THE TWO men walked out of chapel, deep in conversation. It was Tschaka's first Sunday at Warwick University. He'd just met Krish at the service.
"Well, Tschaka, what do you think?" asked Krish.
"I don't know if God exists," Tschaka replied, "but I want to check out other religions, too. So, I'm looking at Christianity now, Islam in Year Two and Buddhism or Judaism in Year Three."
"That's good," said Krish. "I'm starting a course on Christianity called 'Just Looking'. Fancy coming along?"
The conversation led to an interesting term for Tschaka, in which his neat, logical life-plan flew out of the window.

"I was full of questions as a child," Tschaka explains. " Not surprising, really. Mum was a Jehovah's Witness from Jamaica, Dad was an agnostic from Wales, and I had a name derived from a Zulu god! Dad took me to Methodist church to indoctrinate me against JW beliefs and to show me religion from a different point of view. It worked. I ended up not believing in God, and arguing with Christian schoolfriends, using Dad's words to criticise the Bible." Tschaka grew up unable to find his real identity.

"Strangely enough it wasn't about being mixed race or having parents with different beliefs. The root was much deeper. It was to do with wanting to be both popular and proud of who I was at the same time. The two conflicted. I tried being popular and ended up feeling I didn't know who I was.
"At school I was so serious. I'd find it strange how people could warm to you when you were alone with them, then totally blank you in a group. It frustrated me when people weren't true to themselves. I found it hard to know who I was, but at least I was genuinely trying, not acting."

One day, Tschaka was sitting on his bed deep in thought, when he came to the conclusion that, maybe, when he got to university, he should investigate God's existence.
"I'd decided that God didn't exist. But I thought, "That's arrogant - I believed in ghosts, so why not God? That was what led me to the chapel and the 'Just Looking' evenings."
Tschaka's voyage to find God through 'checking out the evidences' wasn't plain sailing.
"After many conversations, I'd concluded that the whole Christianity thing was just a clever big riddle, invented by man. Then, one day, the group discussed 'What was Jesus doing, dying on the Cross?'
"He died to make us perfect," someone said. That blew my mind. I knew I didn't deserve that. I was quite a 'good' person but I'd still done some drastically wrong things. Jesus had given Himself for me, one Man for everyone else. That total unselfishness had to be divine, it's not characteristic of man at all!

"Walking home, I said 'God, I want this!' Quite simply, He filled me with joy, something that's still in my heart a decade later! That was what gave me my identity. Soon after, someone challenged me:
'Tschaka, what are you?'
"I'm a student"
'What ARE you? Define yourself'.
"I ran out of answers, but then I realised - the most precious thing - I was God's child! Nothing else mattered." With zealous idealism, Tschaka threw himself into his new Christian role; stuffed his quick mind with Bible knowledge and enrolled for two years mission work.

"Everything should have been perfect. But something was wrong. One night, a friend said: 'You're lonely.' That was it. Here I was, part of an excellent team of strong young Christians, yet I didn't have any relationships that counted. The word 'lonely' had such a profound effect on me that I felt suicidal. In my usual way, I tried to organise myself out of it by seeing a counsellor. But the issue didn't go away. "It was all me controlling my own life. My joy in knowing God couldn't find a place to grow. I kept crying 'Where are the real relationships?'

Then, one night, God challenged me to do a complete U-turn. He said to me:
'Tschaka, you're building your own little corner of My kingdom. Let Me take over. I want to put you in a church where you will be happy. Then you'll be effective." It was at this point that an old university friend got in touch. He'd joined a Christian community in Coventry and invited Tschaka to stay.
"I agreed to go, found what I'd been looking for and moved in! Community life is such a rich experience. And it's giving me the ability to achieve my heart's desire: to build God's church. Nothing else matters".

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