On Being An Ex-Pat II: Faith

I’ve felt that in Australia, people often don’t care about your faith commitments and in the UK they often don’t notice. But here your faith, especially as a “westerner” is always under scrutiny. That is because the stereotypes that tend to assume you are either here to seek or to sell a religion.

Truth be told, neither end of that stereotype fits the ex-pats I have met, most of whom are here for more down-to-earth reasons. That’s not to say that living in a city like this does not make a deep impression, it does. In fact, it leads a lot of people to seriously re-evaluate their faith and it’s practical outworkings (or to simply abandon them all-together). The church where we worship understands this need among ex-pats as it’s primary focus. In many cities ex-pat churches are often mono-cultural (and frequently denominational) in nature, though here this congregation represents every corner of the globe and a wide range of ecclesiologies. It is far from being a local church, but for many who attend, it engenders deep feelings of belonging.

This time has made me consider in depth how we handle fluidity and mobility in our sense of church. The christendom model of church is rooted firmly in the local/fundamental, which is not only the wrong side of the divide for me, but incresingly the wrong side of the divide for a lot of people in the business, creative and academic spheres. A truly global/cosmopolitan church will have to not only accept, but embrace fluidity and mobility. Even a notion like thin walls is still too local; we need a church with thick networks.