‘My father taught me that the greatest sin was to get caught…’
Tony Sands acts as the Church Planting Facilitator within REACH, Elim’s evangelism department. Tony’s passion for seeing broken lives turned around by the gospel is born out of his own troubled background before he knelt to pray on the floor of his prison cell…
He was swaying on his feet with a broken jaw and his right ear dangling from a flap of skin, almost touching his shoulder. The blood ran freely down his prison uniform, and through blackening eyes he told the warden, “I fell over,” as he was asked who had hurt him.
Having seen a fair few fights and heard screams at night from young lads who were scared and old men who’d had enough, I began to realise the gloss, such as it was, of prison life was fading fast.
I didn’t come from a Christian home. My parents had divorced in the mid-1960s, and everyone in my extended family old enough to drink was an alcoholic. No one in my family had gone past fifth form at school; we were never made of money. My mum died before my 16th birthday. I guess the signs were there.
The only contact I had with a church was through a youth club on Friday evenings, which I attended for about six months. Nice people, those Christians were…
My promising football prospects ended with the discovery of girls, drugs and alcohol. I was a nice enough bloke, but without vision, values, or direction. After my mum died, I was without any kind of moral compass. My father taught me the greatest sin was to get caught – but that’s exactly what I did.
I was rootless and without empathy, becoming colder inside by the day, and had no sense that I couldn’t take what I wanted and do as I liked. I became involved in crime without conscience. I was convicted of robbery with violence and several other offences, and was sent to prison aged 18. “Ten with a five,” they said. It would have been good to get parole after five years, but I didn’t care. Not at first.
I did most of my time in maximum security, but was transferred from place to place. I arrived at one prison, out in the country, to find the only man I knew, Reg, had become a Christian. I didn’t mind, I knew Christians from the youth club… they were all right by me.
Over the months, Reg would try to argue me into the kingdom. It wasn’t his words, though, it was his life. I had never met a happier man, even though he was doing longer than I was. He was different from all the others.
One day, he finally got me. I gave my life to Christ when I was about 20. I knelt down on the cell floor one night and invited Jesus to be Lord of my life. Disappointingly, however, there were no spiritual fireworks, so I went to bed.
When I woke up the next day, the world hadn’t changed, but I had. I was glad to be alive for the first time in my life. Then Reg and I teamed up; we planted a church in C yard!
Then, there were two years of Bible college, four years of theological college and the transformation was well under way – I was a pastor! The highlights since then: my wife and I have had 11 years leading a church in Sydney, three years working in missional leadership training, six years leading a church back from the brink in New South Wales, and we’re currently replanting a church in London as well as working with Elim’s Big Centenary Ask. We like to keep busy!
My reflection on our ministry experience is that we have learned to move from leading and growing great churches to leading and growing missional churches, developing Christian communities capable of reaching and teaching unlimited numbers of people.
This takes more time and is actually counter to my initial ministry training, which was about growing a worship service size and preaching good sermons. We have grown churches with creative ministries, excellence in worship experience and pastoral care. Now, we want to plant and grow churches through disciple making and people building. It’s slower, perhaps, but ultimately it’s much more sustainable, and much more effective in reaching lost people for Jesus.
My role at Elim is to champion The Big Centenary Ask vision, and help visionary but time-pressed ministers by working with them to develop strategies and deliver training with their people for the task of planting churches, multiplying congregations, and launching fresh expressions of church.