I grew up in a Christian family. They said they were Christian and we were baptised but we never went to church. As I grew up, I grew away from that belief. By about nine years old Christianity seemed uncool and I became a firm unbeliever - firmly an atheist. The only one in the family who had real faith was my grandad. I used to talk about it with him and remember he had a saying “For every creation there has to be a creator”. I thought he had a point. I started to think about the origin of life and considering things like gravity and the heat from the sun realising that if they were very slightly different, the figures changed a bit, then life wouldn’t exist. I always felt like I was looking for something and that there was something about life which I couldn’t quite figure out. But as far as God went, I didn’t think about that until my mid twenties. I had long term mental health problems with depression and anxiety and that affected my journey towards faith too. I was firmly agnostic at that time but slowly moving towards a belief in God and Christianity.

One Christmas I felt the need to take the religious aspect of Christmas more seriously. I felt the need to pray and my mindset changed. I started to see things with such a different perspective. I thought of myself as “born again” in as much as I was purely and simply learning everything again. As Christians we have Jesus as a role model for how we should be. I truly believe that Hope is Key and Faith is Key. Hope that things can get better and that faith pushes people to be better. The Bible is full of examples of hope and faith like the disciples for example. We all have the potential to be better and to be the source of joy, happiness and love.

I never had the intention to come to church. I was happy just having my personal relationship with God. But on my twenty sixth birthday I had the day off work unusually for my birthday. I felt the need to go to church and sit and pray, even for a few minutes, and on a day which was all about me, I wanted to give a part of it to God. It was a Friday and the church isn’t normally open on Fridays but for some reason that day it was. I met Father David in there and spoke to him and he encouraged me to come to the Sunday service. I think my old mindset would have thought that the church was open that day through luck or chance but I believe something has intervened and God is looking out for me and made sure the church was open when I went along that day and if people open their heart to him, they will see that he’s looking out for them too. If he can do it for me, he can do it for everybody. 

The church itself is beautiful and being a history nerd, I have always loved old buildings like this. I was made to feel very welcome when I started coming to the Sunday services. For a long time, I was the kid who sat on his own at the back - I still am really! - but I’m now trying to get involved more. I’m getting confirmed soon and I’m really excited about that. It’s something I really believe in. I stand with this church specifically just because of how much it’s given me in the 6 months I’ve been going. I feel like the love I have been shown is something like no other and I’m grateful every day to God and everyone else here for that. If you’d told twenty one year old me that at twenty six I’d be coming to church I would have laughed.

I didn’t come to church having any expectations. I didn’t investigate different denominations at all. It doesn’t particularly matter to me about denomination - what really matters is that we do our best to uphold the principles of Christianity as best we can and we try to be a little bit better each and every day. In my experience the Christians here live by that. That is why I love the study groups and activities like watching The Chosen TV show together the most: you get really involved in the religious process and the actual history and discussion points and interpretations and that is so important because not only does it spark debate, which I think is healthy, but it creates a dialogue. A lot of questions I have had have been handled respectfully and I have felt heard. Everyone gets heard. These activities are the best bits of this church community specifically and it reminds me of my days at uni when we would discuss issues like this. Christianity in general is about people coming together and when they come together, they want to find out about each other. What better way for the church to do that and ask, “What does this mean to you?”

When we finished the interview, Stephen told me he felt that God had intervened pushing me to ask him for this interview. I think that is true. Stephen had felt that he needed to talk about his faith and I then approached him to do this having had a feeling he would be right for it. It’s amazing how God works, even in the simplest ways, sometimes.