25/04/2024
How I came back to faith was quite extraordinary really. I hadn’t been looking to turn to faith or turn back to faith.
At the end of lockdown I had watched a couple of online services at the local church and they had organised a walk and I joined in a couple of these walks. It was just the local community and parishioners.
On the way back on one of the walks we stopped at a coffee shop and I ended up sitting with the Associate Vicar and we just got talking.
When I look back on it, I actually grilled her, I was asking how she came to faith and her story. She wasn’t preaching, she was telling me all about how she came to faith and some of the work she does.
When I got up and walked away, I just felt as though something had turned in me and it was just totally unexpected.
I heard myself saying ‘it has to be now’ and then I said: ‘But God, where do I go from here?’ Then I heard myself singing ‘take my life and let it be, always only always for thee.’ When I got home I prayed, and I said ‘God, I need to come forward and now is the time’.
Jackie Jones is a Parishioner at Christ Church, Higher Bebington, The Wirral in the Diocese of Chester. Since coming back to church she has embarked on a foundations for ministry course and has completed the first year of a pastoral worker training offered by the Diocese of Chester. You can view her video testimony and story on the Diocese of Chester website.