How Ian Christiensen found Jesus

Ian Christiensen

Ian Christensen is an author, church-planter and presenter of a popular Christian TV programme in England. He is the Senior Pastor of New Life Christian Centre International and the Principal of New Life Bible School. Ian discovered Jesus after a long spiritual search and a battle with depression and insomnia. Jonathan Bellamy spent some time with Ian to hear his amazing story, starting with his time as a pro tennis player.

Jonathan: Tennis was your life I understand. Do you want to share a little about how you got into tennis?

Ian: Yes. I saw some great tennis players when I was about 13 and it made such an impression on me and I just fell in love with the sport. You know 13 is a bit late to start tennis but I played on the circuit. In those days if you entered tournaments you could actually play a Wimbledon champion. I played in a lot of tournaments around England. I played against guys like John Lloyd who commentates. I think he beat me 6-2, 6-3 so at least I got a few games off him. I was never a super star but I loved the game and I still do.

Jonathan: Did you actually play at Wimbledon, on the grass?

Ian: No, I didn't play at Wimbledon, but when I was 19 I won a tournament, an open tournament in St Georges in Weybridge which is Cliff Richard territory. I won that open tournament, but I played in a lot of local tournaments.

Jonathan: Was that your life at the time, were you trying to make it?

Ian: Yes, I took part time jobs in retailing and I've worked with the civil service, but tennis was my life until about the age of 22 or 23. Then it was beginning to dawn on me that I might not make it into the big time. I began to rethink what I would do. It's so much fun being on the circuit, you're around a lot of the stars and I was a member of Queen's club. I would go in there, sit down and see all the great stars from yesteryear, sort of rub shoulders with them you know.

Jonathan: How did you handle the feeling that you didn't have what it takes?

Ian: I think maybe I had known that all along because I started so late. These days people like Agassi and Nadal, they start when they are four years old. By the time they're 10 they can beat a lot of club players. I kind of knew when I played on the tournament. I had a bit of flair and I beat some players who were about my age and had been playing longer. I guess I always knew. My Dad kept telling me that I wouldn't make it. I was a teenager so I never used to agree with him. He was right, I found out in the end that I wasn't going to make the big time. One of my options was I could have been a coach and trained people. I did a little bit of that.

Jonathan: What happened after that?

Ian: Well, I was 22 years old, fit and training and playing a lot of squash, playing for a table tennis team, playing for my club in tennis and largely enjoying life. I thought this is good; I'll always be good like this. Then, it's like the hole dropped out of my life all of a sudden. I developed this breathing complaint and then I went to see the doctor and he gave me some sort of anti-depressants and I felt even worse. To cut a long story short, after several weeks and months, I was suffering with chronic depression and insomnia. I had gone from being fit, strong and healthy, to being depressed and suicidal all within a year.

Jonathan: How did that depression come on from having a breathing complaint to actually becoming depressed?

Ian: I think it was a nervous tension thing. There were tensions in my life. I had a bad relationship with my Dad and that didn't help. I knew that I should honour him with my Christian upbringing, which I didn't and it was a combination of knowing that and that I wasn't going to make it in tennis.

I didn't think I was that depressed until they actually gave me those tranquillisers. Eventually after a year it was like a 24/7 dark cloud that I lived in. At night I would sleep maybe an hour and wake up exhausted in the morning so it was a total nightmare. During this period I was slowly beginning to lose the desire to live, because I couldn't smile, I couldn't be happy. I went amongst my friends at the tennis club and I felt uneasy because I was tense so I started drinking heavily to try to alleviate that. It was like a living hell.