An Audience with Paul Jones and Fiona Hendley

Sunday 25th May at 6.30pm

In the 60s, Paul was lead singer in the Manfred Mann rock band, with hits such as "Do Wah Diddy." Later he formed the Blues Band and toured with much success. He's been in films and musical after musical. That's where he met Fiona Hendley-on the London stage, performing "Guys and Dolls" and "The Beggar's Opera." They played lovers in both. They became good friends, talking about many things, "including our common search for God," Fiona said. And they followed in their characters' footsteps, falling in love. Eventually they moved in together. 

Paul became a professional atheist, even debating Cliff Richard, a Christian and pop superstar, on television in 1967. But in the early 1980s, despite his questions and outright denial of God, Paul couldn't help acknowledging values beyond the material. He saw this especially through his love for art, in paintings of nature. One afternoon Fiona, doing some of her own thinking, walked into All Souls Church. "All Souls had Bibles on the back of the seats, so I picked one up, opened it and there were the words of John 3:16: 'God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not die but have eternal life,'" she said. "These words went straight to my heart. They were so sensational if they were true, but the most dreadful lie if they were not. I was determined to find out." Fiona and Paul began attending church. "I found various echoes of my own search for spiritual reality in the Bible and in things I heard in sermons," Paul said. "For me, for the first time, it seemed that the Christian faith might have the answers to that search."  

Paul had asked Fiona to marry him in the past, but she was afraid of that commitment; her parents had divorced soon after she was born. Then Fiona suddenly realized she could say yes to Paul if they both said yes to God. That night they gave their lives to Jesus and made a commitment to each other.  That was nearly 20 years ago, and Paul and Fiona are still very much in love. They now hold Gospel concerts, sing a mixture of secular and Christian songs, and boldly share their love for Jesus Christ.