Our Century

Faith kept me out of prison


My Century,
Rev Mick Williams, Bushbury


"I had no church background, left school at 15 with no GCSEs and had read just one book in my life - Charlotte's Web.

"I spent about three months on a youth training scheme as a builder. It was hopeless, just knocking down walls for 20 a week, not building anything.

"Then I was unemployed and going through a sort of crisis anyway when I got a job making shoes. I met an old school friend called Neil who said his life had been transformed, that he'd become a Christian. I thought he'd been smoking something or popped bad E.

"I was ignorant of the Christian faith. But something had definitely happened to him and while I didn't fancy this religion stuff, I went with him to St Mary's, Bushbury.

"I can't remember the hymns or the sermon but I knew something had happened. It wasn't like the Lottery finger pointing at me but I thought 'there's something going on.' I knew my life would never be the same again.

"Next night, the curate, Charles Beresford, brought me a copy of the New Testament.

"He'd worked for years as a tool setter, he was my kind of man. A few years later I married his daughter, Sarah.

"Though I was a churchgoer, I was still Mick who liked a drink and a fag. And even now, I'm still just Mick who happens to have got himself right with God.

"I did my first tattoo with Indian ink when I was nine, outside the King Charles pub.

"The reason I'm here and not in prison is because someone had the courage to say 'I'm a Christian' and to talk to me about Jesus. That's been very close to my heart."