of Vegas which look very inviting, but when you go deeper you find it’s full of corruption and foulness. So I would say to people that you don’t need to go out and taste the excrement. Wise children don’t eat dog crap. They don’t even feel the need to taste it to conclude that it’s not nice.
YP: (laughs) Love that analogy! Some of the best times I’ve shared with you have been those epic hour long prayer times we’ve had on the Brighton sea front in the middle of the night. You inspire prayer in me. What’s been helpful in shaping your desire to pray with such fervour and conviction?
SV: The biggest influence that has shaped my desire to pray has undoubtedly been the example of my dad – hearing and learning from my dad pray every morning as I grew older. You could set your clock to it! Every morning he would be up and praying for a good hour or so. That just put a dent in my mind and in my life. You just see that to do church leadership, you pray. Sometimes I’ve been really frustrated when I’ve gathered others to pray and they seem so reluctant, and then I’m reminded that while I’ve had this incredible example, not everyone else has. So, that has been a big privilege to have lived so close to a man who is such a man of prayer. My parents were both people of prayer.
One of the things that has really motivated me to pray is that simply, prayer works! I’ve seen awesome things happen when I’ve cried out to God. I’ve seen dramatic results in situations where I’ve seen God intervene in a way that can only have been Him. There’s nothing more encouraging than seeing God work.
I think it’s Tozer who says, “we can have as much of God as we want.” The door is open and we can boldly approach God. We can know God. And it’s up to us how much determination we can bring to that task of cultivating a relationship with God – we can know God! An awareness that we are invited into actually knowing God rather than being Christians is awesome. And I want to know God, to encounter Him. I think Christianity is a bit boring unless you encounter God.
YP: Thanks Si! It’s been great chatting with you. This is really going to help bless a lot of us young guys and encourage many parents! Bless you my friend.
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