My Faith Journey (Conversion Stories 2)

by Alan Lorrimer-Riley

Alan is pastor of the Snowdonia Christian Fellowship (website here). In this personal testimony he looks back at his journey from a Catholic upbringing to his vocation as Evangelical preacher and pastoral leader. 

    

Miners in County Durham in the 19th Century (photo: The Northern Echo)

I was born and brought up on Tyneside – a part of the post-war ‘baby boomer’ generation.

My dad was part of a family who had immigrated to the area from Ireland in the 1840s. They lived in an Irish enclave in one of the mining communities in County Durham. The Catholic Church was a central part of their community life. My dad, and his brother and sister, recalled getting abuse from other local children while they walked the 2 miles to the nearby Catholic school.

My mother was not brought up as a Catholic (she attended an Evangelical Anglican church in Gateshead) but converted to Catholicism in order to marry Dad.

The church was a key, and central, part of my life. I went to mass every Sunday and, at an appropriate age, became an altar boy. I also learned my Catechism, and took my First Communion (I have a photo somewhere) and was confirmed. I think that there was even a hope, particularly from my uncle, that I would become a priest – but I never felt that call. After passing my 11+, I travelled from Gateshead to Newcastle to attend St. Cuthbert’s Grammar School.

Sin and Confession

One of the regular Catholic practices that I found most difficult to cope with was Confession – not because I was a bad lad but because I was pretty good and conforming. I used to have to scratch around to find sins to confess. On one occasion, when I was in my late teens/early 20s, the priest enquired as to how old I was because the sins I was confessing were still fairly ‘childish’.

I was brought up in an era, and in a fairly Irish Catholic culture where sin was a big thing and, in common with many of my contemporaries, I carried a lot of guilt, even though I was pretty conforming. I guess it was when I left school and started work that I encountered the World and started seeing a different side of life, but it was some years before I began to question my Catholic faith. 

Looking back, I think there were two incidents, which played a key part in my move away.

Two key incidents

The first feels rather bizarre looking back. I had friends who were a bit older than me, and some were married. In 1968 there was a Papal Encyclical (Humanae Vitae) on birth control. Obviously this didn’t directly impact me but it did affect my friends. They got together a little group to oppose the encyclical and I, for a short time, got caught up in this.

The second occurred a couple of years later. I had been working, since leaving school, in the NHS as a hospital lab technician, and in 1970 I went to work for a company making hospital lab equipment. This took me away from home to Surrey. I was living in digs in a place called Chertsey. Our nearest cinema was in Staines (yes, this is relevant). I had gone to the cinema to see ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch’ (that is less relevant). There was also a full length ‘B’ movie. 

This created a dilemma. If I stayed to watch the end of the movie I would miss the last bus. I chose to walk the 3+ miles home. As I was walking, someone stopped to give me a list, and we got talking. On the dashboard of his car I notices a sticker saying The Navigators. I asked him about that and he explained that it was a Christian organisation that sought to encourage/help people to read the Bible. (The Navigators UK website here). 

The Navigators Christian Society at the University of Wolverhampton

This led to us talking about religious matters. I explained that I was a Catholic and he asked the question, “Yes, but have you got a personal relationship with Jesus?” Shortly after being asked this question our journey came to an end. He did invite me to visit him and his wife but I never did – and I’m not sure that I gave any sort of reply to his question.

Technician - salesman - probation officer

My relationship with the company I was working for was not good. I was not felt to not be ‘professional’ enough - i.e over-friendly - with customers who came to us, from all over the world, for training. We came to a mutual agreement that I would leave.

Because the company was very sales-orientated, and we technicians were seen as second class citizens, I decided I would become a salesman. I moved back home and started to apply for selling jobs. 

At one of the interviews, the interviewer told me that, to his mind, a good salesman needed two main qualities. The first was the ability to speedily make relationships with people; the second was the ability to push home a sale against resistance. He thought I had the first of these qualities, but not the second, and then said “Have you thought about being a Probation Officer?” I’m not sure that I even knew what a Probation Officer was but, a day or two later, there was an advert in the local paper, from the Home Office, asking the question “Do you think you would make a good Probation Officer?”

At that stage, I was 26 (you will see why that is important as the story unfolds) and applied to Leeds University to do a Social Work degree. Unfortunately, I didn’t get on the course but, out of the blue, I got a telegram from a company who had interviewed me for a job as a Technical Salesman (they were a rival company to the one I had worked for, who were trying to break into the market. Unfortunately, their product was nowhere near as good). 

They told me that I had been their second choice and that their first choice had decided not to take the job. They offered it to me and I accepted. This involved me moving to Tottenham, in North London. I did attend the local Catholic church a few times but quickly came to the conclusion that my relationship with Catholicism was at an end. I was exploring, though without much enthusiasm, other things, including left wing politics and Buddhism.

Discovering the Bible

As I was considering joining the Probation Service, I discovered that they had opportunities for volunteering, which I followed up. I was sent to a boy’s hostel in East London and became friendly with one of the other volunteers, a local school teacher. He was looking for a flatmate and so I moved in with him, and a couple of other guys.

I discovered that he was a Bible believing Christian, who rejected Darwinian evolution in favour of Creationism. I, for the first time in my life, started to read the Bible to show him that it was unreliable and full of contradictions. This was the first time in my life that I had read the Bible as, at that time, Catholics were not encouraged to read it. I remember being told that it was a difficult book that needed the expertise and knowledge of the priest to be understood (I believe that this has changed since the Second Vatican Council).

As I read the Bible, it spoke to me and, in the process of doing that I had a personal encounter with Jesus. It wasn’t anything dramatic just a slow realisation that he was real, and that it was possible to have a personal relationship with him. I finally put this into words in a conversation with my flatmate, Roger. I was telling him the story of my journey from Staines to Chertsey, and the question I had been asked. He simply said, “Well have you?” At that moment, I took the next step on my journey and entered into the intimate relationship of love for which I, and every other human being, had been designed by God.

I also, at that time, entered into a relationship, with the lady in the flat upstairs. We eventually married. She was a missionary working in the Jewish community of East London and had a deep Bible knowledge, which enabled me to dig deeper, and understand more of, the Bible. That has become a very important part of my life and I am still learning new things (but that might need a separate article).

There was a final touch, which I have come to see as a real love gift from God. All this had happened in the space of a single year, during which I had become 27. I discovered that I would be able to study to be a Probation Officer at the Home Office college in London and that, because of my life experience, I would be able to do the course in a year. 

This meant that I qualified at the same time as I would have done if I had got onto the course at Leeds but, in the meanwhile, I had had a totally life-changing year. And, in an amazing coincidence (which I view as a love gift from my Heavenly Father) I had got onto the last ever one-year course.

Having had this encounter, I joined my flatmates in attending an Evangelical Anglican Church in the East End and, being me, got involved in a variety of Christian events in the area.

After getting married in 1976, my wife and I – and our daughter – moved further east eventually settling in Essex – and an Independent Evangelical Church. I began to do some preaching/Bible teaching, as well as working full-time as a Probation Officer. My wife and I also worked together teaching people about the Jewish background to Christianity. 

St Mary's, Beddgelert (photo: Ioan Said Photography)

In order to expedite this we decided to move away from London and, eventually, ended up in North Wales (that is another longish story), where we ran Christian conferences, and other events, in our home, Rainbow Court, which we ran as a guesthouse and restaurant. Churchwise, we were active members of St Mary’s in Beddgelert before, in 1991, starting Snowdonia Christian Fellowship in the village. I was called to be the Pastor a role I have fulfilled for 34 years – and counting.

What does the future hold? I am very happy to leave that in God’s hands – but I am looking forward with a sense of excitement and anticipation.