Not Malaysia or Mozambique but Mitcham - how God called me to minister on my doorstep

Hayley Teague, a Livability community mission advisor, shares her powerful story of domestic violence, rebellion and the church that not only loved her, but invested in her.
Believing passionately that Christians are blessed to be a blessing, she is still at the same church where she is following God's call to work in her local community.

I grew up in south London, with an alcoholic father who also resorted to domestic violence. My mum was amazing and as part of her strategy to shield us from a lot of what was going on she sent me and my sister to a little Shaftesbury Mission church around the corner.  It really was a kind of respite from all that was going on at home. It was at the mission, where we attended Sunday school and girls’ brigade, that I first heard the good news about Jesus, a man who offered unconditional love – the same love that I saw in action.

Our behaviour warranted excluding us, but they never did. These were people loving unconditionally and trying to follow Jesus’ example.

Broken rules and unconditional love

We were not nice kids. I can recall once incident at a camp where I read out the rules one by one – and then proceeded to systematically break them all! That same camp the captain had to sit by our dormitory door at night time as we were making so much noise and while she sit there quietly reading her Bible I would throw things at her.  At times our behaviour warranted excluding us, but they never did. These were people loving us unconditionally and trying to follow Jesus’ example.

As I approached my early teens, I felt the church held nothing for me anymore.  Other things became more exciting and I got involved with a group of older friends and started taking drugs.

Numbing the pain

When I was 19 my uncle - who was only 35 - died suddenly. This impacted me badly as he was more of a father figure to me that my own dad. I got more heavily involved in drugs and alcohol, spending my 21st birthday in hospital from alcohol poisoning – it seemed the only way to numb the pain.

On the surface my life was good. I had a good career in IT and my mum was so proud when I got a job working for the Royal Household based at Buckingham Palace. But the truth was that but inside I was dying.

‘All you need is God’

One day, a friend of mine asked if I wanted to go to a spiritualist meeting and because I had a ‘try anything once’ attitude and as I was still grieving for my uncle I decided to go. God had other plans, however and while sitting on the steps outside crying, a man approached me, asked what was going on and said, “You don’t need any of that, you should let the dead rest in peace, all you need is God”. I shrugged my shoulders at him, but gave me some Christian literature and left. My friends did not see this guy and when I got home I didn’t have any of the literature he had left me.

The following Sunday I walked back into the church I used to attend. Things had changed a little, there was a band, and people were singing and some had their hands in the air – I was looking round for Whoopi Goldberg since to me it felt like a scene from Sister Act!

I kept looking at these people and knew they had something I was lacking. I listened to the talk and cried the whole way through. Once it was over, I left quickly, lit up a cigarette and wondered what it was all about and why I had cried. This happened for a few weeks until someone asked if I’d like to do a Christianity Explored course. For several (sometimes awkward) weeks I went round to the home of the youth worker, Mandy, to do this course and then returned home to smoke cannabis. It was during this course however in her back garden that I remember committing my life to follow Christ.

Worth investment

One week, the leader of Mandy’s cell group gave them each some money and told them to go and invest the money in the Kingdom of heaven. Mandy prayed about what to do and she felt God told her to buy me a Bible. This seemed amazing to me since she didn’t know I was finding it hard to keep up in church without one.

I went home and started reading one of the gospels whilst smoking a cannabis joint.   When I dropped some hot ash on the Bible and it burnt a hole in the page it made me question whether I should be smoking it any more.

I went home and started reading one of the gospels whilst smoking a cannabis joint.   When I dropped some hot ash on the Bible and it burnt a hole in the page it made me question whether I should be smoking it any more. Not long after that I decided that no drugs – illegal or otherwise – were part of God’s best for my life and that they were robbing me of the potential He had for me. I prayed, gave it all up and found that the addictions were miraculously broken – no NHS smoking line, no patches, no falling off the wagon.

God’s call to stay, not go

I had made a friend who was working with AIDS orphans in South Africa and I went to visit the township where she worked. It was heartbreaking to hear that most of the children were HIV positive. This experience really affected me and whilst there I prayed that most dangerous of prayers, ‘God, I’ll go wherever you want me go and do whatever you want me to do.’ Of course I was hoping that God would send me somewhere beautiful and preferably hot but when I got home I felt God say, "Hayley, you don’t have to go to Africa to see people dying, there are young people involved with gangs and knife crime right on your doorstep".

Choosing to serve the King on my doorstep

This call to work locally has never gone away and just got stronger, so I left my job working at the Palace to serve God in my church and local community. It felt good to be able to say. ‘I used to work for the Queen, now I work for the King!’

This call to work locally has never gone away and just got stronger, so I left my job working at the Palace to serve God in my church and local community. It felt good to be able to say. ‘I used to work for the Queen, now I work for the King!’

In my new IT job for Merton council I was called to fix a computer at the magistrate’s court on what just happened to be a youth court day. What I saw filled me with an overwhelming sense of love and compassion for these kids and their families who were living in my neighbourhood. It was the final piece of the picture and I felt a sense of conviction from that moment on that I was being called to be a missionary on my doorstep.

I started by volunteering at the church youth group, and with their support and financial investment went off to complete a youth work and ministry degree at Oasis Trust. During that time I had a placement with my local Youth Justice Team and a local 16 bed secure unit for young girls. Upon completing my training I went to work fulltime with the Youth Justice Team as case worker.

Today!

I am still at the church that loved and supported me, and played such a big part in helping me to find my way to God.
I am one of the founding members of The Jeremiah Project which delivers money management advice, Bible explorer, drug education and street pastors in the local area and has a converted double decker bus which has a coffee shop, IT suite and is used generally as a resource in the local area.

I am actively involved in this project as a HopeUK drug educator teaching in many schools and youth groups in my neighbourhood and a Street Pastor out once a month in the community. It is amazing that God is using me to work alongside people in my home town some of whom from similar backgrounds to mine.

God has done great things in my life. I can say along with Joseph that what was meant for evil in my life God has used for good (Genesis 50:20). He has restored me from death to life, created a new thing out of nothing (Romans 4:17) and turned my sorrow into joy. He will use every last experience - positive and negative - because with Him nothing is wasted.

I now work as a community mission advisor with Livability (an organisation formed by the merger of The Shaftesbury Society and John Grooms).

The organisation was started by passionate Christians; John Groom and Lord Shaftesbury whose faith compelled them to act when they saw poverty, injustice and social challenges on the streets of Victorian Britain.

The Community Mission Team works with churches in deprived areas and aims to help them be really connected and engaged with their local community. We believe it’s so important for the Church to live out the kingdom on the pavement rather than the platform and long for each congregation to realize this.

I believe that Christians are blessed in order to be a blessing and find it a privilege to help churches learn more about how they can be good news in their community.