Paul & Lesley Cheesman with their children Charis & Joel (Click on the photo to enlarge)

Paul started attending Cranleigh Baptist Church in 1967, around nine months before he was born, but it took him until he was 9 to become a Christian. He spent a happy childhood at CBC growing spiritually and throwing paper darts from the gallery after morning services.

Lesley became a Christian at Bishop Hannington Church in Hove, at the age of 14. It was at this Church's youth group that Paul and Lesley first romantically met while sharing a hymn book, and were married at Bishop Hannington on a blustery day in September 1989. (You're quite right, they don't look old enough.) March 15th 1996 saw the arrival of the first little Cheeslet. Charis Joy Cheesman. The second arrived on January 27th 1999 Joel Aidan Cheesman.

Before working with Agape Paul & Lesley both had a commercial background. Lesley was in Banking and Paul was a Claims Negotiator - a rather grand title for the guy you ring when you crash your car. He worked for an insurance company in Guildford in a time of rapid expansion (that preceeded their rapid decline just after Paul left!)

They joined Discovery, Agape's youth and schools ministry and were placed in Newcastle. In 1990 they moved to Whitley Bay, a few miles out of the city and took over leadership of the team in 1991. During this time their work of evangelism and discipleship focussed on three main schools and a number of projects with North Tyneside's Youth Department, and fed into Whitley Bay Baptist Church.

The big change came in 1995, when Paul & Lesley were invited to manage Agape's Personnel Department at the National Office in Birmingham. They now oversee and look after just over 100 staff in the UK and overseas (with more in the pipeline!) A lot of the work is dealing with applications, interviewing and evaluating new staff and caring for them as they go through the often scary time of discovering their financial support. Paul and Lesley are still very involved with young people. They both disciple a number of young people each week, and still get "let out to play" with the local Discovery team in Birmingham schools.

They live on the edge of Birmingham (a few trees nearly give the impression of living back in Cranleigh) and go to a really great little Baptist Church that meets in a school nearby.