CHURCH
My earliest memory of church, I’ll paint the scene: - I’m about 8, its a Sunday and I’m at boarding school.
Its cold, I’m in new Autumn Term uniform that feels a bit scratchy and too big for me. We are in a queue at the back door of my prep school. A couple of officious female teachers are checking our shoes are clean and our hair brushed - was that for the vicar, or for God himself, I presumed the latter.
Cut to church interior - distant organ petering out in the background. Someone in a robe is mumbling at the front, I can’t make out a word of it with all the echo. It now feels colder than it was outside. We kneel down on individually tapestried stools, It smells damp & musty.
Out come the cars - ‘Matchbox cars‘ all bound up deliberately in layer upon layer of sellotape for their protection. Now hidden from view we begin to play stock-cars on the small shelf designed for bibles. Crash, shhh! tumble shhhh. It’s more effort keeping quiet than playing the game.
Suddenly we wake up from our car crash fantasies & prepare to leave. The man in the robe smiles - “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye”, he seems nice enough. Out into the blinding Autumn sunlight - back to school for brisket & oversized roasties.
Cut to me on the loo with tummy ache, talking to Jesus. “Please take my tummy ache away Jesus”. I sensed him there and my favourite hymn “Oh Jesus I have promised to serve thee to the end” reminds me of summer holidays spent in Ibiza, before all the night-clubbing, driving past a peasant with a donkey and lots of parched fields.
Time passes, a lot of time. I’m 16 and I bump into an American on a golf course in Scotland - he says he thinks I have the potential to be a professional. It's another story but basically, this guy begins to mentor me and as we become friends one of the many potent doctrines he instilled in me was that “all religion is a croque of shit”.
He was impressive, he had big stories. He had ”lunched” with Ron Reagan…helped finance the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline, so I didn't feel the need to take what he said with a pinch of salt.
Meanwhile, back home in Lancashire, I'm in the kitchen with my mother and I'm basically telling her that her Billy-Graham-found-faith in Jesus is nonsense - Science and rationality are the only way.
Leap forward in time and I'm halfway through my career directing documentaries for Channel 4, going all over the world but struggling and can feel there is something huge missing in my life. I am exhausted and strangely unfulfilled despite my grand-sounding job. I'm struggling with panic attacks and depression. I need a drink virtually every evening, I'm ripping through cheap cigars and crisps as a result of that. My self-confidence is waning as I mix with more and more very bright, very sure-minded, quick-witted people in the TV industry. Then something happens, out of the blue…
I'm invited to Lancashire to a lovely pub in the countryside - it's a tennis club party and we have to wear black-tie. My Aunty Jilly has paid for my ticket and I find myself sitting at the table surrounded by a dozen people I've never met.
But something strikes me very powerfully - it's the nature of these people and the way they are treating me. I had not felt so good in years. I ask the obvious question, “Who are you guys?” they clearly all knew each other. “Oh we are friends from a church in London and they go to church in Bristol.”
Ok - so there is something about these people that I just know I long to have. They are dancing but not showing off, they are drinking but not drunk, and they are fun but not cracking misogynistic, cutting jokes or pontificating about politics. They're also very interested in me. As I drive away I cannot get them out of my mind. My longing is just to be with them again.
It's not long before they invite me to some kind of Christian gathering for the media on Oxford St. When I walk in, it’s all a bit overwhelming, so I quickly exit and go outside. All I remember from that night is that there were a lot of young people and a lot of enthusiasm and a moment when these cool, lovely people stood around me and asked if they could lay hands on me and pray. I can't say anything dramatic happened but when I open my eyes, I just say “I think this is the loveliest thing anybody has ever done for me”. It was.
It's not long before we are on a night out in Brixton - the same crowd. I'm sitting next to this extraordinary cool girl called Eils and I get a strange urge to ask this question. “What does your God think about people who have slept around a lot?” She laughs and leans over to whisper gently in my ear… “You have to understand He is a very forgiving God”. My heart just burst and I still find it hard to talk about that moment.
So soon I'm in their Church in London, surrounded by more of these most delightful people - many of them from the media and arts, so there are instant points of connection with many of them. I find a leaflet in a wrack at the back describing a course called ‘Alpha’.
In my day job I'm surrounded by cameras and celebrities but every Tuesday evening it’s Alpha night. I'm so much more excited by this, I literally jog to the bus stop, but still unaware that something is about to happen in my life that is going to change everything.
On week six of the course, we go away to a pretty poor hotel in Eastbourne. My church friends are there, along with many newbies like me. The church leader says now we're going to pray for people. Some chap walks in and said to me “Would you like me to pray for you?”. I have been hiding behind a pillar up until now but I reluctantly agree to it - like, I'm happy to be guinea pig.
He simply says “Jesus come to Jeremy”. And in an instant, this overwhelming feeling of gentle power rushes into me. So much so that I can no longer stand, so soon I'm on the floor unable to move or speak. All that is going through my mind is….“Oh my gosh I think I have just encountered God” - the sense of peace was absolute, no other way to describe it.
The days that followed are hard to describe it was so otherworldly. This is not the place for me to tell in detail what I experienced but it certainly made me aware of another realm where the miraculous is ordinary. As I began to look afresh in the Bible, at the Gospels of Jesus, the whole thing came alive in a whole new way.
If you buy me lunch one day, I’ll gladly tell you more!
