What I love about my in house Christian group - Samuel
My name is Samuel Tsang and I’ve worked as a public servant at Corrective Services NSW for over 11 years.
For most of that time I’ve been involved with an In house Christian group there, together with colleagues from Transport NSW (from a nearby building).
In 2019, I took over leading the group.
What I love about my Christian workplace group is the diversity. Members of our group come from different churches, different ethnic groups, men and women, young and old.
But I also love the unity that we share in wanting to share the love of Jesus with our work colleagues and to support one another in prayer and Christian living in the workplace. It’s great to have a forum where we can share our worries about work related issues and to pray for one another. I have particularly appreciated our fellowship during the past two years with the stress and uncertainty of the Covid pandemic.
Our structure has been to have a fortnightly prayer group with an outward focus together with a fortnightly Bible study group. A few times we have run Bible study series suitable for beginners and have had some success in inviting guests along.
For the past four years or so we have put on outreach events at Easter and Christmas in partnership with Third Space (City Bible Forum). When we were physically in the office we would book a conference room, provide some food and then sit down to listen to the talk. Dr Sam Chan has spoken for us a number of times. In the past two years our outreach talks have been online. It’s always a challenge to invite non Christian guests but we usually have a few come to listen.
I encourage you to try and find other Christian colleagues within your organisation. Start with a small prayer group or Bible study group, then see if there's an opportunity to host outreach events.
I know that some Christians are anxious about setting up a Christian group in the public service, but so far, I have found it reasonably easy to minister in this context. I think it comes down to building good relationships with the appropriate authorities and of course lots of prayer.
[City Bible Forum works with numerous Christian in house 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 an In house group in your organisation, link up with an existing group or get some help for your group.]
