‘I didn’t have a dad – now I am calling my church to father the fatherless’

Fernando Carrillo didn’t have the best start in life. Born in a prison in Miami, both of his parents struggled with drug addiction. His mother made the difficult decision to send Fernando to the UK to live with his grandmother as she began to turn her life around.

He was raised by his extended Colombian family, many of whom were also battling addiction. When Fernando was 14, his grandmother died. “My life went downhill really quickly,” he recalls. By 17, he was in prison. “I had no purpose or meaning, nothing to hope for. I realise I had a hole in my heart that I was trying to fill with love and affirmation, with trying to be popular and liked.”

But God was at work. Fernando’s mother had become a Christian and, even in the depths of his addiction, Fernando could not escape God’s presence. One day, in an unlikely encounter in a drug den in south-east London, a friend (who was also his dealer) said: “Fernando, God loves you and He has a plan for your life.”

“I was such a mess,” Fernando recalls. “I didn’t have the words to describe it then, but now I understand that the Holy Spirit filled that room. I felt the presence of God like never before. I felt like I was being set free.”

Despite his supernatural experience, Fernando continued to use drugs and soon faced prison again. Eventually, his mother sent him to a rehabilitation centre in Bogotá, Colombia, where he spent four months reading the Bible every day. “I felt like God was healing and restoring my heart,” he says.

The rocky road to recovery

Returning to London, sobriety proved elusive. Although he began attending church, Fernando started using drugs again. This time, however, he was surrounded by a church family. Having grown up with no male role models, God started placing men in Fernando’s life. 

One weekend, during a ‘fire encounter’ night at church, a pastor asked Fernando if he could pray for him and, just as He did in that drug den, God met him powerfully. There, he heard the audible voice of God: “Fernando, I’ll love you no matter what you do.”

“It was like electricity was flowing through every fibre of my being. From that moment, my life was never the same again.”

The first thing Fernando did was pray for a job. With no work experience or qualifications, employment felt out of reach. Within days, however, he was serving meatballs in an IKEA café. “God started opening a door,” he recalls.

A couple of months later, Fernando’s church asked him to speak to a group of young people on a nearby council estate. All ten had bloodshot eyes from smoking weed and none had ever been to church. “Suddenly, I understood why my church thought it was a good idea for me to go!”

Despite being fresh out of rehab himself, Fernando knew instantly that this was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He continued meeting the group regularly. Within five years, all of them had been baptised, and Fernando was leading multiple groups while also completing a degree in international business.

Called to church leadership

Fernando was working as an evangelist with London City Mission when a friend asked whether he’d considered ordination. Initially, he was unsure about joining a church that was so different to the one he was used to. But despite his reticence, he began to dream of “old church buildings that were full of life inside”. Eventually, he realised God was calling him to church ministry. Fernando completed a degree in theology and a master’s in Christian leadership and, in 2010, was ordained into the Church of England. He went on to serve for eight years at Holy Trinity Brompton before sensing God was calling him elsewhere.

Fernando prayed a dangerous prayer: “I said: ‘God, I’ll go anywhere,’” he recalls. But Christ Church Peckham, in south-east London, did not immediately appeal. The church had a leaky roof, no car park and was far from the local train station. Fernando had no staff team or finances – but he did have the small group he’d mentored in his home for the past 13 years. The first thing they did was pray for a sound system. “And when God provided that – well, it’s been an adventure ever since!” he says.

I realise God, in His kindness, has been preparing me for this my whole life

The timing and location were not coincidental, says Fernando, looking back. Christ Church Peckham is close to the drug den where he first heard God, the council estate where he first led a small group and the church his mum first attended. It is also where his mentor once took him for prayer ministry. “It’s funny how that worked out,” he muses. “I went there to get healing and seven years later, I’m leading it!”

The community Fernando ministers to is, in many ways, similar to the one he grew up in. “When I look around Peckham, I realise God, in His kindness, has been preparing me for this my whole life.

“There’s so much brokenness. Dysfunction in the family unit, absent fathers, broken homes. We’re just trying to say: ‘Lord, not in our generation, not in our time.’” Having suffered from the lack of positive male role models in his own life, Christ Church Peckham is making it a key focus to “raise men who live like Jesus,” he says.

In the past two years, they’ve seen 54 people baptised – but are praying for 500 more. “We’re doing everything we can to reach our community to tell them that Jesus loves them and He has a plan for their life,” Fernando says. “Just like God reached out to me when I was in a drug den.”  

Rev Fernando Carrillo was speaking to Lydia Bennett on Premier Christian Radio. Listen to the interview at premier.plus/Fernando