What I love about my in house Christian group - Anastasya
About 6 months after I had joined KPMG*1, I was over at a friend’s place and her mum, who also works at KPMG, asked if I’d had a chance to join the Christian group?
I replied, ‘There’s a Christian group?!’.
She quickly fired off an email and arranged for me to be added to the distribution list for the group.
Within the fortnight I found myself at the KPMG lunchtime bible study where I was meeting other Christians in the firm, reflecting on how passages of scripture relate to my work and praying for things happening in the firm and in one another’s lives. I felt like I was getting trained to be a Christian at work and was growing in my faith.
Then Covid struck and we were all sent home. It appeared that we were not going to be able to meet together for some time. But with the change to online working also came new opportunities to meet online in our Christian network.
The advantages of becoming an official group
During this time, one of our group members Larissa, who worked with the People, Performance and Culture team at KPMG, had been working hard to get the Christian group recognised as an official KPMG club. This gave us access to people in the firm across the whole country and the ability to publicise our group in the firm’s daily newsletter and intranet. We could also set up a national MS Teams group to facilitate online meetings.
Now others like me don’t have to wait to find the group by accident, but instead can read about the group online and join one of our fortnightly prayer team meetings on MS teams.
In the months that followed, our group grew to over 170+ members, with 20-30 of us meeting fortnightly online to read the bible and pray together. I’ve enjoyed meeting colleagues who work in other cities. I have been particularly encouraged by the way my Melbourne colleagues, during lockdowns, have turned to God amidst periods of uncertainty and continued to depend on him (now it’s my turn).
Another highlight of our workplace group has been the firm-wide outreach events organised in partnership with City Bible Forum. We did this last Christmas and also at Easter this year.
Part of something bigger
On 7 October this year I am helping to organise another outreach event where Dr Sam Chan from City Bible Forum will be speaking on Mental Health. We are inviting other Christian groups in the area to join us onsite with their guests in our Sydney office. We will also stream the event so that other groups around Australia (and beyond) can take advantage of this opportunity (contact Craig Josling for more information on this event).
I love my Christian workplace group and I’m thankful I found it by 'accident' through my friend’s mum.
Notes
*1 Anastaysa joined KPMG in March of 2019 in the Finance, Strategy and Performance team within the Management Consulting Division.
[City Bible Forum works with numerous Christian workplace groups inside companies, firms and government, for example KPMG, CBA, Westpac, Reserve Bank, Qantas, Cochlear. We aim to help these groups, especially the leaders, by providing resources, training, speakers for events and peer to peer encouragement.
Please contact Craig Josling if you would like to start a workplace group in your organisation, link up with an existing group or get some help for your group.]
