Alison's testimony is also available in Audio Format and Video Format

My name is Alison, I have been married to Sean for 12 years, and we have two beautiful daughters. I became a founder member of Grace Church in 2009. People at Grace Church are my family, my support network and my friends. However, my passion for Jesus and Church life has not always been this way...

I was brought up within a loving Non Christian family; we spent many years abroad as my Dad was in the army. We came to England when I was 12; I found it difficult to settle into an English state school. I didn't cause my parents too much trouble in my early years, getting good school reports and being relatively compliant. There were no real dramas in my life until I became a teenager when I discovered alcohol and nightclubs. I became a surly, moody, angry teenager who blamed everything that went wrong on someone else. I never took responsibility for anything and God was definitely no part of my life.

I continued on the self destructive path of alcohol, boyfriends and staying out all night, until one day my Dad had had enough and told me to leave the family home. I was 20 when I moved in with my boyfriend and continued to be the self centred individual I had become.

Four turbulent years later I got married (to the same boyfriend) and qualified as a Veterinary Nurse. We moved back to Loughborough and I began working in a Vets where there were two Christians. One of the Christians was married to a lady who's best friend lived in the house opposite to us. So, I guess it was here that my journey began, still selfish, still angry with the world.

I was often trapped in the operating theatre with no escape route from answering questions about my beliefs! Gulp, sweat...I had no idea what I believed and had never given it a second thought. I was constantly invited for coffee by my neighbour and even hid behind the settee trying to avoid answering the door. (She does know this now!) I eventually gave in and we shared many coffees as she tried to answer my rather peculiar and odd questions about God! It was with gentle persuasion that I agreed to go to Church one Sunday in 1999. I tried so many times to say 'No', I had better things to do with my time. I squirmed trying to say 'No', but it came out as 'Yes'!

I felt awkward and terrified, I couldn't find my way around the Bible, but my friend would always be there giving me her Bible at the correct page. I couldn't sing the songs and I felt like every pair of eyes were on me. At the end of the service I wanted to run home from all these people who were so friendly to me, no way was I going to do that again!

The weeks went by and thankfully no one asked me to Church until one Saturday my neighbour asked 'Alison, would you like to come with me on Sunday' I wanted to reply, 'No way, no thanks', but it fell out of my mouth 'I'd love too'! What?! Arrgh, another Sunday wasted!

The changes in me were so gradual I didn't really know what was happening to me. It was around this time I was spending a lot of time going backwards and forwards to the hospital. I seemed to be having many miscarriages and was diagnosed with an auto immune disease. My husband had taken a lot of days off work and as we had been here before my Mum came with me to the hospital. As I sat there waiting to be scanned, I probably prayed for the first time, genuinely on my own. My prayer was short and simple: 'Ok, God if you're really real and if my baby is alive then I will consider you'. That was it. I was scanned by the Consultant who I had seen many, many times before and with my Mum by my side. There on the screen was a little dot with a beating heart, barely 6 weeks old! I just couldn't believe it! My Mum was so excited seeing her first grandchild and my poor husband had missed his baby's first scan!

I now had a problem: I had made a deal with God and felt I had to fulfil my part of the deal. I now know that God doesn't work like this, but forgive my naivety in those early days! I attended Christianity Explored with a small group of other people, my devoted neighbour held my hand through the course and the scales over my eyes began to fall away and I realised just what Jesus had done for me.

My pregnancy was difficult and I was very ill, but my new baby arrived safely. Thanks to God! The Vet I worked with gave up her lunch time break to teach me more and more about Jesus, I realised soon after that I believed in Jesus, he died on the cross for all the selfish ugly things I had said and done. I asked him to help me make the changes I couldn't. The emptiness I had filled with partying and alcohol had now been filled. I was nervous telling my family, they were worried about what I was getting myself into, so to really freak them out I was baptised in July 2001! I remember vividly England were playing football and my Dad was not impressed that he had to be in Church watching me go for a swim! They can see for themselves the changes in me- especially my husband. I am sure without God changing me our marriage would not be as strong as it is now. I pray that one day soon, God will work in all my family just as He did for me.

My past is my past, my behaviour must have been disappointing to God as I rebelled and rejected Him, but He loved me, forgave me and saved me anyway. My life is in His hands now and I thank those people who were so instrumental in my conversion. Their patience, time and kindness will never be forgotten. When God wants you, he puts people in your path just at the right time; there is no coincidence when God is working! The Christian walk isn't always easy, but then God never said it would be. One day I will be in Heaven and reap the rewards of Eternal Life, just for accepting the free gift of Jesus that is available to everyone. Take it, you won't be disappointed!

Hi, I'm Alison. I am married to Martin and we have two teenage children, Louise (15) and Daniel (13). I was brought up in Syston in a family where going to church every week was important. Sunday School carried on until 14 in that church and when I reached the class for 12-14's there were no people to take that class so an elderly lady from another church came to teach us. She began to teach us what Christianity is all about: what Jesus has done for us and how to become a Christian. I hadn't really understood what it was all about but I believed I had. I went to confirmation classes because I really thought I was a Christian. When I came home from school one day my Mum asked me why I was going to get confirmed as I wasn't a Christian and that I would go to Hell if I died that night! I was completely devastated. I had learned enough at church to believe in Hell and if I wasn't a Christian I knew that I would go there when I died.

That night in bed I thought a lot about what my Mum had said and realised that she was right, I wasn't a Christian and I knew I needed to be one. I remembered what my Sunday School teacher had told me and I knew I needed Jesus, I couldn't become a Christian by myself. I called out to him and told him I was truly sorry for living my life my way instead of living it his way and asked him to forgive me and make me a Christian. Immediately I was filled with the most amazing peace and joy, and I knew for certain that now when I died I would be going to Heaven and not to Hell.

That all took place over 20 years ago and Jesus has not let me down, even though I have let him down many times. Life hasn't been easy but Jesus is always there for me and gives me the strength to get through. My life would be weak and ineffectual without him in my life as that is the kind of person I was without him.

I was born into a loving, caring, secure, but non-Christian family in 1965 in Shepperton, Middlesex. We never went to church, not even at Christmas, but that was fine by me at the time. I was brought up in a happy home. My parents had a happy marriage until my father died in July of 2010, only three months short of their fiftieth wedding anniversary. I was the middle of three sons, but unfortunately the only one to recognise Jesus as my saviour (so far).

I did not become a Christian until I was twenty two in autumn 1987. Some of my friends were Christian and we would occasionally discuss Christianity, and they would invite me to church but I always refused, erroneously thinking I had better things to do. I was a good person, not hurting anybody, and being helpful when I could. I didn't smoke or take drugs. I was even teetotal.

They persisted and eventually I agreed to go to a mid-week meeting at Walton-on-Thames Baptist church where there was an evangelist speaking. I do not remember his name, but God does, and he spoke of his life as a biker, in a gang, and how he nearly killed a man over a trivial matter. At that point, realising what he had nearly done, to cut a long story short, he knew he had to turn his life around, and he heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and committed his life to God.

He explained how Jesus had lived a perfect life before he died to take my sins upon Himself. Taking the punishment I deserved, for living life my own way and without God. It didn't matter how good I thought I was, I was still a sinner and in need of a Saviour, and that Saviour is Jesus Christ. All I had to do was repent of those sins, telling God I was sorry for them, sorry enough to turn away from them and to Him. To commit my life to God and then to do my utmost in following Him as found in the Bible.

I had heard this from my Christian friends in our discussions, and they hadn't said or done anything wrong, but for some reason I did not respond to God until I heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ from the evangelist. I knew I needed to repent of my sins, however slight they had been in my sight; I now knew them for what they were. A barrier between me and God. There may be different consequences for different sins in this life, but there is only one eternal consequence. Separation from God for eternity. But God Himself had broken that barrier down and provided a way for me to be with Him. All I had to do was take it.

At the end of his talk the evangelist prayed and asked anybody who wanted to, to come forward and accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. I sat there knowing what I should do, but not doing it. I wondered what people would think, but mainly I was just nervous. Going up in front of a group of people was, for me, a nerve racking thing to do. I don't know if all this was plain on my face, but one of my Christian friends, who was sitting beside me, asked me if I wanted him to go up with me. I said yes. We went up and through to a side room where we prayed and I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Saviour.

That was a pivotal point in my life and I have never regretted that decision in all the years since. I have tried to do my best to live according to God's standards. I have not always succeeded, but know that God is always there to pick me up again and point me in the right direction like the loving Father He is. Since that time I have always known God's presence, guidance, and provision in my life.

My name is Paul Harrison and I am a leader at Grace Church. In my day job, I work for Sure Start which is a government funded programme that works with families who have children under 5. I have 4 children; 2 daughters who are both married and have moved away from Loughborough and they both have 2 children each. We also have 2 boys at home.

Outside work I have a number of interests other than my role within the church. I am involved with a local charity that works to support families who have a child with a disability. I am also a keen motorcyclist, I enjoy go-karting, and I also enjoy reading and music. At church I do a lot of the teaching and am also involved with the music.

I was born in Liverpool and was brought up in a Christian home. My dad was a Baptist minister and so I was taken to church from being a baby but as far back as I can remember I understood that the Bible teaches that this did not make me a Christian. I knew that being a Christian was about having a personal relationship with God.

When I was 7 years of age I realised that I had done wrong things and that as a result, instead of having a relationship with God I was separated from him. I realised that the whole point of Jesus dying on the first "Good Friday" was that He took my punishment so that I could be forgiven. Although my understanding of this was at a very simple level at the time, I asked Jesus to forgive me and to help me to live my life in the way that He wanted me to from then on.

This is when I became a Christian. This was the start of a life-long journey of gradually becoming the person that God wants me to be and to live my life to please Him. I am still a long way off being the person that He made me to be but little by little He is changing me.

When I was 9, we moved to Rhyl in North Wales. The next important stage in my Christian life was at the age of 11 or 12 when my faith was first challenged seriously. At school we were being taught about evolution and for the first time I really came across the view that science had disproved the Bible. I realised that if this was true, I was wasting my life believing a lie and so I started to look into the whole matter. The more I looked into this the more I realised that my belief made much more logical sense than what I was being taught at school. I have continued to think about these things and read around the subject through the rest of my life. One of the more recent books that I have found helpful in thinking about this is called "The reason for God" by Tim Keller. I am now convinced that the Christian world view gives us a very clear and logical explanation for the way that things are in the world and that in fact it gives us the best explanation that I have come across.

By the time I was 14 I was passionate about my faith and so was baptised as a way of telling everyone that I had put my trust in Jesus to save me from the effects and the consequences of all of the wrong things that I had done (what the Bible calls sin).

Within 12 months we moved as a family to Rothley but this was the start of a very difficult time for my family and also for me personally. We moved in the August and in the October my dad left the family. We then found out that he had been having an affair for a number of years.

This shook the whole family in many ways but it particularly challenged my faith. My parents had taught me most of what I knew about the Bible and now my dad had been shown to have been living a lie. I had to face up to the possibility that this proved that my faith was not trustworthy.

As I started to work these questions through, I questioned everything that I believed and tried to work through whether the Bible could be trusted. Over the months and years I realised that the fact that people fail and disobey God does not mean that God can't be trusted but rather that people are weak and that we all make a mess of life. I came through this time even stronger in my faith as I realised that in my fragile and changing world, God was the only person that could really be relied upon. I settled into a life that was busy working in the church; teaching Sunday School, running youth clubs, preaching and also leading the music on Sundays and playing in a band.

After some time, my mum had a visit from a family friend who had just been through a divorce. Her husband had left her with 2 children under 3. Sue came to visit my mum because she didn't know any other Christians who had been through a divorce. To cut a long story very short Sue and I were married 9 months later.

I was working in the heavy engineering sector looking after stock control and production planning. Sue had given up work at the bank and worked part time first of all cleaning and then at a local supermarket. We had 2 more children so now had 2 girls and 2 boys. This was a difficult time; money was tight; I was working long hours and as soon as I came in, Sue went out to work. On top of this, one of our children was very difficult to handle. After a real battle with school, the health service, etc we found out that he has Autism, Tourettes Syndrome and ADHD. This was very difficult but as we started to understand what was going on we were able to help him to deal with the difficulties that he had. From there we started working on a voluntary basis helping other parents who were having similar problems to us.

In 2003, as a result of our personal experiences and our voluntary work, I moved jobs and started working in the NHS helping families with disabled children.

We continued to work hard in the church and have for many years been involved in children's clubs, youth clubs, music and other things. Early in 2009, about 12 of us felt that God was telling us to start a new church and so Grace Church was born. I love being a part of Grace Church. We are just ordinary people who are serious about living for God and learning together to live the way He wants us to. We have a very relaxed and informal set up.

Although many people have had much more difficult lives than me, I have had challenges in my life. Through all of the difficult times, God has been there to help me through. I know that I am far from perfect and regularly mess up and have to come back to Him, ask Him to forgive me again and to help me to stop making the same mistakes over and over again. What I have learned though is that God is so good. He loves us and is patient with us. Becoming a Christian was just the start of a journey that I know will continue for the rest of my life. The Bible doesn't promise us an easy life, but it does promise that God will help us to get through whatever life throws at us.

I believe that living for God is the best choice that anyone can make and so want to share with everyone that God is real, that He loves us that He wants to have a relationship with us and that Jesus died to take the punishment for our sins so that we can have that relationship with Him.

If you would like to know more about what the Bible has to say and to have a relationship with God then come along to Grace. We don't have all of the answers but we know that God does. We are not perfect but we know that God loves us as we are and we help each other to get to know God better and to be more and more the people He wants us to be.

Chris's testimony is also available in Audio Format and Video Format

Hi my name's Chris, I'm 24 and I'm proud to say I'm a Christian. I believe that:

I am unable to do anything that is able to satisfy God, for nothing I do can compare to God's standards.

I naturally do many things every day that displease God by rejecting the natural order of life.

Jesus took God's judgment for this displeasing attitude by death on a cross, and moreover, that because of this I can come to God to have a relationship with him as I was always intended to.

Although I am sure of these things now standing here at the grand age of 24 I wasn't always so sure of what I believed or if I even believed in anything at all. I would like to take you all on a journey of how I came to such a sure faith that there is a God and how God has stepped into my life, formed a relationship with me and is now pointing me in the right direction.

As a child I grew up in a Christian family surrounded by Christian influences with little understanding of the 'real' world and other people's secular views. I hung out with friends from church and spent time only with people that my parents thought were good for me, with my only view of the outside world being from the well known, reliable source known as the media. For as long as I can remember I always went along to church on a Sunday with my brother and my parents and I thought it was a wonderful place where we could sing, have fun and be safe with lots of different people and that's all I knew of church.

It was one night in bed when I was about 7 or 8 that I was pondering over the subject of the world and existence. The thought was "if my life was to end suddenly what would I be?" this thought wasn't one of morbid death but one more of what I was. Was I just a bundle of evolved chemical reactions formed through chaos, and so at death the end would be the end of everything leaving nothing of myself to continue? I hated the idea of a person's life melting away to nothing, complete emptiness, and that from this I discerned that there was something greater within myself than just a body of chemicals. The conclusion I drew from this was that there was more to life than just the stuff I'm made from. At this point I can say I believed that there was a soul and so a greater power than just human existence. Through my young mind and the trusted people around me at church I connected the God at church to this greater power. At this point I can see that I was an agnostic, I believed that there was a greater power but I didn't know what this power was for myself.

The years passed but the distorted view I had of the world (that everyone thought like a Christian) continued well into my years in secondary school, a Christian school at that, but under the veil of Christian morals at the school I can now see that worldly desires were slipping into my life from all directions and taking control. My mind was being focused onto greed, onto pride, onto shallow relationships, onto drink and onto so many other things that I was drawn into seemingly naturally. But along with my experience of the world increasing so did my knowledge of the bible increase. I learned from church and Sunday school of God and that Jesus died for my sins but at that point of my life I knew of God from someone else. I didn't know God for myself and I did not understand for myself what was achieved on the cross. Reflecting on my life I can now really see the difference between knowledge and understanding. Sure, I knew it but did I understand it for myself? No I didn't.

It was in my years at 6th form that I was lead towards God through prayer. I had never really prayed from the heart before but through the care of the woman who is now my sister-in-law, I was encouraged forward towards scripture and towards knowing God. This at the time was such an eye opener for me. I had found God through prayer and I could see answers to my prayers popping up all around me but even though I could say I could link my knowledge of prayer to my understanding of prayer, still I had no understanding of what Jesus had done for me. I can say that from here on I started a relationship with God and I was sure of his existence but I still had no idea of how I was rejecting his existence by living life my way and that God being "Just" I would have to pay for this rejection. So although I knew of God I kept on going my own way and getting more and more involved in my rejection of God.

When it came to the end of 6th form I did what was the traditional thing for students at my school; I went to university. On my application I had picked Southampton, St. Andrews and Loughborough and when the results came out I was able to get into all of my courses. I chose to go to Southampton to go and study physics mainly because the girlfriend at the time was going to Southampton. So off I went to uni and I got stuck right into the uni life. It was at this point I had my bubble of the Christian world popped. I met with people who believed different things and I met people who didn't believe in anything and I started to reflect their actions in drinking, in relationships, in life, in thought, all just because it seemed to be the educated thing. But still I went along to the CU a few times and church every so often and even though I knew of a relationship with God I didn't know why on earth I needed one. My knowledge and understanding were still out of sync.

It was in my last year of a 4 year masters in Southampton that I can now see that my world was crumbling around me. I had no aim, I had no self-esteem, I had no self confidence, I was bitter, I was selfish and I was looking so hard for things to fix it all. I was looking in all the wrong places of course; I was looking in relationships, which failed after not finding what I needed, resulting in pain for the people involved. I was looking in drinking and partying which just left me feeling ill in the morning. I was looking everywhere and anywhere for an aim, a goal, a state of mind! I didn't know what I was looking for but looking back I can see the depression that was stemming from the lack of solid things in my life was crumbling the good things that were left in my life to dust.

Now there must be a plot change somewhere in this story you must guess. I'm standing here with an aim and goal and the things in my life are built on the firmest foundation I have ever known and they will never crumble away.

Well, after graduating from Southampton University with a 2.2 in a masters of physics and being about 2% off of the 2.1 I needed for the PhD I had applied for I ended up going home and eventually getting a job packing locusts! Yes it was as weird as it sounds, and as horrible as it sounds! But even then I knew I didn't get that grade because of the lack of aim in my life. It was while I was doing this strange work that I realised I could go off and study to get back to my dream of doing a PhD. I started looking for MScs and Loughborough popped up on my tick sheet of what I wanted in a uni time and time again, and with the perfect course for me with the perfect setting. So I quit the locust packing job as soon as I could and came to Loughborough. When I landed in Loughborough I was on my own, I knew only 2 people in the whole town, and I didn't know them too well at that, which was a massive upheaval from being the social man about town I was in Southampton. However, these two people I did know both went along to the Christian Union on campus. It was due to coming along to the CU here in Loughborough that I was able to meet and get to know Christians and start to build up good honest friends around me. This put me in the perfect situation for God to come into my life and display to me what he had truly done for me and through fantastic teaching from the CU I was put back on track to a better life for myself, but this was only in knowledge.

It was in a service at Emmanuel Church, a service which I brought a packet of tissues along with me just incase someone around me had a cold, that God revealed to me why I really needed him to sort myself out. It was during the communion that I took the bread and wine and focused on what Jesus had said he had done for me and what he could do for me: remembering that Jesus took the just wrath from God for all the times I had ignored him and gone against him. It hit me like I had run into a wall! I realised that I had lived a life that God disliked because of me ignoring him and that if I trusted in him and trusted that Jesus could take that anger away for me then God would provide a foundation to my life and provide everything I would ever need. But what truly got to my core was that God was able to do this! He was bigger than all my hurts and all my ignorance and my knowledge and even death itself, and he wanted a relationship. It was at this point that I realised that those tissues I had put in my bag for other people were going to come in very useful for myself. As I cried joyful tears because of the love that God has for me I gave everything I had to him for his gain because I know my way was flawed. Although before this point I had known that God loved me and died to take this anger, I only knew this from what other people had said, it was at this point that I understood all of those things and what they really meant through experience and knowledge combined.

My life from this point reminds me of the story of the prodigal son somewhat; the partying was there, the women were there, the drink was there. Then the pigs were there but obviously they were in the form of locusts but also at the end of it all God was still standing there cleaning me off and welcoming me back. It shows me God has got a plan.

It was from that day that my eyes were opened and my heart rejoiced because I had found what I had been looking for. All of what I had learned as a child I now saw with adult eyes and an adult mind and I saw that it all linked perfectly together. Before this point I couldn't justify anything miraculous; miracles grated against my scientific nature but now with this new foundation and view on existence my scientific nature conformed to the existence I now know. From that point onwards I have been putting my trust in God and not in worldly things because I know I don't know better. And even though there has still been hardship and pain I still keep firm to my steadfast foundation of God because of my foundation of God.

It now comes to the present day in the story and through the love and teaching I have found here in Grace Church Loughborough I have been able to keep my eyes fixed on what God did for me and not the pain that was in my life. The teaching under the light of what God has done for me has opened the bible and world anew and fills my heart to the brim with joy at every turn. In my life now I trust in God, I trust in him fully for my salvation and I trust in him fully to keep everything sustained. Now from this I have an aim and a goal; to live for God with every moment. Throuh adding this foundation of God to my life I was able to get my work attitude sorted, I was working to honour God and not myself, and from that God gave me a distinction to my masters and so gave me a fully founded PhD. I have experienced what it is to not put my life in God and to see my life crumble and I have seen my life given to God and I have seen it flourish. I cannot 'argue' anyone into believing in God and believing that Jesus died so they can also experience God, because I experienced knowledge myself and it got me nowhere. But what I can do is encourage you to look for God, to get closer to his will and also to tell you this testimony to show you two sides of my life: two sides of the same coin, one without God and one with. I will tell you the truth; there is a God, for I have seen him revealed to me in my life and know that he wants to live through me. And let me tell you; he also wants to live though you too for your own good.

I was brought up in a non-Christian home, and for the first fifteen or so years of my life I had little Christian influence. When I was born, my parents decided not to have me christened, thinking that it would be best for me to make my own mind up when I was older.

I seem to remember that in my childhood and early teenage years I knew so little about who Christ really was: other than a broad outline of events in his life, and a few of his parables, I don't think I knew that much more. It wasn't until I was about 15 that one of my school-friends started talking properly to me about Jesus. It was through him that God told me of his great love for me and what price he had paid for that. Still despite this, I was still troubled about whether God did really exist or not - how was I to know, since I couldn't touch him or hear his voice?

However one day as I was out walking, and as I approached the top of a hill, I was compelled to go sit on the wall surrounding the church there. As I sat down on the wall, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of God's great love - it really was indescribable, and nothing like I'd ever felt before. Yet, I knew so certainly what it was, and knew also that God was calling me to him.

From then on I called myself a Christian, but it wasn't until someone explained some elementary teaching to me that I really knew what it was all about. Pretty soon, I accepted Christ as Saviour and Lord, but too quickly settled into a comfort zone of the school's CU and a local church. Only since coming to university in Cambridge have I moved out of this comfort zone, and have felt God working in my life so much more, not just in the good times but also through the difficulties.

During the summer of 2010 I carried out a placement with a pharmaceutical company in Loughborough - this was quite a scary experience what with being so far from home, and without knowing anyone there. However, after a week or so I stumbled across Grace Church on the internet and decided to come along to a Sunday service. This turned out to be a wonderful blessing - meeting a group of Christians who so readily accepted me into their Church family, sharing not only their time but also their lives with me. Not only was I welcomed along to Bible studies and other church events, but members of the church made a real effort to get to know me and spend time with me outside of church-based activities: this aspect of Christian love is what has been my lasting impression of my time at Grace.

In addition, the strong Bible teaching coupled with a vision to reach-out to and care for the local community is a further memory I have of Grace, and are characteristics that can be so difficult to balance in churches today. In short, I am thankful for the generosity that Grace showed me, and pray that the Lord continues to prosper their work in Loughborough.