Our family finally started going to a Mars Hill "community group." For the unindoctrinated, most Christian churches have some form of middle of the week small forum gatherings to discuss life and the Bible and such in a more intimate setting. In the past, these were slightly larger and called fellowships, but today they're more popularly known as small groups. And at Mars Hill, because they're cool and all, they decided to call them community groups.
We're still attending our good 'ole Chinese church fellowship regrettably named Happy Fish. I was not in attendance when this name was chosen. We love our Happy Fishers, but we really need to get to know more people at our church, Mars Hill.
Anyway, that's a long introduction.
So our new group is different in many ways. At first glance they are made up of folks about the same age as we are, except for a couple of duly noted more seasoned individuals. Most live on the eastside, so that means a lot of Microsofties, tech professionals and suburbanites. But there are some marked differences.
First, they are not Chinese. If I was the me in my undergraduate college years, I would cheer for me for propagating a multi-cultural community. But now that I'm beyond my more romantic years and colored by attending an all Asian fellowship for 7 years, I'm not so self congratulatory.
Also I noticed that during discussions, the gals really dominate. This is different from HF where discussions are generally like pulling hairs and the gals make up 50% or less of the sharing. Although I'm not sure what the percentage is when I'm not around.
This new community group also eats dinner before discussion time. It seems that it's usually some sort of voluntary potluck system - some people bring dishes for everybody else? And these people... I'm not sure these people know how to eat. The first dinner went to was baked potatoes, and people brought the fixin's. And the dinner this week was labeled Italian, so we ate lasagna, fettuccine alfredo, salad and bread.
Where are the other fun dishes? Granted we're suppose to be Jesus lovers and talk about Jesus, but that doesn't mean we can't eat creative before talking Jesus.
I guess there are many things I'll have to adjust to with this new group, and I'll have to put on my game face and make new friends. Well, they're all nice, so maybe it won't be so hard.
1 comments:
Hi Angela, long time lurker, first time commenting. I don't think it's you. A friend who recently started a multi-ethnic (or not all Chinese) small group has had a similar experience. She was shocked that at the first meeting people wanted to eat hamburgers and at the second meeting it was lasagna. It was a stark contrast to the variety of dishes found at our small group potlucks (which she attended for a few months) -- and I have to say, I don't think our predominantly ABC small group could compete with the food at small groups made up of overseas born Chinese. My opinion is that Chinese people like to eat, and they don't mind taking the time to cook it.
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