Across Cultures at Ty Gwyn Community Church (Llanelli)
This story has to start with a bit of a preface. Llanelli is not a very multi cultural town, its demographic is largely white British people. Despite this we have been blessed for many years in our church family with a large group of brothers and sisters from South Korea who's stated mission is to come and bring worship to this nation until revival comes! They are such a blessing to us and the local community and lead us brilliantly in worship.
About a year or so ago we were joined by a few people from Nigeria who really settled in our fellowship and and then around springtime of this year we had a group come from Zimbabwe and then more from Nigeria and Ghana and it seemed as though God was gathering people from the nations to us, in our very 'non multi cultural' town we had a large group from South Korea and a growing group from the African nations, it was brilliant and seemingly out of nowhere but we were excited by it.
It actually felt very significant and the timing was amazing as in our town a lot of unrest had been stirring around the government's planned use of a local hotel to house Asylum Seekers. Without getting into the politics of this it was clear that many were unhappy at the prospect and despite some very legitimate concerns, sadly there was a degree of underlying racism that was beginning to show within the town.
However God was doing something spiritually important in gathering people from across the nations and we ended up having an international celebration, we worshipped and sang in 5 different languages led by our brother from Brazil, we had testimonies of God meeting people across the world, among other things. It was an extremely special time, very emotional and the Spirit of God was moving so powerfully. Some invitations went out to members of the community, we wanted to show people how different nations could gather as one people and the blessings that could be found in this. One non-believing member of the public who attended shared this statement after the service, "wow, this is real love!"!
I really feel that there was and continues to be an example set by the church in this. While the world may fear other nations our God given desire should be to worship side by side with them, we are all under Christ and are all adopted into His family as one. Jesus prayed that we would all be one as He is one with the Father, this should be our aim and goal, that the church works together for the Glory of God so that the world may believe that Jesus was sent to us.
There is something beautiful about different cultural expressions of worship to our God and it is amazing when they can be expressed together, it is a touch of heaven! It is a blessing that God would move in this way at this time in this place, our prayer is that it continues as we believe this will help us disciple people in this nation and across the nations for His Glory.