Peer group pressure! It is a big factor in a youngster's life. this proved to be especially true when I was 12 years old. I had just started at a senior school in my home town of Windsor and I was eager to make an impression on new friends.
One of those friends, Alan, invited me over to his house for some fun. When I told him I was hungry, he suggested we went to the shops and got some sweets, but neither of us had any money. But that was no problem. 'We'll just steal them', Alan said. I had some qualms about this, my parents being good, church-going people, and being aware of what God thought of stealing. But my protest soon ended when I realised that Alan's estimate of me was plummeting rapidly, and that if I was not careful, I would quickly be labelled a coward at school. Quite soon we were coming out of the shop with pockets bulging with sweets and books we had stolen.
'Do Windsor'
From there things just snowballed. I turned from one who had been tempted, to one who went around tempting others to do the same. Soon we were organising 'nicking sprees', going into town during our lunch break to 'do Windsor'. It was a matter of pride as to who could steal the most. As time went on, there was one incident with the police, when I was involved in breaking and entering. I suddenly realised the position I was in, and was scared of being convicted. I prayed to God to get me out of it, promising to read the Bible every day if he did. I did get off, but, of course, I forgot all about my promise to God.
A year or so later, after my CSEs, I was asked to leave school. Three teachers refused to teach me, because I was such a disruptive influence. I was not troubled. I had a job to go to, working as a stagehand in Windsor Theatre. I enjoyed myself there until I was sacked for being at the pub when I should have been changing the scenery between acts. From the theatre I moved through many jobs, not especially keen on any of them. I was dissatisfied and bored. Life seemed meaningless. The feeling of alienation and the lack of anything meaningful and relevant taught to us at school, did not mean that there was not a very deep side to myself and my friends. But we just tried to cover these thoughts with silliness.
Pining for someone
After my 18th birthday I began to search for something more in life. I was reading some weird books and I was thinking about drugs as an answer. This was in 1979, and there was a song by the Moody Blues which seemed to haunt me and sum up my deep longing for something more than parties, drink and my mates:
'I woke up today, I was crying
Lost in a lost world,
'Cos so many people are dying
Lost in a lost world.
Everywhere you go you'll see them searching
Everywhere you turn you'll feel the pain
Everyone is looking for an answer,
We'll look again, come on my friend
Love will find you in the end
Come on my friends, we've got to bend
on our knees and say a prayer.
Oh, can you feel the world is pining
Pining for someone who really cares.
One day I was in Windsor Castle with a friend. We were up to our old trick of selling bicycle clips to American tourists, claiming they had belonged to Queen Victoria! A man came up and chatted to us. We kept bumping into him until he invited about five of my friends and me around to his house for coffee. This man, Nigel, then told us about God and the gospel. My friends and I became increasingly interested in what he was saying.
Jesus loved me
We met him for a number of weeks, and, opening up the Bible, he explained to us that we were sinners deserving of hell. I had never thought of myself as a sinner before.
A few months earlier I was saying to myself that I was not good enough for heaven, but I didn't see myself as bad enough for hell! My eyes were opened. My despair and hopelessness dissolved as Nigel told me about the Lord Jesus Christ, who loved me so much that he came to pay the price of my sin. I had to come to Jesus in repentance, and ask him to take away my sin and make me new.
I did and he did! I became a Christian and my life changed totally. Amazingly, about 25 of my mates were converted within six months to a year. About five or six of these are now in full-time Christian work and many others are fully committed to the work of their local churches. A number of parents were also converted, as God used our testimony, including my own. They started having Bible studies in their home.
First time at church
Going to church for the first time after we were converted was quite an experience. We went to a small Brethren assembly. I need to stress that we were very serious and did not go to laugh. But, talk about Toronto! - we laughed to bursting. They were dear folk, but very old. There were a few old men and a few more old ladies (I would have thought you had to be 60 to get into the creche). We didn't mind this, but it was the suspicion with which we were viewed, which made it an atmosphere of 'Who are they?' We were dressed in dirty jeans and T-shirts and my hair was very long.
I have to tell you about the toilets. They had two signs: 'Brothers' and 'Sisters'. If you were a 'sister' you went out of the door and turned right into an outside cubicle. But if you were a 'brother' (I'm not sure what the unconverted were supposed to do), you went out of the door, turned left, and then first right into another hall, right again walking the whole length of the hall, right again and out of the door and right again, which brought you to the 'brothers' cubicle next to and adjoining the 'sisters'! All this was indicated by signs with arrows and the word 'Brothers' on it.
But back to the service. Every song seemed to be written to produce maximum embarrassment and maximum warble for the ladies. After the service, the ladies were delightfully welcoming, but the men seemed to want to give us a hard time. Questions like: 'Why do you have long hair?' and 'Why do you use that Bible?' were hurled at us. I had a Good News version and didn't know anything about other versions.
One man told me that they had had a funeral the day before. It felt like they were having another one today. However, I really put my foot in it, as I was searching for something to say to make conversation, and looking around, I found myself saying: 'I bet you get a lot of funerals here'. It went down like a lead balloon, and I felt I needed to take another trip to the 'Brothers'.
For the last 13 years, Peter Woodcock has been working from Hook Evangelical Church, Surbiton, and travelling round the country speaking at evangelistic suppers and church missions. On average he has been preaching around 400 times a year, most of which have been evangelistic occasions. God has blessed Peter's ministry and he has been greatly used in seeing folk saved.
In May Peter will be leaving England for the next couple of years. He will be travelling with his family to Hobart, Tasmania, to work as an evangelist from St. John's Presbyterian Church, where David N. Jones (formerly of Grove Chapel, Camberwell, London) is the minister. The work will involve evangelism in and around Tasmania and also a wider ministry in Australia and New Zealand. EN hopes to keep up with Peter's ministry 'down under'.
Peter has also been invited to be a part-time staff worker with the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (equivalent of UCCF).
