So the journey proper had started. Early the following year I responded to one of those reasonably regular calls to be baptised. I remember thinking at the time that this was what God wanted me to do. That God had spoken to me, and that resistance was not an option. I had to make that stand, and I genuinely felt pleased to have done so. I didn’t feel coerced, I felt that this was a genuine decision that I had made to witness my faith, and one that had been directly prompted by God.
Gradually I started to get more and more involved with the youth group at church, something which helped to move my faith beyond that initial impulse, to something with shape and substance. Admittedly, that shape and substance was an inherited one, one that was taught and implied by the evangelical sub-culture of which I was becoming a part. But I wanted that – I wanted to be told what this was all about, and I took it all on board.
Now don’t get me wrong – this wasn’t a wild and dramatic charismatic experience. This was a fairly conservative evangelical group, one that was certainly aware of some of what was coming out of the house church movement, but only taking on board a relatively tamed version. And for me, that was fine.
And so things settled down for a while. School and church were the two key parts of my life, and the latter was definitely the more meaningful. During that time, my parents had moved down to Cornwall, and so when I finished my A-levels, I moved down there to join them. My parents hadn’t really settled into a church during that time, but two formative events stick out during the 8 months or so I spent down there.
The first was going with them to a service at the local Methodist Church. It was a fairly standard Methodist service, from what I remember. However, the difficulty came towards the end, when they took communion. In the Baptist church, I had been used to communion being brought round to each of us, served in our seats by the church leaders. The Methodist approach, however, was more like that of the Anglican’s, whereby all the congregation gradually files up to an altar rail, and kneels to receive communion. As I saw this happening, I became more and more anxious about what to do (I think it was that uncertainty about what I was meant to do, rather than any theological dispute), to the extent that when it came time for our pew to go up, I just couldn’t, and walked out the back of the church. Looking back the whole episode just feels silly and pathetic, but I remember at the time being really worked up about it. I also feel bad about it because I think that my actions were partly responsible for putting my parents off that or any other church. They never really found a spiritual home while they were down there, and never have since.
My other memory from that time was of being taken to a charismatic event of some sort by some friends who lived in our road. I don’t think I really knew what I was getting taken along to. This was a special event - I think there was some nationally-renowned speaker there. To be honest, it was probably reasonably tame, but I do remember being surrounded by people speaking in tongues, raising their hands in the air, and the usual paraphernalia of those kind of events. I felt very isolated by all this, just unable to engage or understand what this was or where it came from. And it wasn’t something I felt particularly jealous about either – this wasn’t really something I wanted, it just kind of bemused me. I remember driving home with our friends afterwards, probably very quiet, and unable to empathise with the excitement that they all felt about it.
After a short time down in Cornwall, I moved back to Portsmouth in search of work (I hadn’t been able to find any employment since leaving school), but also because I still had a girlfriend down there as well. I eventually did find work, which was great. And moved into digs in Southampton. But I remember during that summer starting to feel somewhat distanced from church and Christianity. I remember feeling that it wasn't making much sense, didn't really relate to life as I found it, and that it was a waste of time. I can’t really recall what prompted that, but I remember being in that state. I was 19, just starting work, and maybe trying to feel my way into the world. Perhaps some of that was unsettling my faith.
Later that year, though, I ended up splitting up (through some complicated circumstances) with my long-term girlfriend. And bizarrely, it was that which pushed me back to the church. I was now living in Southampton, yet still my social and church life revolved around Portsmouth. That split kind of forced me to sever those links, and to look for a more settled home in Southampton. The easiest way to find some kind of life seemed to be to find a church with a youth group like I’d been used to. Fortunately, the local Baptist church offered just that, and so started the next phase of my spiritual journey.
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