out above the crowd, prompting Bobby DeMont to whisper playfully in his ear. Lennox Strong showed no hint of embarrassment at the rapturous greeting. He clasped his hands in front of his chest and waited for quiet.
He spoke with a pronounced Bristol accent, but with the ease and confidence of a true professional. The son of a single teenage mother, he was a drug abuser, a car thief and a member of a violent gang all by the time he was thirteen. At fourteen, he was sentenced to five months in juvenile detention for robbing a defenceless old woman at knifepoint. Far from reforming him, his spell inside introduced him to seasoned criminals he tried hard to impress and emulate. During the next several years he was in and out of custody as he went on a spree of burglary, car-theft and drug dealing. On his nineteenth birthday the police caught him carrying a gun.
'And every day I thank God that I was arrested before I fired that weapon in anger,' Lennox said. 'Another week and I would have to have proved to my so-called brothers that I wasn't just a boy with a gun, but a man who'd used one. I'll confess it openly, I had only darkness in my soul.'
The Lord found Lennox four months after his release from prison. He was just twenty-two, 'an angry ball of testosterone and muscle spoiling for a fight'. It was late into a wild night when he took some cocaine on top of alcohol and amphetamines. 'I thought I could take anything, but I went down like a felled tree.' Lennox was rushed to hospital suffering a series of cardiac arrests. He was resuscitated five times in the ambulance. He couldn't recall much of the journey, but he did remember suffering the final excruciating arrest which was to stop his heart for a full three minutes.
'My friends, I'd never had a spiritual thought in my life. I believed that when you died the lights went out and that was it. The lights went out all right, but it wasn't an end. I felt myself leaving my physical body and going down ... and down, into a blackness I can't even describe. The further I sank, the hotter and more stifling it became. I could feel my lungs burning.' He paused to take a breath. 'Was I terrified? . . . There are no words to express the fear I felt as I realized I was falling into hell. I may have known nothing about the Bible, but I knew what I was looking at, and it was more real than you are now. And then this scream came from somewhere within me, "Jesus, save me!" There was no answer, and this is God's truth, my friends, I felt my flesh beginning to boil. I cried out again, "Jesus, please . . . save me!" And suddenly there was a rush of wind, and for a moment it was as if two strong men were pulling me in opposite directions, then bam!' He clapped his hands. 'I felt as if I'd split in two, but suddenly I shot upwards like a cork out of a bottle and I found myself standing at the side of the bed where the doctors were shocking my heart, and, very calmly, I lay down . . . The next thing I knew I was waking up in the ward with my mother and little sister looking down at me. And I'm telling you now, I'd never felt so much love in my whole life . . .' Lennox's voice clogged with emotion.
Bobby put an avuncular hand on his shoulder. 'Don't stop short of the punchline, Lennox,' he joked. 'Tell the people what happened next.'
A ripple of nervous laughter travelled through the crowd.
'I said to my mum, "You aren't going to believe this, but I think Jesus just saved me." And she said, "Well, you'd better make sure to pay him back." And as soon as I spoke those words I knew that my life had changed for ever. She called the hospital chaplain and, for the first time since I was a tiny child, I prayed. I prayed that I would give my life to the service of God. And that prayer wasn't answered in months, or weeks or even days - you know how they say the new wine is the strongest? - that prayer was answered the very next day when the chaplain told