Stay in the City by Gornik Mark R.;Wong Maria Liu;Keller Timothy;Acevedo Peter & Miriam Yvette;

Author:Gornik, Mark R.;Wong, Maria Liu;Keller, Timothy;Acevedo, Peter & Miriam Yvette;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eerdmans

Chapter 4

Make Yourselves at Home

I (Maria) was born in Ipswich, England, and came to the United States as a child. My parents, who had originally emigrated from Hong Kong to the United Kingdom, were part of a flow of Christian believers from the East and the South to the West, a reverse mission trajectory. In fact, they were the fruit of a significant college campus movement and revival in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s, in part because of missionaries who had to leave China after 1950. They were immigrants living their faith wherever they were around the world.

Our family came to New York in the early 1980s, bringing with us a broadcasting ministry that served the immigrant Chinese community—not only in New York City (particularly the garment factory and restaurant workers who at the time could not attend church on Sundays) but also in the pockets of Chinese immigrants scattered all over the world—with a range of evangelistic programs recorded on cassette tapes in some ten or more different Chinese dialects. In New York, my parents joined a community of Chinese Christians living, working, and worshiping together in the city and surrounding suburbs, reaching across the subdivisions of an immigrant community, university-educated professionals along with blue-collar workers.

The church they attended in Manhattan’s Chinatown, Oversea Chinese Mission, became one of the largest Chinese churches in the city, holding services in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. It continues to minister to all sectors of the community, from English as a Second Language and citizenship classes to the praying elderly Sisters Fellowship and young families’ ministries. New ministries, such as a Saturday basketball ministry for local youth, are thriving as subsequent generations take the helm of leadership. It is another example of these threads coming together to form the fabric of faith in New York City.

***

Jeremiah 29:4–7 is often read as a text about peacemaking, exile, and the city:

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” (NIV)

As we see, this text is also about families. This applies to singles who are part of extended families as much as other family constellations. Seek the peace and flourishing of the city; settle and raise your family there.

One of things that makes raising a family in the city not just possible but a gift is the extended networks of family and friends. While I no longer attend the church I grew up in, making peace with my own calling to be a bridge-builder and to work cross-culturally, I have not left.

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