WHEN YOU'RE a well-brought up, middle-class "Christian" girl with family values of upright living and caring for others, it's strangely easy to avoid being genuinely converted to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ!

This was Ann Hawker's experience. "As a child, I'd always dutifully tried to do the right things - but without any experience of doing them from love, inside me. At my first secondary school - a Catholic one in Croydon - I remember loving the mystery of the 'Stations of the Cross' but all that did was to lean me towards religiosity.

At Crusaders' Camp I first became aware you were supposed to make some kind of personal commitment to Jesus - which I dutifully tried to do, without any idea what it meant!

"In 1969, when I was 13, we moved to Northamptonshire and I joined a Church of England school. A year later, I agreed to be confirmed and I remember distinctly being very disappointed that it didn't mean more, as I had an awareness that confirmation should have meant that I 'found the Holy Spirit' - though nobody could tell me how or why."

Most of Ann's peers at her new school had chosen their friends before she arrived and Ann's identity became fixed as the friend that all the friendless used to hang around with.

"Because these weren't two-way relationships, I became quite lonely and this led, in my late teens, to me getting into more drinking and sexual behaviour than my conscience felt happy about. I would still have called myself a Christian and sang in the choir but gradually church got squeezed out of my life by music, boys and going out drinking."

By the early 1970s, the charismatic revival came to Britain and, just before Ann's 18th birthday, her elder brother, Dave, announced that he'd become a Christian.

"He really provoked me by saying: 'Ann, if you say you're a Christian, how come you don't know the Holy Spirit?' I got very cross. I did not want my cage rattled at all!"

When Dave went off to university, he left the house littered with charismatic books like Run Baby Run and Nine O'clock in the Morning. In spite of herself, Ann read them all avidly. They sparked a realisation that you could actually know a living, miracle-working God today, through experiencing something the books called 'Holy Spirit baptism'.

"When Dave came home for Christmas, 1973, he asked if he could take me to Bugbrooke Chapel. I don't actually recall saying yes but somehow there I was, surrounded by the gifts of the Holy Spirit and seeing with my own eyes the things I'd been reading about in Dave's books! That night he asked if he could pray for me and I was filled with the Holy Spirit and, later, spoke in tongues - without knowing much of repentance or deep conversion!

"The overwhelming sensation I felt was that now I knew God. I'd met Him for the first time. My spirit had come alive. I went around with a massive grin and got cheekache through smiling so much! At school, people asked if I had a new boyfriend - I was so happy something must have happened. That Spring, I was baptised in water and became a member of the Jesus Fellowship."

At this time, the church began to set up the New Creation Christian Community and purchased the first houses. Soon, pioneer groups of church members were getting to grips with the realities of an all-things-in common lifestyle, as described in Acts 2 and 4. Ann, meantime, had enrolled for a three year university course in Social Sciences at Leicester and found it hard to have to wait for weekends before she could be with the church again.

"At last, in 1978, my graduation day came and I was free to join them. My first community house was Living Stones in Flore, a few miles from Bugbrooke Chapel. I felt an overwhelming sense of 'coming home' and I was very happy and fulfilled. I count the three years I lived there as my spiritual adolescence and the thirteen years at my second house, Highway House in Weedon, as the spiritual training ground for my ministry of spiritual motherhood.

"In 1994, I moved to my present home at Promise House, Coventry and you could say that this was the house where I felt my life of ministry really began. Over the last eleven years I've moved from being secretary to our architect's practice to being the property trustee responsible for all the eighty Jesus Fellowship community houses.

"Following years of outreach, I had a growing vision for church to be more accessible to all during the daytime and this vision was finally realised when we began the Coventry Jesus Centre project. I became project manager and am now the part-time services manager. Both during the setting up and now with the ongoing running, my testimony, again and again, is that God provides - whether through the amazing provision of suitable chairs at a bargain price or through volunteers suddenly appearing when there has been a gap we had no idea how to fill!"

One day, during her time at Living Stones, Ann gave a friend a lift to work. As she got out of the car, the friend joked: "Only thirty-five more years of journeys to work!"

As Ann waved goodbye to her she thought: "Well, that won't ever be me - be cause I'm going to get married!"

Immediately, she heard God's inner voice say: "Are you sure about that!?

"Yes I am!"

Over the next weeks, Ann knew she needed to ask God what He thought about her future.

"I experienced a great tussle with God. Eventually, I agreed that I would ask Him. In gentle steps, He talked to me about receiving His gift of celibacy.

"At Living Stones we had a tree called 'The Tree of Heaven' and one day, under this tree, I made my vow to stay single for His service.

"I believe this was the most decisive decision of my life - very much part of God's plan for me and it all fits together in the way He wanted it to - releasing me to be free for my service to the church.

"Twenty-five years on, I've experienced lots of heartache and loneliness at times and the occasional emotional entanglement - but never any regrets.

"Spiritual motherhood has demanded of me all that I am and my work as property trustee and at the Jesus Centre means lots of stress and slog - like juggling many plates in the air! But it's true to say that it's at the very point of finding myself completely at an end of my own resources that I've found God most faithful, holding me up in the midst of it all.

"I am who I'm meant to be, doing what God wants me to do - and that's a very precious thing to be able to say!"