Such a thrill to speak with Gareth from Kingdom Wrestling at The Gathering 2024.
Visit their website for more info: kingdomwrestling.org
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I've got another guest in front of me right now and his name is Gareth and well it's wrestling which sort of throws me a little bit. We'll come to that because I don't know much but just tell us a little bit. What is it you're doing here? So I'm here with Kingdom Wrestling which is a charity based out of Yorkshire and we do evangelistic Christian wrestling events for churches across the country. We've been coming to the gathering since 2018 and every year we bring a ring, we have that outside, we do some training sessions like the lads getting between the ropes and feel what it's like to get body slammed and take a clothesline. Just get some of that frustration out there system and then learn some of the tricks of the trade and have a newfound respect for the art that is pro wrestling. So I would assume, I'm going to put this out there, but you had wrestling in your background that God sort of got involved in that somewhere and now you're doing what you do. Just give us a bit of an overview of how it is you're now doing this based on whatever you used to do. So I had a rubbish childhood and wrestling was my escape. So I would watch DBBUF and DBCW and my grandmother on a Friday night. She was like a macho man fan and I was like rockin' Austin, you know they were my guys and me and my grandma we bonded over wrestling and then when I was homeless at 15, went through some debt and ended up in a hostel, slept in a skip, got my life back on track, I was invited to church, became a Christian and felt totally moved in the worship, felt God's love in the worship and then I found a wrestling school not long after and then I started training how to be a wrestler while also learning how to be a follower of Christ and both of those things evolved alongside each other and what then became a release then became a passion and then God challenged me on well where am I in this and I was like oh so I changed my character to become a Christian wrestling character so I became Gareth Angel the divine Avenger and I would quote scripture in my promos and pray for my opponents. Before I knew it I'm now pastoring a gaggle of pro wrestlers and then I'm like well what do we do now and God's like share your story. So I then started putting my tester and he spat bang in the middle of a wrestling show and we're getting hundreds of people from the local community coming in because they want to see wrestling and then they hear Jesus' power in my life and turning it around and then people started getting saved and then we were like well now what do we do and then we set up a wrestling church and so we have got baptisms happening right next to body slums and we've got the bishop showing up and worship and word and wrestling and then we're unpacking Bible stories and doing David and Goliath in the ring and then we're just doing a sermon on the back of it and then that got coverage on BBC and Sky and then all these people started coming to us and going we want to learn we want to do it can you come to our church can you come to our men's breakfast we're getting invited into schools doing like inspirational talks and it's just all kicking off and so kingdom wrestling became a charity just past December and we're now touring the country we've got multiple sites set up we're doing amazing stuff and God is at work we baptized 30 people last year and that's incredible and these guys are coming to events like this and they're meeting Jesus and meeting other Christians and they're now walking we're being discipled we're doing Bible study together and it's just amazing man God is so good. I want to come back to the grand because when I was involved in children's ministry older folk would come along and say like I'm a grand parent I don't know when my children don't are interested in church or Christianity I've got grandchildren who I get to have some influence in what can I possibly do and I would always say the same look if you're the grandparent pray for your grandchildren but I love the fact we've got the fact here we've got a testimony it's all you can't you can't refute it your grandma has involved in in somehow changing your life because she actually tried it. I mean I know my nam prayed for me you know I know she did I heard a praying for me you know and and she she knew what was going on at home and she knew to take me away from that every Friday night was an escape but it was a chance for her to invest in me she bought me books on bugs and dinosaurs and the human body and she watched the wrestling because she saw I enjoyed it and just wanted to give me a childhood because at home I was looking after my two younger brothers my mum was an alcoholic my dad was absent I was being abused by an older family member it's actually abused so she knew all that was going on and she's like let me just love you one week one night a week and give you a childhood and that's stuck with me even to her final days when she was you know she had dementia I was still the one person she remembered out of the whole family whenever I came around and she had a thick wash action she was like Gareth who are all these nurses and I'm like oh that's that's your children grand and she'd be like oh I don't know why they're here and I was like well because they love you and and she were like are you still praying you're still going to church and I'm like yes yes I am and she was just so happy for me but that that grandmother she was my mum she was a strong woman and she started more pictures of Mary in a house than her own children because she was a devout Catholic but hey she prayed and I knew she prayed and that was enough and for her to be present and I said this to people who are mentoring younger guys and some of the people that we have you just showing up is enough you just being present and having your life on the line for them and saying hey I'm here for you my door is open my phone is on you need me you call you text because so many people out there are lonely so many people out there don't know where to go or who's for them and who's with them and that's why you end up with people drinking that's why you end up with people getting in with the wrong crowds because the wrong people are showing up she needed to show up for me because nobody else was and I'll hold anyone to that and that's why I show up for my guys now and that's why I've got guys here who just come over to me and said hey because of you I'm now in a church where I am because of you and your story and I'm like that's what Jesus does that's why we share our stories and that's why we show up so Jesus can be there and our stories they matter I had this conversation a few times with people recently and the one thing about testimony and our story people may be able to question it they might criticize it they may judge it but here's reality about our testimony they can't say it's not true not because in reality that is our story and that's why it's so powerful and so important that as believes in Jesus Christ we don't just have a story but we're actually willing to share it with others as well so thank you for sharing part of yours I could check to all the people I've spoken to for hours but I'm trying to get as many people in front of the microphone today so thank you so much how do people find out more about yours? yeah so if they go to kingdomwrestling.org that's our website we're on all the social media platforms just search at kingdomwrestling.uk you'll find us all our details are on this maybe how you can support us or you can book us or you can find out what we're doing it's all on there fabulous thank you so much it's been a thrill did you know pure 24/7 radio has a shop well we do you can buy merchandise while supporting the work that we do here simply head over to www.pure247radio.org/shop that's www.pure247radio.org/shop (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
