Michael Parry

I would like to share with you how I came to know Jesus Christ, how my life has been changed by meeting Jesus who is alive. It wasn’t necessarily a dramatic encounter, but rather a step by step journey. However, even if the encounter wasn’t dramatic, the changes in my life have been.

I wasn’t brought up a Christian at all, but for some reason at the age of about fourteen I decided to start going to my local sleepy Anglican parish in a small quiet nondescript English town. Shortly after, there was a Billy Graham mission in the parish and after the preaching there was a call to come forward for those who wanted to give their lives to Jesus. I went forward, and a team lead me in a prayer giving my life to Jesus. If God had been scripting a Hollywood film, then this would have been the cue for a dramatic life changing moment. Instead, seemingly, nothing altered in my life. I continued to go along once a week to the sleepy church without actually knowing why. In fact I still didn’t even believe in God – for me everything could be explained by logic and science.

A few years later I went to university in Bristol. Here I met a Jehovah’s Witness, who awoke in me a desire to find God and to find the truth. We studied Scripture together and I became hungry to discover more. I was lead by some Christians to a course, similar to Alpha, at an evangelical Anglican church. Here it all made sense. Here I came to see that God is real, God is alive and my life meant nothing without Him. I met Jesus as my Lord, King, Saviour, brother and friend.

Now that could be the end. A lot of testimonies finish with “…and I met Jesus” but meeting Jesus was only the beginning. At that point I knew Jesus with my mind and my intellect. I started going to a free evangelical church. I was a believer, but Jesus had two further extremely vital encounters for me. Firstly, He showed me the Holy Spirit, who made my faith alive and active by taking it the incredibly long distance from the mind to the heart. Secondly, He introduced me to Christian community. In Poland, I met Koinonia John the Baptist, which is an international charismatic Catholic community. This was a life-changing experience. Through Koinonia John the Baptist I saw that there was life in the Catholic Church and joined it from being an evangelical Protestant. Praise the Lord, I didn’t meet either the Church or the community as an organisation but as people who are alive in Christ and gave witness to Jesus’ resurrection in their lives. It is not possible to overstate how important Christian community is.

I am now living in England with my young family and the fire for evangelisation and community, which Koinonia John the Baptist lit in my heart, still burns. We, and others, have received many blessings through having a House of Prayer in our family home.