Profile John Holme

John Holme is an IT sales manager on a mission from God. He tells Catherine Toole how his exploits as a 'flying pastor' made him headline news

I run the indirect channel for Information Advantage (formerly IQ Software) but what I'm most passionate about is my work as a pastor at a Christian church on a council estate. The church is in a double decker bus, which we've had for three years. It has a counselling room, an office and a meeting room.

We get about 25 to 30 people on a Sunday.

I was a total heathen until I was 24. Then I found God and now I believe my ministry is to share the Gospel with people. Lots of people think that Christianity is outmoded and that you have to go to a church. Jesus never did that. He went out to the people and that's what I do.

I came to fame a year last March trying to do just that. I think God set me up, actually! I'd asked my company, as a sales incentive, to buy me my own paramotor - a paraglider with an engine on the back - so that I could preach the Gospel from the air through a megaphone.

Anyway, we'd spent ages trying to get this thing off the ground and then one day weather conditions were perfect, so I took off in a field in Salisbury.

Unfortunately, I didn't appreciate the power of the wind and the paramotor began climbing over the trees. To my horror, I saw a housing estate ahead of me and flew around it concentrating on trying not to hit anyone or anything. I did fear for someone's bird table for a while! Eventually I managed to land where I took off, with no damage done.

In the meantime, however, the police had arrived, having received seven '999' calls. I was taken to court by the Civil Aviation Authority and charged with low flying below 500ft, low flying below 1,500 ft and flying within an air traffic zone without a permit.

It was brilliant! The 'Flying Preacher' story was in every national newspaper except the Financial Times and I was on the BBC World Service, Talk Radio, Richard and Judy ... a German TV channel even filmed a half-hour documentary on me and my ministry. That's what I mean about God setting me up - I couldn't have got anywhere near that amount of publicity otherwise!

Since then I've got a private pilot's licence and I often fly to meetings in my Evans VP2, built by teenagers on a youth project. It's a single seater the size of a coffin and it goes at about 100 miles an hour in a straight line. Except two weeks ago I hit trouble and ended up landing it in a highly sensitive military installation.

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