Losing parents drew me closer to the Lord

An evangelical who has been appointed to head up an inter-church body says losing both his parents at a young age drew him closer to the Lord.

Mike Royal (see photo), a member of the Evangelical Alliance Council as well as a church leader in Birmingham, who is also involved with various Christian charities, will become General Secretary of Churches Together in England next March.

As a teenager Royal recalls: ‘Being one of the only black kids in my school was tough. Racism was casual in the 1970s and the playground could be brutal. I began to get angry about deprivation, especially as experienced by black people in inner-city Britain.