‘I wrote ‘Jesus loves you’ on my clothes, helped lead a daily prayer meeting in school and ... told everyone, including our teachers, that Jesus loved them!’ band called No Longer Music. Our name was Jamaica Mo Mix (don’t ask why!). We had read a book called Rock Priest by David Pierce in which he told stories of No Longer Music’s evangelistic feats in some really dark, even overtly satanic music clubs around the globe. That was it. We had a hero after whom to pattern ourselves. We never quite made it to any satanic music clubs, but those years were marked by evangelism at every turn. I wrote ‘Jesus loves you’ on my clothes, helped lead a daily prayer meeting in school and me and my friends told everyone, including our teachers, that Jesus loved them! By the time I got out of school a very important friend – the same guy who had led my small group on that momentous summer camp – had left our band and I had my first full blown identity crisis. This friend had been such a huge influence in my life that I started asking myself whether I had always only copied him. Suddenly I felt like I had never really been myself. This led me to question many things which I had thought were authentic until then, including my walk with God. At the time, part of the letter to the church in Laodicea from the book of Revelation applied to me. I was neither hot nor cold. I knew that Jesus didn’t like lukewarm Christianity. And because I had too many doubts and knew that pretending to be hot wasn’t going to work, I became a prodigal son. For the next one or two years, I was on a search for authenticity and meaning. I remember going for
a walk in the middle of the night and being amazed that while I did my share of wild living I still sensed the Father’s arms being wide open every time I needed someone to talk to. It was the purity of this kind of love that eventually made me realise that this was the reality I was searching for, full of meaning and authenticity. I came to the conclusion that following Jesus was actually the most meaningful way of life I could imagine. It was at this point that I decided to take what was a huge step for a country boy like me and come to England in order to do a 5 month discipleship school in Croydon (south London ). For the first time in my life I got on a plane. On that sunny September day I set off to spend half a year with some people I had never met before. My hope was that this time would help me become an authentic and wholehearted follower of Jesus. Folly’s End Church was part of a church network that grew out of a renewal movement that started at the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship. It was a pretty wacky place to be! I remember once we had to carry two students out of the church into our minibus in order to get home. They were so drunk in the Spirit that they couldn’t walk! The teaching at the school revolved around a few core themes: The father heart of God, hearing God’s voice and emotional
wholeness. One of the main goals there was to see the character of the student shaped by these values and living in community was seen as the best way to achieve that. So we shared a big house and had to do the shopping, cooking and cleaning together. It was an amazing experience of close community. In many ways this influenced my view of church and how individuals can be empowered by belonging to a loving, family-like community. After the school I travelled around North America for three months and got to know some people that would have a huge impact on me in what was yet ahead. But before any of that happened I went back home and did an apprenticeship in roofing. One day there was exciting news! A friend told me and my brother that his parents owned an empty, old house and that we could live there for free as long as we paid the expenses. My brother had also just come back from a discipleship school with YWAM and it felt as though God was opening a door for us to develop what he had planted in us abroad. The house soon became a hub for many of our friends. We had regular cell group meetings and band practices there and quite often we had friends staying with us. Some years later I had finished my apprenticeship but I was a bit unsettled about the prospect of spending my life on building sites. Somewhere along the way I had picked up a passion for people as well as the desire to do something that would connect them with God. I was pondering these sorts of issues when I
‘because I had too many doubts and knew that pretending to be hot wasn’t going to work, I became a prodigal son.’
Areopagus
SprinG 2010
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