URBAN GORILLAS >>> Dave & Kate [Sheffield]

On our first night at the Urban Gorilla club night, we spent almost the whole evening dancing and worshipping Jesus. As the night came to an end, a couple of us got chatting to some of the bouncers. They joked around with us at first, and then we asked one of them whether there was anything he wanted prayer for. The others laughed, but nonetheless he admitted that he was interested and that he wanted to talk about it some more. He asked us all sorts of questions – what is prayer? how do you pray? did we pray five times a day facing east? do you need to be quiet to pray? what kind of things do we need to pray for?

We told him about Jesus and shared some of our own experiences of prayer, then after a while this lad with a big orange cross on his t-shirt turned up and joined in the conversation. The bouncer ended up asking us to pray for his migraines (which would sometimes get so bad he couldn't work for weeks) and for his dad (who was a depressive alcoholic). Eventually we said goodbye to the bouncer, but carried on chatting to the lad with the orange cross. He explained that he was a Christian and had been coming to Urban Gorilla with his sister for months. They had been praying that they'd meet other Christians to reach the club with, and in particular that they'd get an opportunity to speak to this very bouncer, who turned out to be head of security for several local clubs!

Another night I went to sit down for a rest after a good long session worshipping on the dancefloor, when a guy came and sat next to me. To begin with I wasn't sure whether to talk to him, because I didn't want to come across as chatting him up – after all, the reason I was there was to tell people the good news and to love them. In the end I decided to get straight to the point, so I leaned over and asked him whether he believed in Jesus. He looked confused and asked me to repeat what I had just said. I asked him again, "Do you believe in Jesus?" He was naturally quite surprised by my question, but he was intrigued and we got chatting. Over the coming weeks he regularly came back and asked what God was speaking to me about. After a few weeks, it got to where he would open up to us about all sorts of situations that were occurring in his life – he said that he felt good about himself after chatting with us (we would tell him this was the Holy Spirit at work), and he just seemed so amazed that we were interested and willing to listen.

In fact, he was so amazed that he went back home and told all his friends. The following week he brought along a friend (who doesn't normally go clubbing) just so that he could talk to us. The week after this he brought along a few more friends. Week after week, we would sit and chat with them in the chill-out area of the club. It got to where we had queue of his friends waiting to talk to us about the mess and mayhem that was going on in their lives – family issues, problems with drugs and alcohol, relationships, work, anything and everything. Sometimes we would just listen, sometimes we were able to bring the conversation round to Jesus, sometimes we would pray with them, and one week the original guy asks about the Bible – so I whip out my copy and we end up reading one of the stories together and talking about what it meant. This was a real answer to prayer. The following week he told me that he'd been reading the Bible on the Internet with an online study guide. A few weeks later he told me that he'd seen a homeless man struggling with a number of heavy bags and offered to help him, and ended up chatting to him for hours. He said that he didn't normally do that kind of thing – the Holy Spirit was clearly at work in his life!