The biographies on the People page naturally tell of the event or process that is central to every Christian's life: their coming to Christ. This page complements the testimonies contained in the biographies by other such documents that YCC people have written, for example in preparation for their baptism or in letters to friends. All members of our church are invited to consider contributing such documents to this webpage. More and more testimonies will be added over the coming months.
The contributions are presented in reverse chronological order, i.e., the most recently submitted ones are at the top.
May there be an account of an arrival here that gladdens your heart and gives you encouragement.
Brought up to go to a small Welsh chapel – as everyone did then, but drifted away, wanted my own way. Thought I was fine without all this religious stuff, left it behind.
Lived and worked and loved – a husband, Vladimir, and two stepchildren, Tania and Noah; jobs, friends, a busy and full life.
Then ‘mid-life’ - loss of my father and my grandmother, growing older, sense of loss of energy and purpose in life. Went seeking. Went all the way to the US to Wyoming – on a business retreat – and discovered that meaning and purpose wasn’t there – but there was a still small voice inside which if I quietened my mind and opened my heart – would tell me all I ever needed to know.
So became more convinced of the importance of the spiritual in my life – nature’s wonder, beauty, music, art seeking the lovely in the day-to-day. I meditated, I kept a journal, I read and I explored ideas and ancient truths.
And strangely many of the people who came alongside and had supported me or who I really felt close to – at work and outside, turned out to be Christians. Odd that.
Then one evening – sat at dinner in a friend’s house I happened to be next to Margaret Jenkinson and she became my willing worker – she extended the invitation – come to Church with me – and I found myself saying yes. The next day I came to YCC for the first time – into the Communion service. And I felt that I was in the right place, I was home, I belonged here.
Now I would describe it as being part of Gods family – his child and part of the body of Christ, the Church.
Over the next weeks and months I became more and more keen to be part of the Church and to learn more. I was very comfortable with the idea of an all-powerful Creator who had brought the wonders of this universe and this our earth into being. But now I also was more and more aware of a Saviour who had died for me and now wanted to rule in my life. This was a lot less comfortable an idea.
C.S. Lewis had a big impact on me here –
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him. ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic or else he would be the Devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (From C S Lewis - Mere Christianity)
There has been no single moment of revelation – but a growing relationship, a dawning of understanding of what knowing Jesus as your personal saviour can and does do in your life. A growing confidence in listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, can’t not do things – just have to be somewhere or do something – and it is only afterwards that the realisation of why comes to you.
What difference has it made in my life – I feel I was always blessed with many friendships and good things. Now know that this is not just ‘luck’ but that my life is showered with grace and mercy from the Lord. And I know that I don’t ‘deserve’ it. It comes free.
Encouragement
There have been so many encouragements along the way – the family that is YCC is wonderful, there is a depth of caring and supporting and learning and worship, which is so special. Celebrating the good times – and holding you fast through the times of difficulty. Jane Lewis and Susan Shelley and I in our prayer trio have been blessed with so much close fellowship, listening and praying and helping one another. I thank the Lord for them.
Joy – there have been times of amazing Joy
Gods kids – with the children making a joyful noise to the Lord – singing My god is a Great Big God.
Margaret’s 90th birthday party – which started as a low-key small affair – but God had other ideas. It turned into a huge celebration – a feast for 150 people and the Archbishop of York as the speaker!
I remember Jane and Mark Lewis using the analogy of the house as a way of describing the work of Jesus our lives. It as if we come before God and recognise some things that are wrong in our lives – we confess and ask forgiveness – and clear out a few old drawers, tidy up a couple of rooms – but are a bit taken aback when actually the Lord starts to want to rip down walls and extend out rooms and build another floor – hang-on I thought (and still do think sometimes) how much change does there need to be. And the answer comes – it all needs to change – your life is no longer your own, you must become like Christ – perfect.
Impossible, I cry – sometimes I can be really good, loving and helpful and caring and warm-hearted and peaceful – but I can’t keep it up the whole time – so then I get angry and irritable and mean-spirited and feel taken for granted and resentful etc. And that is the rub. It is impossible for me – but nothing is impossible for God. He doesn’t expect me to just try harder – he wants me to know that if I rely on Him – then I can change. He wants me to know that ONLY if I rely on him, I can change.
And so that is what this baptism is about – it is an outward sign of an inner conviction – that what God wants from me is obedience. And this obedience is not from fear or duty – but with a heartful of love and thankfulness for what he has done in bringing me back into his family.
(Psalm 37. v 3-7)
Trust in the Lord and do good
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture
Delight yourself in the Lord
And he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord;
Trust in Him and He will do this
He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn
The justice of your cause like the noonday sun.
Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him.
So it is not my doing, it is His – he wanted me back, he led me back – and ‘Now by His grace I come’.
It is not my life – Jesus gave his life for me – he is my Redeemer – and he has left his Spirit here to work with us until he comes again.
He is my Rock – in times of trouble
He is my shepherd – and came after me – a lost sheep
He is my deliverer, my redeemer and my friend.
I love him and I continue to grow in my understanding of and realisation of how much he loves me. He died for me, he died so that my sins are forgiven and he died so that there should be nothing to separate me from God, the Father.
Amazing!
Over the past week, as I phoned people to tell them about my Baptism, the dominant initial response that came back to me was surprise. Various degrees of surprise. My loved ones who are not Christians had a moment of struggle to overcome a shock. Friends from church were delighted and surprised. Although, since some of them had actually prayed for years for this to happen, one might have expected them to be delighted but not surprised. I almost feel that some of us gathered here have come to witness a miracle. And, I must admit, if I were to look at myself standing here with the eyes of the person I was only a few months ago, those eyes would be goggle-like.
I owe you an account of how this has come to pass.
I was brought up in an almost impeccably secular environment. My grandmothers went to church, one being Protestant and the other Catholic, but it was a side of them that I had an occasion to witness only now and then. I suspect that my parents discouraged them from teaching me their faith, perhaps because they wanted to spare me the burden of being categorised as religious in a communist land.
To be fair to my parents, however, they brought me up to respect that some people had faith in God. I was never allowed to mock people of faith and I think it is thanks to my father that I have always understood that the existence of God could be neither proved nor disproved by scientific evidence and reasoning alone. However scientific a reasoning, it rests on assumptions at the heart of which there has to be a leap of faith. The atheist asserts a belief in proclaiming the world to be godless just as the believer lives in faith as he marvels at the world that God has created. It is almost as if we had a choice which way to leap: to godlessness or to God. Until quite recently, I had an intellectual pride in making a point of not performing either leap. I was one of the people that Brian Crosby confessed to finding particularly annoying when he preached the last time we were here to celebrate Baptism: the people who just stick to mundane realities and won't be drawn into any arguments about life beyond the mundanely obvious.
The process of opening my heart to God started a year ago, when I decided to read the Bible. I wanted to please Jayne, and also to close a gap in my knowledge, because my ignorance of God's Word began to feel shameful. I decided, however, to read it in German, a language I had been learning and needed to practise. Our friend Odile gave me a copy of the New Testament containing Martin Luther's German translation as well as King James' English version. The reading was a slow process, but engaging like none I had ever done before.
It was changing me gradually, but two particular events marked the path. One day I took my granddaughter Nina on a trip to Scarborough. We had a great day together and towards the end, as we walked up the South Cliff towards our car, she popped the question: "Grandpa, do you believe in Jesus?" I paused to consider a reply but she insisted: "Do you believe in Jesus? Just say yes or no!" She put me on the spot and I had to get off the fence; and I said yes.
A few weeks later, I woke up at night with the realisation that I love Jesus and that he therefore must be real. After this moment, there was no going back. I knew that I would have to join the church. The bible was telling me to do it and I wanted to obey.
While my personal relationship with Jesus started and developed in the course of my reading God's Word, it is clear in retrospect that I was ready for the reading by the time I started. Now I know that many in the church had prayed that I open my heart to God, but I did not know it at the time. I was aware, however, of two kinds of experience that had been drawing me towards the body of Christ for some time.
The first was my love of walking in high mountains. Last time Jayne and I were in the Alps we saw it written somewhere that, in the mountains, even the most secularly minded walker or climber often gets an experience for which he or she just wants to thank someone; and if there were no Creator, whom could we thank? I experienced just that feeling repeatedly for many years.
But it is not just the magnificence of nature that draws Jayne and me back to a particular place in the Alps year after year. It is the people who live there as well. They love their mountains, do their work in them often with breathtaking eye for perfection and skilled care, they are straight and warm and friendly, and devout Christians. Their forms of worship are Roman Catholic, but the chapels they have hewn in rock, the shrines they lovingly tend by high and remote paths, and the crosses they install on many peaks, with inscriptions of Bible verse, move the spirit in many, regardless of religious denomination.
Back at home in York, contact with Christians has been a powerful influence over quite a few years. The architect, the builder and the joiner who altered our house must be mentioned here, in addition to the increasing number of York Community Church people that I have met through Jayne. By the time I started my Bible reading, I had long felt blessed by Christian friends.
Two weeks ago Jim popped this question in the last half a mile of a walk: "Can I ask you something about the New Testament?" "Yes", I said. "What does it say about Baptism?" "Everyone has to do it", I readily replied, relieved that I knew the answer.