“If there is a God, why are we struggling, and why is our life falling around us?”
A question I asked myself daily during some of the lowest points. I had spent many years working in banking and financial management. For a long time I was successful, but that didn’t last.
Around eight years ago I found myself in serious financial difficulty. I was at my wit’s end and unsure how to tackle this crisis my family was facing. I stepped into a church for the first time in my life and felt instantly at ease.
Not a typical vicar
My wife, Dianne, woke up one morning and said that we needed to go to church, having never been before and having no connection to it. I initially resisted but that week we went to our local parish church in Binfield in Berkshire and were greeted by the Revd Luke Taylor. As a non-churchgoer, I thought he didn’t look like a typical vicar – he wore shorts and a hoodie and had tattoos.
During the sermon, it felt as if we were in a tunnel, it was just the two of us and Luke, he was talking directly at us. I felt a calmness and a weight lifted. God was reaching out to us, and I wanted the moment to last forever.
We continued to go back to church, hungry to know more of who God was and catch up on all the years we had missed.
Not just existing
Things in my life started to become okay. Once God had my attention, he started to help me recognise the parts of my life he was working in and the new things he was calling me to. I felt like I was living and no longer just existing.
We got stuck in to helping out at the church, joined an Alpha small group and set up the Lighthouse Initiative supporting local homeless and lonely people. Along with this and completing a short theological course, I felt encouraged into ministry despite only becoming a Christian a short time ago. I took on the role of churchwarden for five years, where I could journey more closely with others in the church.
An open door
I was ordained in 2021 and am now a curate in the Ascot Heath Benefice in Buckinghamshire.
Through Luke, God opened the door, and I didn’t refuse to enter.
Who told you? is our ongoing series of stories from Christians about coming to faith and the people who helped them along the way. We are all called to fullness in Christ and sometimes that’s to ordained ministry. Find out more at oxford.anglican.org/vocations.