Burnley's champion of the poor recounts his own difficult background in emotional podcast

The founder of Burnley's Church on the Street, Pastor Fleming has become a welcome and familiar face in the town for his voluntary work in delivering more than 100 food parcels a day to vulnerable people during the pandemic, work which has attracted national interest.

Now, he has been interviewed by film star Jason Flemyng for the More Than My Past podcast, led by the Forward Trust, a series of interviews which tell the stories of notable former prisoners and addicts.

Pastor Mick spent many years taking and selling drugs, working under an array of different names and characters.

He expained how, after a powerful religious moment in 2009, he turned his life around and became a Pastor in Burnley setting up Church on the Street Ministries (CotSM), a charity that supports the most vulnerable people in his community.

In the episode, he speaks to Jason about how trauma in his early life set him on the wrong path, and how faith helped to turn his life around.

As he explains during the interview, Mick’s life changed when he was 11 after he was sexually abused and less than two days later, found out that his sister had passed away. He used his mother’s pain killers to block the early trauma, setting him on a negative spiral of drug abuse and crime.

Addiction led Mick to becoming a feared debt collector and drug dealer, operating in Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow under the various names and characters he created.

He said: “I’ve set up food banks and use the same system as when I was distributing drugs. Preparing, cooking and distributing to those in need”.

He believes that giving and receiving should be at the heart of everyone’s actions. “It’s easy to give but receiving is far more difficult”.

This mentality is behind Fleming’s ‘two cups’ mantra. “If you see someone sitting on the street then don’t just buy them a cup of coffee, buy two cups and sit and chat with them, rather than handing one over and standing above them like you’re better than them," he said.

Pastor Mick also talks to Jason about meeting his abuser later in his life, after his own redemption. Mick got talking to an alcoholic and started to offer him support, helping him to stay sober and find peace, without telling him who he was “he died a far happier man than when I met him. I didn’t want to tell him that I knew who he was and what he’d done because I don’t want to live my life through someone else’s sin."

Redemption and forgiveness are at the heart of Pastor Mick’s theology and fuels his charity work.

He added: “The current system doesn’t work, so at CotSM we look at poverty differently. We run recovery groups for addicts and offer practical solutions for people to pay back debts”.

He believes that people have to work with one another and tackle poverty with a positive attitude, because “when poverty inspires, it no longer exists”.

The More Than My Past podcast is available now on all major podcast platforms.