Bio

Name: Jonny Giddens

Family:  Married to Hannah with 4 amazing children

Hobbies: Basketball and sailing

Vocation: Pastor of a Church and director of a technology company.

Background:  I was blessed to have two great parents who got me off to a good start in life, as commited Christians they taught me the morals and teachings of Jesus, but I never really understood the faith of my parents. 

At the age of 13 our whole family moved from Dorset to Cornwall.  After adjusting to the cuture shock of crossing the tammar - I soon got into Cornish life, which for the average teenager meant I immersed myself in the world of excessive drink, soft drugs and loose relationships.  

This self centred lifestyle went on until the age of 17 when I realised my life was so shallow, empty and unfulfilled.  I was hungry for reality, for acceptance, for adventure, for meaning, and identity.  I didn’t have a clue who I was or what I was doing here.  I began to hate myself.  Everyone else seemed to have it all together, but what about me?  I didn’t just want to get a job, have a family, settle down, live a little then die, there had to be more.

As all this was going on inside a number of amazing things happened to me.  1) I was in a pub having a drink with a friend when 2 christians came and joined us.  They shared their faith with us.  I didn’t pay much attention to what they said but I could see that they had what I longed for.  2) A few weeks later I was hitch hicking back to my parents house when a man stoped to pick me up.  I asked him what he did for a living, he told me he was a pastor of a Church.  He inveted me to his Church, and amazingly a few weeks later I decided to go.  Again I was amazed, like the people I meet in the pub, the church was full of people who had such a sense of peace, joy and love.

Someone lent me a book about a guy called Keith Green  who like me, had longed for reality, forgivness, love, and after a long search found it in a relationship with Jesus.  Suddenly it all made sense.  Christianity isn't about some dead tradition, or boring rituals, or restrictive regulations, its about a life giving relationship with Jesus. 

As I read the book in my parents Caravan, I dropped to my knees, and with tears in my eyes I started talking to God.  I told him I was sorry for trying to live life my way and asked him to come into my life and help me live it his way.  As I prayed He came.  The Caravan seemed to fill with light and love, a holy presence descended upon me.  Finally I had found what I was living for!

Over the next few months as I got to know Him, personally, intimately.  I found that my fears started to go, my self hate began to disappear. I found an amazing sense of purpose in life.  In stead of using other people for my advantage, I started loving them simply for who they were because I had come to realise that that’s what God does to us.  He loves us for who we are.

Then to top it all off a few years later – I married the pastors daughter! Hannah.

Over the next few years I immersed myself in the bible – I was fascinated with the teachings of Jesus.   But as I read it, I increasingly began to realise that Jesus started was a unlike so many churches in the western world.  During this time I began to read the history books and saw there that what God had done in the past.  I read about places like Baldu – a small village just down the road from where I now live.  As you drive though it today it’s an unassuming place but in the 1850’s, after the vicar was converted in his own sermon, the church regularly had in excess of 1000 people attending it every week – and as they came together the church resounded with the presence and praise of God.  Lives were totally transformed – God was so powerfully present – Church was incredibly dynamic.

I realised what God was doing.  He was putting in my heart a passion to see it happen again.