Source/Author: By Su Hie, Faith Methodist Church, Kuching

SCAC News - Article taken from Connection 6 Sept 2015

Faith Methodist Church (FMC) started the BM Fellowship at Boulevard Shopping Mall on 7 March 2015 to give the Boulevard employees the opportunity to worship God together on a weekly basis. Many of them who are Christians have to work on Sundays because of the shift system, and so they are unable to attend regular Sunday service.

The off days of these employees are not weekends because weekends are the busiest times at the mall. Those with diploma and degree qualifications are more fortunate in that they stop work on Saturday evening, and so they can go to their home church for Saturday night events and Sunday worship services.

We started this outreach activity with anticipation and some trepidation because we did not know what reception to expect from the Boulevard employees. But we had the support of the Boulevard management who provided us a meeting room to use and even supplied refreshment for the gathering. They even provided us free parking. Some of their senior management staff also join our gathering regularly, and serve their employees milo, tea and coffee.

We meet at 5.15 p.m. on Saturdays for an hour. We have the usual singspiration, preaching and prayer. We end the gathering with a fellowship meal which is the time when we can get to know our brothers and sisters in Christ who work in Boulevard.

FMC members take turns to order food from coffee shops, and bring the packaged food to the gathering.

God calls the most unlikely of his people to this ministry! It is the senior citizens in our midst who feel that this is an area in which they can help out and they have been faithfully doing this. Of course, there are also some young people who help to buy food for the fellowship meal. We have experienced panic times when the food was kind of late. We operate within very strict time constraints because many of the Boulevard employees have only one hour dinner break and have to clock in for the 6.30 – 10.30 p.m. shift.

It turned out that the BM Fellowship is not only meeting the needs of Boulevard employees. We do not expect that there are BM-educated Christians in the FMC congregation who feel comfortable attending services in BM. To my surprise, I find myself touched by the BM songs more than English hymns and praise songs that I have been singing all these years.

FMC did not set up fellowship gatherings specifically for the Indonesian household helpers but the BM Fellowship at Boulevard is meeting this need – unintentionally. Maria is a regular worshipper at FMC. She lives in the neighbourhood and walks to FMC to follow the church van to go to Boulevard. She comes from Florens, Indonesia and works for Aunty Alice and Uncle Liew. She has told a few of us how she encouraged a friend to read the Bible and shared various experiences of her encounter with God. I feel that the BM Fellowship offers her an avenue for her to relate to fellow BM speaking Christians on a weekly basis. Another church member recently brought her helper to the fellowship.

On June 20, we started the Alpha Workplace in the BM Fellowship, and the discussions have been an eye-opener because the Boulevard employees face challenges that we are not aware of and do not think about. It makes us realise that we take for granted our freedom to choose Christ as our Saviour. Our concerted prayer is that all who attend the BM Fellowship may be strengthened in their faith and others may come to know the Lord through this Fellowship.