Someone said to me, oh you should go to Bible College.

I went to speak to the church eldest.

One of them literally laughed at me and said,

that's not for a place with people like you, so we all knew what he meant. Guys were running into the service with bats and balakalabas. The building was getting smashed up. Members were getting beaten in the street. We didn't realise we'd bought the house off a drug dealer. I'm driving in from the church back to the house. police are out the door and I'm dragged out of the car.

This car is registered to Reverend Mez McConnell.

I went well from the church back to the house. Police are out the door and I'm dragged out of the car. This car's registered to Reverend Mez McConnell. I'm like, well, I'm the Reverend Mez McConnell. And his mate started laughing. One of them looked at me, looked at a driving license and said to his me. Yeah, he is. I'm like, listen, boys, I'm here because these guys need Jesus. And you need Jesus too. They were gone so quick. They were away.

Welcome, everybody. This is Simon Gilbo with Inspired. Inspired. If you're new to us, it's all

about meeting different people from all sorts of different walks of life who're doing beautiful things.

You know, we just get relentlessly bombarded the media by a barrage of stuff that just makes us more depressed

and anxious and cynical and negative and what we need is to hear well just great stories are going to

stir faith and encourage us so i've got no doubt this week you're going to be inspired because we've got

with us mez mcconnell welcome mez thank you so good to have you so mez well um we we're going to hear his story from a really rough start in life to currently

being the director of 20 schemes.

I love it.

Schemes for us would be council estates.

So the roughest parts of Scotland that he's had a vision to minister into into their brokenness.

And he's church planting, its revivalization

across Scotland, also involved in Acts 29 and written a few books telling his stories. But anyway,

that's enough by means of introduction, Mez. So grateful for you to be with us. I just want to

set you up really to tell your story. It was a pretty rough start, wasn't it?

Can you just go for it?

Yeah.

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