Debra Green OBE: ’Just because you’re a Christian, it doesn’t mean that bad things won’t happen to your children, so be ready'

Founder and National Director of Redeeming Our Communities, Debra Green OBE, encourages Christian parents to lean into God and his church when the inevitable difficulties of family life come

Debra, you have worked for many years now helping people through Redeeming Our Communities, can you give us a sense of where that ministry came from?

Well, I was born in Middleton in East Manchester into an ordinary working-class home. We moved to London for a few years with my dad’s job and by the time we moved back to Manchester, when I was about 12, things had changed a lot. We now had more money, so we moved into a nice area of South Manchester into a big house but sadly my parents had walked away from faith and then I went through a rebellious phase in my teenager years. My life then changed through an event at school which I’ll mention later on but also unexpectedly, at my wedding day we were singing a version of the 23^rd Psalm and God showed up. I didn’t understand what was going on, but I sort of knew it was God. Then things started to change around me in my family.

I wasn’t the kind of person who would ask for help or to admit that I had a problem. But because we were part of a church, we had a support network

My dad had been searching and had gone back to church, and I went along with him and became a Christian. Then 6 months later my husband was also converted. So, in the space of a few months, me my day, my husband and then also ……