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Well, this situation carried on for a long time, as I say. I was enjoying St. Swithun's, didn't really want to leave. Well, in my eyes, it was either staying at that church or not going to church at all.
You see, East Grinstead has a reputation of having lots of cults, denominations, and all sorts. Anglicans, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons... and that was just Christian denominations. There were also Scientologists and other religious views as well.
In short, I was a bit concerned about getting trapped up in one of these (no offence meant to anyone), so I stayed where I was.
Until, that is, in the Easter period in 2000. Another church in the town which I had only vaguely heard about was putting on a free Easter presentation at the Chequer Mead Arts Centre. St. Swithun's were advertising it in their pewslips, and I was interested, as it sounded like it should be cool.
It was more than cool. It was brilliant - the main purpose behind the presentation, was, of course, about the story of Jesus and how He died on the cross for us, and then rose three days later. There was lots of music and funny sketches, too.
Before the presentation, I had already felt a lot closer to God than I had done at the start of this story, but I felt this was something else. If nothing else, the music (done with electric guitars, proper drums and piano) was better than what was happening in St. Swithun's (normally only an organ, except for once a month when an in-church band played at youth services).
After it was over, I was on fire for God in a way that I hadn't felt like for aaages. It had stated in the St. Swithun's pewslip beforehand that this was being organised by Trinity Methodist Church (which is the church I now go to), and I wondered whether this was typical of their services, so I went down and talked to the people who took part. One of them, Abi, told me that their youth services were like this a lot of the time. After asking, she told me the date and time of the next youth service. I also met a lot of other nice people there too.
So at 6:30pm on the 25th of June 2000, I arrived with anticipation for the first time at Trinity. The topic for the evening was a girl called Cassie Bernall, who is hailed as a modern-day Christian martyr. At a Columbine high-school shooting, two people came up to Cassie, put a gun to her head and asked her "Do you believe in God?".
"Yes" was her firm reply.
She was killed for it. |