Biography | |
| A bit about me | |
| I was born in 1965 and grew up in Rochester in Kent. My first memory is of me sitting on mum’s lap looking at my dad talking to me while he was shaving. It was all very interesting but I didn’t have a clue what he was saying. When I was nine I won a Choral Scholarship to the Kings School. My parents were pleased, although I don’t think I really understood what this meant for me. There followed nine years of public school education, interwoven with exposure to church services in a Cathedral environment, both as a chorister and as a pupil of the school. There’s a divine sense of irony about the fact that I didn’t become a Christian until just after I left school in the summer of 1983. In the July of that year my sister invited me to the youth club of a local URC church. I was not to know until I arrived that on this particular evening the church would be packed with guests for a talk by the late Bob Gordon. As I recall this was not primarily an evangelistic event, but it nevertheless persuaded me, I was signing up with or without an altar call.
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| In 1985 I went off to Portsmouth University to study Economics and had a great time! Of course, this was in the days before there was such a thing as a student debt — although some of my friends did manage to build up some pretty impressive overdrafts back then. I managed to squeeze some studying in between being a Student Union and Christian Union activist, and, latterly developing a love life!; After college I had to do some work; I got a job in a bank, and in 1989 I got married to the girl who led my first CU fellowship group at Portsmouth. When she first met me Ruth thought I was a bit of a ‘super spiritual’ type who needed to have the corners knocked off and I’m sure she wasn’t wrong. It didn’t stop us getting together about eighteen months later so maybe she’s the forgiving kind. |
After the bank came a job in a marketing consultancy, and then a technology company, and then for seven years Ruth and I were the Senior Pastors of the Cambridge Vineyard Church in England. I still live in Cambridge and we have now have two children one of whom will soon be old enough to go to University (that is frightening!). Then of course there’s my writing. Ever since I could write, I’ve been writing — which is obvious of course, but you know what I mean. I’ve always loved creating stories that explore the way characters deal with challenges. These can be circumstantial or relational challenges, and I love to throw in some help (or hindrance!) from a supernatural source. This is reflected in my fiction writing, principally Urban Angel published by Authentic Media. The theme also runs through his work as a ghost writer where he has helped to tell the amazing true stories of Barry Woodward , the former Manchester drug dealer who is now an evangelist in Once an addict; and Kim Goh the former triad gang leader who came to faith in prison and now servers as a church leader and public speaker; Kim´s book will be out in 2008. | |
