The Rocking Rev
8So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God. 9He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, 10but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 11And of this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher.
Young 16-year-old budding musician has a tragic accident and a near death experience changing his life forever. His legs and arms are affected and unable to play guitar he loses his friends and the life he once knew. Against all odds he changes his life around and starts to live on his own, retrains himself to play guitar and now needs to use stick and crutches to get around.
Through a chance meeting and being in the wrong place at the wrong time he is then accused of something he did not do and ended up with a year court trial to prove his innocence. This causes so much stress that he ends up in a coma after a series of seizures and ends up in a rehabilitation hospital for six months. Here he starts to find his faith as life is at such a low abb he reaches out to God.
He is now unable to return to his flat and is wheelchair bound putting his life backwards once again. He has nowhere to go but end up being taken cared for by a Christian family and begins training to be a preacher. Through a Christian Charity he is offered a bungalow and a new start and begins a new life. Here he also starts to forge a career in the music business and meets his best friend, and an unbreakable bond merges, and they begin a journey together as musician and roadie gigging and touring all over the country with many stories to tell.
This was the turning point in his life, he now had a purpose, and he found God again and started preaching again and started training for ministry. Now his daughter was of the age that she needed a room of her own, so his friend went to work, changing the studio into another bedroom. Then with help from some preacher friends set up a studio and he started his own business which started to flourish and get very busy, so busy he needed somewhere to put on concerts as the studio wasn’t big enough. He had heard of a Congregational Church that was renting the church cheaply and visited the Minister and made a friendship and hired the church for concerts and eventually started to worship there too. The minister found out that he was a preacher and asked him to lead worship. Afterwards the Minister offered him the chance to study for ministry and become an assistant Pastor, but he told him about his past and that it would never be allowed. The church deacons however believed his innocence and he became a pastor and started the training.
Things then started turning bad at the studio as someone in the industrial estate was complaining about the noise even though it was fully soundproofed. He was asked to spend £10,000 on an internal soundproof wall that he couldn’t afford, he therefore needed to move, and the church offered their building. The day he was moving the person who had complained came in measuring up and it turned out that it was a rouse to get his property.
The studio was set up in the church and he was working every hour as the studio owner, a teacher and a preacher and it was starting to have an effect on his health, the stress was getting worse, and he just couldn’t make it work financially, and the accounts just were not adding up and he took wrong advice and was nearly bankrupted.
One day he collapsed and was taken to hospital where he nearly died and was diagnosed diabetic. He then moved to another Congregational church for respite and gave up the business and started further training as a Congregational Minister. Revd Justin Lunniss was ordained in Wivenhoe Congregational Church in 2015 and remains the Minister up until today. His health has suffered, but God hasn’t finished with him yet.