We hear from an apprentice involved with cross-cultural ministry in the UK. The author is now serving Christ in Asia in partnership with The Plant.
In September 2006 I moved to Manchester to welcome international students in Christ's name. I was welcomed myself by The Plant, a regional network of church plants, who took me on for a ministry traineeship with a twist. As well as digging into the North West Ministry Training Course and general Plant life, the elders gave me time to meet internationals and encourage others to get involved.
Meeting people was easy: I had lunch at the international students' society for the first few weeks, and met M, a secular Turk who's still my best friend in Manchester. I also spent a memorable morning being tailed by a Chinese Communist official – after two months in the city, he'd finally found a Brit who would talk to him, and he wasn't going to go away easily! Getting people to come to Christian events was easy too: M came to a Plant evangelistic event an hour after I first met him, and there was a steady stream of guests at the Manchester Globe Café. Globe cafés offer internationals friendship built around respect rather than alcohol, and our team of Christians from different churches welcomed many who felt harassed and helpless in a strange land. Getting people to talk about Jesus was also easier than we sometimes experience with cynical Brits. A Palestinian postgrad saw the way that Jesus impacted every area of life and wondered whether Islam could do the same; chatting to a Chinese lawyer about his research led naturally to the wickedness of human hearts. But changing such hearts is never easy. M has come regularly to The Plant for a year, but still won't accept that he needs a saviour.
The ease of meeting people has a down side. Did your student church struggle to cope with the influx of Freshers each autumn? International students are often around for a year or less, and it's so easy to have dozens of superficial friendships rather than a few that count. Another challenge was to establish a lasting Bible-based group. I tried to set up an evangelistic Bible study for international students, but an average attendance of 0.75 counts as a pretty dismal failure! I don't regret trying – Jesus counts faithfulness rather than numbers – though I'm sure I could have handled things better.
A year is hardly long enough to draw lasting lessons, but my experience reaffirmed the importance of being godly and gospel-centred wherever we serve Christ. If I can speak Mandarin but don't have love, I'm just a clanging cymbal; if I'm willing to explain the way to Lidl but not the way to life, I've lost our Father's sense of priorities. The year also emphasised the value of each friendship where Christ is presented. It wasn't my privilege to see much of the fruit, but I trust the seeds planted in Manchester will be watered in Alma Ata, Antioch and Beijing.