Christian Union and Church

My third week in Leeds has passed by already and here comes to the start of the 4th week! So far, I've attended several Christian Union functions in the university and also a few churches in the city to search for a suitable home church to settle down. I kinda had a strong desire to settle down to one church as soon as possible to ensure that my learning gets going and not be stagnated with nomadic attendance. After deliberating and seeking God for guidance, I've decided to make St. George's Church as my homechurch in the UK! Alot of factors come to play in terms of the decision such as Bible teaching, distance, availability of transport, serving and ministry opportunities. St. G's was not the first choices of church I looked into eventhough I passed by it everyday when I was coming back from uni campus. I thought that they hold very traditional Anglican services with mass-like procedures considering it's quite an old church with a crypt too. And I did not know anyone well enough to actually have a look at the services too.

Well, then Jason, one of my newfound friends in Leeds invited me to have a look at the services and I thought that it may be a good idea since the place is just 5 minutes away from my accomodation. I did some preliminary scouting before going to the church from its website and I've found out that this Anglican church is actually pretty much like St. Peter's English service where they had a worship band playing contemporary music and occassionally some hymns fused with a modern touch. Most importantly, it hits me in the right chords like how I felt when I first went to GFS Banting. It's just something like the little nudge that God pokes at me when I arrived at the right place. In Nilai, it took me only one try. In Leeds, it took several tries but I'm glad I've found it in the end. (Btw, settling down in St. G's has partly fulfilled my teenage fascination with the Church of England too..haha) When it is God's planning and timing, everything will just flow through smoothly along. Today, I had the wonderful opportunity of being invited into an elderly English couple's home for homecooked lunch, tea session and a walk in the park :)

The Christian Union (the UK's version of CF) is a very huge society compared to ICF as each meetings brings about 100+ people in. They had to split into different departments and the main meeting itself even has its own coordinator to be in charge. They have other departments like the Living Room (cafe for international students), prayer meetings, sports team, lunch bars, girl's meet up and CG so they need human resources to be spreaded out since the committee can't do everything by themselves. The organisation overseeing CU is the UUCF (UK's version of FES..haha) and they have full-time workers from UUCF every week to give a message in the meeting. In any case, I noticed that there are very little Malaysians attending the main CU meeeting. There are pockets of other nationalities but maybe me and 2-3 other Malaysians only. That brought me thinking during my time at ICF where we virtually had zero international students attending our meetings every week and I attribute that to the factor that the international students had difficulty in integrating with the locals or we as Malaysian locals failed to do enough to make them feel welcome or are unwilling to perhaps be tolerant to other nationality's line of thinking or lifestyle. As a committee we tried to brainstorm ways but we never really got anywhere near in solving the problem. And then I realised the irony now is that I'm an international student myself! I am right in their shoes and I think I experienced almost exactly the same thing as them - how to intergrate into the local Christian population.

It's not that easy as it looks and I would say that Britain 's CUs face the same problem over here too in reaching out to internationals. To some extent, they are one step ahead in that there are individuals who are trained specially to mingle with internationals but a lot of work still needs to be done in the majority local population who still feels more comfortable sticking in their own (pardon the vocab..racial/national) group. Lol..Racial polarisation is not just a Malaysian thing, it's everywhere on Earth. Not that they had intentions to do that, but it's just the natural comfortable reaction of human's basic animalistic instinct, and we need to rise above that. So, I would say it boils down to a tug-of-war effort between both sides, in that how willing is each side's perserverance in understanding each other and forging friendships transborder-wise, seeing each other not as separate national entities but as citizens of Christ's one united Kingdom. I have seen many who have given up and chose to remain in their comfort zone, but I'll go on in finding the key and prove that it is possible to be done - if we just persevere a little more onwards. I'm particularly inspired by Ruth in the Old Testament, a Moabite by descent who chose to follow God even while she was alone in a foreign land and at the same time, displayed an exemplary character to the other locals in the foreign land that she resides.

Colossians 3:11 - Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

Galatians 3:26-28 - You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.