A year in a UK missional community: Christoph Heubeck

Before I came to Bicester, I always thought of missionaries as being people that go to a poor country and help people in their daily life and sharing the gospel with them. During the last 4 months my view changed in many perspectives about what a mission community could look like.

One part of my experience is going to the Crowded House Church in Bicester and seeing this church having a high value of mission through community. Participating in this church doesn’t only mean being together and talking about faith, praying and caring for each other, but also is always orientated in how to spread Christianity to people who know nothing about it yet. I didn’t expect such a strong focus on trying to tell unknown people about God because my home church is different probably although because of the circumstances, like everyone knows each other at my home. Here, for example the youth drop in at Costa is meant to build up relationships with teenagers and show them that God is good and starting to disciple them. Although we visit schools and talk to kids, we want to make them familiar to us. Because of these outgoing opportunities I see youth ministry a bit differently than before. On the one hand I am sure that really everyone can relate to people that are not Christians yet and so be a word-spreader even if we sometimes need to be pushed. On the other hand I realized that it can be easy to bring God in a conversation, you just have to do it! Often in daily conversations I didn’t bring up God very often. That is definitely something I saw other people doing in the last few months and it really encourages me to do the same. Finally I see the big picture of Crowded House being one community that is really standing together and being one body in order to accept the challenge of the great commission. It’s very helpful to have brothers and sister that care for each other and work together.

Two weeks ago we, Darin, Scott, the other Greenhouse students and me went on a trip to Northern Ireland for a week. After a 7 hour car ride we took the ferry and three hours later we arrived in Belfast. The mornings were about St. Patrick and we heard and saw of his life and his passion for “his island” Ireland. Being slaved and robbed to Ireland with the age of 16 he started praying to God and after his escape to his homeland England he decided to come back to Ireland to mission the people. In the end he had made a big impact for God in the life of many Irish people. Every afternoon we went out in the city of Belfast to talk with strangers, to bless them and to tell them of God’s love for them. My favorite experience I made was talking to a homeless guy on the streets. He knew Jesus and named him as his friend that is always with him. But on the other hand he didn’t want to pray to God himself because he felt not worthy to pray to him. To explain him the connection between Jesus and God we made a small craft where there’s the gap of sin between humans and God and Jesus builds the bridge through himself dying on the cross. After that he stunned and was full of joy because he realized in his heart what Jesus did for him and us on the cross. He was totally amazed and I never met someone I didn’t know before who was so open for the Gospel. I think during this trip I learned a lot how to talk to people about God and that there are people that are naturally interested in hearing the gospel.

All in all I am really enjoying the time here and I learn a lot. I guess most of it I will realize when I will be in Germany and be different to the people I know for a longer period of time. Nevertheless I am trying to spend my energy in the teenagers God put in my life here, and I’m really excited to see God working in the next two months!

Christoph hails from Germany and has been living in the UK for the past four months.  If you would like to learn more about Greenhouse please visit us at http://reignministries.co.uk/walk-the-road/greenhouse.