When George first introducted me to the Jesus Fellowship there was no community house in Preston, in fact there hardly any saints at all in the north of England.
George told me the best way of understanding what the fellowship was all about was to go and stay at a farm called Plough Hall. The leader in charge of this community house was Steve 'Surefoot', along with his close friend Dave 'Meek'.
I was very much in awe of these men of God when I first got there, Steve was the senior leader of the whole of Warwickshire he certainly wasn't going to have time for some young northern brother sent down to experience 'Zion', or so I thought.
I couldn't have been more wrong!
He'd told me the day I arrived that at some point we would go for a walk around the outside of the farm fields, (there were a few very large ones), and for sure three days later that's what happened. I expected a similar leader to all those I had met before in the churches I had attended, standoffish, and unwilling or unable to tell me anything about themselves.
That's not what I got that day as we walked around, I got a man who shared his heart with me, a stranger, and who was willing to be vaulnerable in order to reach me.
During my time at Plough I had no way of paying for the food they were giving me, and so I picked eggs in the huge huts they had. I also washed up, a lot, and remember on certain nights that was for 30 or more. When it came to the Saturday evening meeting Steve went around the room and asked some one to introduce the people who were there for the first time, which would of course include me.
When Steve got to me, he looked at some of the other brethren and they seemed to nod... "This is Chris 'Servant' from Blackpool". I knew all about virtue names by that time, but of course not belonging to one household, I hadn't been given one.
My first thoughts were, 'You SOOOOO don't know me'... and I might have said something like that to Steve after the meeting. He replied, 'Chris, everytime I come home from work you are in one of two places, either in with the Chickens, or stood at the sink, you never stop serving us all'.
I replied, 'yeh but Steve I can't pay for my food, or my lodgings, so I have to do something...' With his arm around me, he wispered to me, 'That's the point bro, no you dont, you choose to, and that's a servant heart'.
The man who gave me my vitue name has since become one of my closest friends.
At Noel's fairwell celebration I expected to cry a lot, I'm not exactly good at these things. During the whole of the service I was fine, even when we sung 'This is my home, the harbour of my soul', no tears. Then Noel's coffin went past and still I held it together. At Cornhill Manor, where Noel was laid to rest along side other memebers of the fellowship I watched as they lowered his coffin into the ground.. nearly.. but still ok.
As people waited to pay their last respects and toss some soil down onto the coffin I walked around the thousand people gathered around the grave.
There stood talking to one another were George and Steve.. I hadn't spoken to Steve all day, or even got close to him. I came up behind him and placed my arms around him and it was like God just said, 'NOW, let go'. I cried like a baby for the best part of a minute, desperatly trying to say hello to Steve through it all... and failing miserably.
God allowed me to hold it together until I was in the arms of some one who would give me a fatherly hug, how awesome is our God??
That day I asked God to give me someone who would pray with me and through circumstances that would take me too long to explain it turned out to be Steve. Every meeting I have been to since, God has places Steve there to pray for me.
I have let this man down so, so badly over the years.. not been faithful, not been true, not been there for him when he needed me. When I came back it was EVERYTHING that you read in the bible about the prodigal son...
Over the Easter weekend of 2010 I stayed at Kings House, which is where both Steve and Dave 'meek' now live. God will blessed me so much that weekend, not only with some great times of sharing with Steve, but also with some wonderful new brothers. At the end of May my whole family travelled down to Kings to be with the household, and although there was a spiritual battle, as well as a physical one going on over that weekend, we ended up staying for a whole week.
We made Winning Weekend at the end of August, which has been the first time in many, many years that I will have made all three festival weekend meetings... ohh and we are now both back in Covenant with the fellowship linked to the house that Steve and Dave live in.