It's Friday night in Oxford, and out among the student and townie clubbers is a small Jesus Army group with a bulky bin bag and a trolley case. At the centre, kneeling, is David White, quietly pouring out a cup of soup for one of his friends among the street people.

This soup run has been going for a year every Friday without fail, rain or shine - and the Oxford Jesus Fellowship Sunday evening meeting now sometimes resembles a dog show with so many of the regulars' pooches tied up in the courtyard outside:

"The soup run is not my idea like some people may think. It is God's. Which is why, whatever happens, I will not let go till God tells me to," says David. "The idea just would not leave me alone. First I saw the need on the street, then I felt a voice say 'soup run', and then the feeling got stronger the more I tried to ignore it. When God says 'jump!', all you can say is 'how high?'"

David's favourite book in the Bible is the story of Esther: "She knows something's wrong and she keeps going to the king, knowing he's got the power to chop off her head - and she times her request just right." It's a story about perseverance.

This is something David learnt from a very young age as he was born with disabilities.

"I was told I would never walk or talk because I was born with slight brain damage down the right side and cerebral palsy," David explains. "But riding helped me: as I love horses my teachers bribed me with the promise of a ride, not only to talk but to walk a few steps. Their attitude was 'You don't know unless you have had a jolly good try.' This drove me to go for it."

Through the first year of the soup run David has got to know many of the street people, and there have been a few near breakthroughs. One girl stayed in community for a few days, made a break but then fell back when she wasn't able to transfer her methadone scrip. He's still praying for her.

"I don't see myself as an evangelist," he says, "yet in a funny way serving these people is sort of street evangelism. It is not in-yer-face, but it is quietly serving."

The group have had comments both good and bad from passers-by - on one particularly hard winter's night a police officer asked them to look out for a guy who looked really cold and in need of some help.

With David go a team of two to four runners, and a few others help make the soup. "None of this packet stuff, this is the real home-made stuff which goes down really well with the street people!" says David. The team also give out clothes, blankets and sleeping bags.

For David, this is the difference between being a Christian and religion: "Religion is dead, formal, in the head, all words. Being a Christian is showing God's love and being practical."

David's sister Johanna joined the Jesus Fellowship when she was at university. After her baptism, their mum started going to a local church in Basingstoke. David went along with her and was baptised there in 1991.

But life continued to have its battles for David. While at the Fortune Centre of Riding Therapy in Dorset, he lost his young cousin to secondary cancer. Shortly after, a good friend committed suicide.

"My life darkened, and I rebelled against God; I felt He had left me," says David. His life spiralled down into drink and self-harm. "Cutting myself started small and got bigger," he says. "I once cut myself all the way from my shoulder down to my wrist. Another time I carved 'Help' on my arm."

The lowest point came when he downed a whole bottle of vodka and blacked out in his room. He lay unconscious for most of the day.

But God hadn't left David, and kept calling out to him - for instance, through music. "One time I heard the Candi Statten song 'You've got love to see me through'," he recalls.

Love broke through the darkness when, soon after, David went to stay in a Jesus Fellowship community house in Northampton. There the leader gave him a new nickname: 'Gifted'. And gifted he is - in healing, prayer, serving, poetry, drama, and more. While in Northampton he went along to the second meeting of a drama group at the Northampton Jesus Centre; he now co-leads it.

In 2005, David moved down to Oxfordshire with his parents and they all joined the Oxford church household, 'Living Faith'. "Since being here I've gained lots of confidence. I've done a drama for over a 1,000 people!" says David. "I feel really supported by my friends here."

David's vision for Living Faith is to see the people reached on a Friday night "coming home", escaping the social trap, finding a new way of life in the church. "I can picture 'Mike' helping Jason lug a pile of bricks onto a work lorry or 'Jane' working at the church's cakery alongside my sister. That's what I'm working, serving and praying for."