Biker

Next meeting February 29

January Bike Night was a success with plenty of bikes outside for the duration.
Indoors the cafe kept everyone fed and watered, the chapel space had our reflection film playing and the diner was filled with people chatting over their plans and projects, or just listening in and getting a feel for what we are about.
We are hoping to organise some rideouts when the Spring arrives so watch this space and remember, the gates is open daily except Thursday.
Next Bike Night Feb 29 for a leap-year special

Here at OBs we actively encourage free thinking.

welcome to ed space

GOLDFISH

When i was fifteen years old I was thoroughly engrossed in the teachings of the church, particualrly the part where I was told that God can answer any prayer and perform any miracle. I was inspired by stories of Moses, Daniel, David and others having had amazing and impossible things happen at God's hand.
I was thoroughly convinced by stories of Jesus turning 120 gallons of water into wine, curing the lame, deaf and blind, raising Lazarus from the dead and teaching that all who genuinely believed in his name could do likewise, including throwing mountains into the sea.
"I will make you fishers of men" (Matthew 4) was taken on board like a program on a computer hard-drive and I was going to witness men giving their trust to God.
One day in 1981 I found my two pet goldfish floating, quite dead on the surface of their water.
Words can't express how sincerely I prayed for those fish to be raised to life all that evening, How completely I'd believed that my wish would be granted and how thoroughly crushed I was when no flickering of life appeared in those dead bodies floating in the tank by the next morning.
How could I trust God's promises if he wouldn't bring back the only things I truly cared about in the world at that time? Remember I was a teenager who felt uncomfortable in my new surroundings. I couldn't just get on my bike and cycle away to find a place to think, as was my custom in Somerset. On my first day on the estate in south London I was robbed for a packet of biscuits by a group of four lads and when I knocked down the first one, the other three were on me like a pack. Having no backup made me withdraw, lick my wounds and sow the seeds of doubt. I only felt safe outside when with my family in the car and had no visitors. My only social outlet was the youth group at Dennett Road AOG, run by Dave Smith.
These seeds of doubt grew into a rebellion that lasted for the next twenty years. I'd stopped going to church within two years and I blamed God for every bad thing that happened in my life, despite the vast majority of them being my fault.
My parents divorced and I blamed God for not holding them together, my family fell apart and I blamed God.
I regularly woke with a steaming hangover from the excesses of life, rarely acknowledging his presence in the world around me but always raising the fist in anger at him when I felt let down.
Every bike accident was "punishment from God" but near-misses were due to my skill and roadcraft. Every job I didn't get was God's fault but each time I was successful it was due to my skills. Get the picture?
Shift forward to November 2000 and through my rebellion and beligerance I'd managed to become a divorced person with no active faith, despite membership of various churches and bike clubs over the years and then came November 3rd and the accident that nearly cost my life, and did cost my right leg, my bike, my job and my home.
I realised that despite my efforts, I'd never dealt with the issues over the goldfish. I had to learn to trust God again.
I regained a faith, saw God's work in more and more aspects of my life over the next ten years and was very well rewarded for that trust but still no explanation for the goldfish incident. By 2002, I was calling those inexplicable times "Goldfish moments", the times when we don't have an answer but things "just are".
During my morning prayer on Sunday, I couldn't shake my interest in the goldfish prayers, which had to be placed on the back burner as I had a busy day planned and this was thought for another time. I don't keep a prayer diary as such but I couldn't get into the day for the goldfish thoughts.
How was I to know that within 24 hours I would hear of two biking brothers accepting Christ into their lives, showing an interest in the bible and the reality of God's existence and the potential for a major revival among the biking community of truly free thinking individuals willing to join us on a journey of discovery.
I don't have many answers but I enjoy exploring the questions and I trust the Lord to guide.
"I will make you fishers of men" is how Jesus instructed his early disciples when he wanted them to change course, to follow a different path, to trust him.
I will never know exactly what happened with those goldfish but I do know that their replacements are far more valuable and my prayers have been fully and completely answered, just not to my timescale.
With God a thousand years are like one day and I can never begin to understand quantum dynamics but I have learnt that trusting God is never a waste of time.
May God be revealed to us as we respond to that still, small voice

My name is Ed and I have been into bikes for as long as I can remember. I remember as a seven-year-old pinching Dad's playing cards and Mum's pegs to make my Raleigh Chopper sound right. This same bike was subjected to my early attempts at customising too, ending up satin black and being called the "Black Widow". I'd grafted on the front end from a racing bike, with 27 inch forks, wheel, brakes and stumpy mudguard. It was ridiculously long and when riding my chin was on the end of the seat but I was eleven and the widow was my escape, reliably taking me away from home and into the countryside to think.
My first sight of a line of thundering bikes was in Somerset in the 1970s when an early,, helmetless MAG run passed through Wellington and I was hooked by the sight and sound of this bunch of free-thinkers uniting for a common cause. When I later found out why they were riding together my life as a biker began.
I worked as a despatch rider in London in the 1980s, suffered many collisions, visited many A&E departments and joined my first rally club (Breakouts MCC) in 1987, based in Surrey. we travelled the length and breadth of england, partying with like-mided people. I spent some time as PSG secretary with the Kent branch of the CMA in the early 1990s.
Moving to sheffield in 1996 I had my lower right leg ripped off by an errant van driver in November 2000 whilst riding my Bandit through the City Centre.
It took a while to get my head back together after the massive upheaval of losing club, accommodation, employment and sanity within six months but i was riding a trike by the following july. I always knew that the solidarity of a good bike club would make everything else go right again.
This happened in 2002 when i was invited to join the Enema Bandits covering the length and breadth of Europe in a decade you'd have to have lived through to understand.
I have built and ridden bikes, trikes, sidecar outfits, owned in excess of fifty bikes (Mrs Ed will tell you I still have too many) and still ride all over Europe as funds permit.
I answered the long-standing call to serve God when I realised it didn't have to involve the stuffy, out-dated church of my childhood and I was very pleased to discover that the Church of England is reaching out to the marginalised and supporting Pioneer Ministries. I completed a course of Academic Study in 2010 and am currently pursuing the path to ordination with the Church of England.
I was invited to be an active part of the leadership of the OBS in 2011 and am currently building my role as Director of Motorcycle Ministries, living out the gospel among the motorcycling community that I call home.

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