What are you feeling?
I don't go here because it's easier not to touch this area.
It makes me understand the cost that I've paid.
It's a community like many communities that is being impacted by drug and alcohol abuse.
The breakdown of marriages, unemployment, lack of qualifications.
As a church leader, I see that every day.
To counter that, there are people that do really well, that are affluent and influential, successful and fruitful with their lives.
You know, it's not all doom and gloom, but there is a massive level of deprivation that just tugs at your heart string.
Because you know that people have the potential for greater things if they just are able to have a little bit of help.
Jesus talks about being good news, and I believe that as a leader of a church, we should be good news to this community.
So where we see these issues, we can seek to serve the people that are facing the issues.
It's not telling them that they've got to behave differently, but it's showing them that there's a different way.
You realise it becomes really expensive, because it takes everything.
Some of the hard times have been hard purely because we have felt on our own.
King David said that he was not willing to sacrifice something that had cost him nothing.
And so I think my life, it needs to cost me something if I'm going to live it for God, if I'm going to live it in a way that Jesus is known.
And unless I give everything I've got, maybe there might be people who don't hear what needs to be heard.
When I'm in my grave, I want to make sure that there's nothing left that I could have given, hold nothing back.
I'd like to do some things for me, but that's where the emotion begins to kick in, because then I begin to think, well, it's not about you, it's not about you.
Push that to one side, it's about the people in this community that need some hope given to them.
And I realise that if I'm really going to be as effective as I want to be, I have to find people that have heard this call.
And it's not a call from Bill, it's a call from God, it's a call from Jesus that says, do you see these people? I love them.
Will you give your life to them?
See, because then I'll run, with people like that, because they'll run with me.
But they're rare.
People always like nice coffee, and they like nice things to eat, and I think we can provide that.
One of the main roles that I have here at the gallery at the moment is to prepare, cook and serve the meals.
Lunchtimes are really busy, but afterwards is the time that I really, really enjoy.
I love to be able to get out of the kitchen and to just walk amongst the people that are here enjoying good food.
And that's, I think, for me, the heart and the reason that we would entertain this sort of a project.
One of the most amazing things that I look back and see that has happened to me is that when I first made a decision to follow God,
I found that I had an amazing love for people, and I think that was the evidence that my life was different.
My aim in life is to talk to the non-Christian, so as much as I love our church family, I love to go beyond those walls of the church at Meadowhouse.
If anyone told me 30 years ago what I'd be doing today, I don't think I'd have believed them.
I thank God, really, for what I do do today, because I absolutely love what I do.
As people tell me and I know that I wear many different hats, doing lots of different jobs can do 101 things in a day,
but I wouldn't want it any other way because I believe that I'm making my life count for something that is beyond this life here on Earth.
And there's an eternity there waiting for me, and if my life can be used to affect other lives,
for them to know that one day they can have a life in eternity with God forever, then that's why I would continue to do what I do.
I always had dreams, always wanted, always had a rough idea of what I wanted to do,
whether it was being a fisherman, a trawlerman, a boat builder, a youth worker,
all of those dreams that I had as a young man, being a businessman, having a business, I wanted those things.
But they were always me-centered, but then when Jesus came into my life in such a dramatic way,
suddenly the dreams and the passions and the interests, they didn't change,
but suddenly they had a different out-working.
So the thing that really energizes me is when I see people who once didn't love God, begin to love God,
and it began to change their world.
The fruit in the life of the Church is extraordinary.
We see marriages that have been under strain and are maybe still under strain working.
We see people that have been homeless finding homes.
As a Church, we've been able to practically help by giving gainful employment, giving proper jobs with a proper salary.
Everything that we've talked about is the community being regenerated.
Our heart and our prayer will be that we leave behind something that will go on forever
and make a difference in this community, and the difference we want to make is to see lives changed for good,
people having hope in their futures, whatever that might be.
And if we can help them on that journey, then that's what we want to do.
And so for me, no matter how easy or how hard or how awake or how tired I am,
the reason I would continue to do what I do is because of the Gospel.
God said that He so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son,
that whoever believed in Him would not perish.
I don't want to go backwards, I want to go forwards,
I want people to come to a relationship with God and then live that out in fellowship with purpose-driven people.
God says,
God says,
God says,
God says,
God says,
God says,
God says,
God says,
