Mansell's Testimony

When I look back over my Christian life so far there have been a number of significant moments.

The first of these, not surprisingly, was my conversion at the age of eighteen. Seven years later I spent six months with Youth with a Mission on a discipleship training school where for the first time I discovered what it meant to ‘get out of the boat’, sharing my testimony to a group of people gathered out in the open in Leicester Square on a cold Friday night.

This was followed some years later by spending four years living in a discipleship house, coming to terms with and trying to live out Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. It was during this time that God confronted me with the plight of the homeless in Manchester. Walking around the city centre some weeks before Christmas I realized that for many people Christmas was not the happy family occasion that had been my experience since I was a child. The following year a friend made me aware of Lifeshare, a non-Christian charity, who not only provided soup and sandwiches for homeless people and those working in the ‘Red Light’ district but who that year were also putting on something for the homeless over the Christmas period. This was the beginning of a working relationship with Lifeshare and the homeless of Manchester that lasted about eight years.

Another key moment in my life came when I attended a conference held in Liverpool entitled ‘Jesus in the City.’ Confronted by the realization that whilst 80% of Christians lived in suburbia and a similar number of non-Christians lived in the inner cities, I came away from that conference faced with two choices: I could either give much more of my time to praying for the city or I could move into the inner city and serve a church working in this urban context.

In 1996 I left Ivy Cottage, a suburban church in Didsbury and moved to Newton Heath in East Manchester and served as a bi-vocational worker with Heathfield Church. It was here that I met my wife-to-be, Tracy, and thus began a new phase in my life.

Two years later we married. Then came the call to pastor. This was a gradual process but actually looking back this call came on my life a number of years ago when God spoke to me through Isaiah 61 and the verse ‘To provide for those who grieve in Zion.’ Actually, I realize now that this was not just a call to pastor but it was also a call to serve in the city. Two years after we were married Tracy and I took up the challenge of pastoring a church in Clayton, another inner city church based in East Manchester.  There have been many wonderful times and many not so wonderful times but in it all God has been incredibly faithful.

One final thing to mention, a number of years into our marriage we were told we could not have any children. We made this known to those close to us who we knew would pray. Now we are the proud parents of three lovely boys – Samuel, the eldest, then Jonathan and finally Joshua. To all who read this we would value your prayers both for our family and for the church family, that we would be a blessing and bring glory to our God.

Mansell Morgan, pastoring in East Manchester.

Tracy's Testimony

Having been brought up in a Methodist Sunday School, I guess I never doubted God’s existence, until, just before my 13^th birthday when my aunty died. It was the first person close to me who died and I began asking big questions. “If God is real, why isn’t He real to me?” “If Jesus is alive, why isn’t He alive to me?” “What about other faiths?” I started asking my Sunday School teacher questions about the Holy Spirit, questions she couldn’t answer. Around the same time, I was given a Gideon’s bible at school and I was hooked. I read it over and over, I couldn’t put it down. I convinced my best friend to try other churches with me on my quest to find God. Several weeks later I stumbled into a church in Leeds and immediately felt the presence of God. At the end of the service, a young man stood up and spoke in a strange, angelic tongue. I had never heard this before, but had read about the first Pentecost and now I had my proof that God was still very much alive today! Amazingly, the interpretation was given, “God is calling a young person here today:  go and spread my love through this love-starved world.” My heart felt like it was going to jump out of my body and I knew God was speaking to me. I committed my life to Jesus that night when I was thirteen.

Throughout my teens, my constant prayer was “Lord, how do you want me to spread your love?” but heaven remained silent. I later realized that, although I would have said that God was number one, in reality I had other priorities.

It was not until my early twenties, when I again lost someone very close to me, became ill, couldn’t work (I was a freelance designer/illustrator) and consequently ended up with nowhere to live, that God stripped me of all but Him; and I praise Him for that.  I spent eight nights sleeping in my old red Volkswagen beetle and, unable to sleep, wandered into the middle of a field one cold starry night. I remember sitting on a dry stone wall, praying, and the next thing, I was on my knees in the middle of the field, crying out to God. Tears ran down my face as I confessed my sins before Him.  At that same moment I pictured Jesus before me, tears running down His face, arms outstretched on the cross, saying “I did this for you.” I promised that if He got me out of the mess I was in, that I would go anywhere and do anything, and I really meant it. I immediately felt really warm and peaceful and I knew that somehow, someway, everything was going to be alright.

The next morning, I applied for a job designing greeting cards in a place I had only ever heard of, called Preston. I got the job, and my first Sunday there, found myself at Fulwood Free Methodist Church. The warmth, welcome, worship and word, made me feel that spiritually, I had found my home. I got involved in the youth ministry and a few years later managed to buy a lovely little bungalow. I was so grateful to God for His blessings to me, my job, my home, my church family…but then God started to challenge me. “Do you remember when you said you would go anywhere and do anything…” A short term mission trip really confirmed to me that God was calling me to serve Him full-time.  People were dying.

I asked God if He would send me where there would be mountains and sunshine, but he sent me to inner-city Manchester. In 1996 I left my home, church and friends to do youth and schools ministry in the inner city, taking the gospel into schools and doing assemblies, RE lessons, after-school clubs, Christian Unions etc. through drama, mime, art, puppetry etc. This was a huge step of faith for me, as I had a weekly gift of £20 to pay all my bills and living expenses, but God moved so powerfully.

For four years I was employed by Heathfield Church in Newton Heath as Youth Ministries Co-ordinator, and it was there I met my husband, Mansell.

I remember seeing the filth, the brokenness, and the ugliness of the inner-city and saying “Lord, if this is really where you want me, then you’ve got to break my heart with the things that break your heart.” He did, and I know that the need here is so vast, that we MUST be here – it truly is a mission field.

In recent years my ministry has changed incredibly. After 7 years of barrenness and being told there was no hope of children, through prayer God miraculously opened my womb and gave us 3 little boys in 3 years. This has enabled me to befriend many mothers at grass roots level and I’m excited at the future possibilities to reach these families for Christ. I have started running a playgroup and I support mothers to breast feed, as a means of getting alongside the local community. My heart is still in children’s ministry, but as I write this, I know God is leading us down roads we’ve never trodden before. It’s exciting and scary but our awesome God simply says “Who will go?” to which I cannot but reply, “Here I am Lord, send me.”