Nations Sunday - A diverse people united around Jesus

So we wanna be a people who don't just look diverse.

We don't just want it to be a place where we have a catwalk and people are wearing different clothes, uh, but actually everything is run by a particular, you know, the white culture.

We want genuine leadership influence and responsibility to be across many different ethnicities and cultures in this church.

And yet, at the same time, we want that diverse leadership to unite under Jesus, to be like, "Yeah, we're all gonna bring our own things, but we're gonna all do this together in a way that lifts Jesus up in our context in this moment." And I just wanna say, like, as we're talking about this, this is not a new thing in this church.

We celebrate it once a year, but there's many people among us who've been doing this and giving themselves to this for years.

A person I would mention, there's a photo coming on the screen, uh, Dio, who was in our 9:30 service this morning.

So Dio was... has been among us, N- Nigerian heritage, uh, and, uh, has been a trustee for us for nine years.

Our trustees do three-year terms, but Dio just was so kind of willing to serve that he served three in a row, so he did nine years.

And he has a lot of experience in the business world, uh, and brought significant wisdom, strategic thinking, and insight into this community to take us from a church when he first began as a trustee, we were just a little group of people, around about sixty of us, through to where we are now.

Uh, it's just a decision that he took to say, "I'm gonna put myself forward to bring what I carry and help build what Jesus wants to build." Another person, Sal, who again would be present in our 9:30 service, uh, one of our Brazilians who's among us.

Uh, Sal came into this church context before we even had Sunday services.

We would go out onto the high street in Croydon, and we'd just tr- say, "Hey, is there anything we can pray for? Can we tell you about this person called Jesus who we have found to be phenomenal?" And, and as we met him, and he, he was looking for a church, and he came along, and he said, "Okay, I'll come, I'll come to an event you're doing." We were doing a hog roast at our house, Leslie and my house.

We had about sixty, seventy people present in our front driveway and at the, in our garden, all that kind of stuff.

And he came, and he, he seemed like he was kind of enjoying it from the surface of things.

But f- a week or so afterwards, he said to Leslie, "Oh, can I just have a chat?" Like, "I came, and I do feel like God's maybe calling me to be part of this," this little group of people.

It was about twelve, fifteen of us at the time.

Uh, "But I have to be really honest with you.

I felt quite uncomfortable at that event, that hog roast.

Uh, I, it just felt so white.

Like, just all the music you played was really white.

Uh, everybody in the room felt like they were white.

And the whole thing, and I just don't know if I, as a Brazilian person, can feel comfortable in this church.

I want to be present, but I just...

I need to be honest, I don't know if I can feel comfortable." And Leslie said something which is so true and is still our heart.

She just said, "Look, like, we're white, and we can't, we can't do this unless somebody like yourself would be willing to help us.