This Is Not Church

OK, here is something that has really been bothering me about my current church. But, before I rant I should, in all fairness, preface my comments by saying that I do tend to be a quiet but polite sort at church. I engage in small talk, say my hellos and so on, but I have never been a natural at “working the room.”

With that out of the way; several times over the past year, church regulars (who must recognise me) have failed to say hello when I have bumped into them outside the four walls of church. These are people wh have seen me week after week at church, and frequently shaken my hand when sharing the peace and so on. Yet around golf circles, in resturants or at the small handful of shopping markets oriented towards expats they give off the goldest of cold-shoulders.

Oddly, expatriates in this city are less friendly to each other than I had anticipated they would be. My intuition was that since there is a low number of expats here (for such a large capital city) and the conditions somewhat unforgiving, there would be an automatic commeraderie. How wrong I was! Shopping and socialising around London (even though we left nearly three years ago) is far friendly than here, particularly when I am accompanied by the young C.

But the “church-goers cold shoulder” (I’m tempted to shorthand it to CGCS, maybe I have been in India too long), is just a bit too much.

[tags] Church, Expat, Globalistion [/tags]