Growing students in cross cultural gospel witness at home and abroad.

We catch up with two euFOCUS graduates (local and international) who have served international students in cross cultural gospel ministry. They share with us about how their time with us has grown a desire to see the gospel reach people of all nations.

Alice*
Alice is a graduated international student of euFOCUS (2016 -2020). Since finishing her degree in psychology in USyd, she has moved to Melbourne and is currently working as a counsellor. She currently attends St Jude Anglican.

How have you found moving on from the EU as a past international student?

I think, moving into another stage of life, I realised just how privileged I was with how many resources were available to me in euFOCUS through the EU. In reality, as I have moved on to work, there isn’t anyone checking with me on how I am going in faith and in life in general. I need to reach out to God and be the one who decides to live my life in a way that is Jesus centred. I know that others who go back to their home country find it even more challenging.

How has your time at the EU and in euFOCUS grown you?

I think that there are two major parts. The first one is in theological and in biblical training. During lunch times we had public meetings where we were able to look deeply at the passage and learn about how it applied to our daily lives. I found that the EU really helped me to learn about how to apply God’s word into my life. I also found it really important to be part of a small group with people of very different backgrounds. As people shared about their different points of view on a passage I really learnt a lot about what it meant to follow God.

The second one was about how to actually be a Christian. In my previous experience of Christianity in Hong Kong, it was easy to think that being a Christian was about going to church or fellowship. But I learnt that being a Christian was really about learning how to show love to people around you. I could see in euFOCUS, through various events and in thursday night Come Home Dinners, that people are actually serving because they love Jesus. Jesus is why we are serving and trying to help each other feel loved in a foreign country. This is what I was really touched by and is what I learnt from you all at the EU.

How has euFOCUS equipped you today, cross culturally or otherwise?

euFOCUS has helped me to see some of the challenges of sharing the gospel cross culturally. I think for us it is very different learning about christianity than it might be for a western person. For us, we don’t have a rich historical background to draw from. For many international students, reaching out to learn about Christianity is about learning a part of the Australian or western culture. Furthermore, there can also be a lot of conflict between one’s own culture and common Christian teaching and it can be difficult to understand what part of one’s culture is right or wrong in Christian teaching. It can be quite challenging.

Even as Christians, I found that if we go to a church in the local setting, it can often have a culture that is quite western dominant. It can be challenging to make friends or get into the congregation and build relationships with brothers and sisters. Going to church isn’t a practice that we would normally do, so going to church really is something that comes from the heart for me.

Most importantly, euFOCUS has equipped me in my personal discipleship. I think that my experience of training at AnCon and in small groups helped me to read the bible on my own. Because of these experiences I know what to look for when I have questions and how to approach reading the passage. One semester we spent time in small groups thinking about how to share the gospel with non Christians. It isn’t something that we easily learn, so I found it really helpful to seek to do it with other Christian friends. I am really grateful for my time with the EU and euFOCUS.

How can we pray for Christians in your home country?

Pray for Hong Kong Christians. In Hong Kong politics and religion can easily be mixed together. It can easily confuse people and lead people astray. Pray that the public witness of Christians will not be compromised.

Gigi Liang

As a student Gigi served as part of euFOCUS in 2021. She attends Cornerstone and since graduating has been working as a primary school teacher in Sydney. We asked her some questions about her experience serving international students.

How did your time in euFOCUS help you to grow as a christian?

Being part of euFOCUS helped me to grow by broadening my perspective to understand people different to myself. Surrounded by fellow Australians and Australian culture it was easy to have a closed understanding of how the gospel can be shared. However, in euFOCUS I found that my vision for the gospel to go out to all nations has grown.

I found that serving with international students challenged me to learn how to love people with different needs and who are from a different culture. Serving them required me to think about the challenges that they would face such as ancestral worship and local religions. I also realised that some aspects of Christian support that I might be able to assume with Australian locals such as a church family, other christian friends and helpful resources, were in small quantity. Because international students come to us with little or no Christian support, I found that there was a different kind of friendship and accountability that I sought to grow intentionally.

How has your experience helped you to think about serving globally?

It’s definitely something that is on my heart. Being Asian and coming from a non Christian family I already had a desire for more people in Asia to come to know Jesus. At the same time, being part of euFOCUS has helped me see more of the culture that my parents have been exposed to and its power to shape how they see things. It has grown my heart to see how God’s word speaks into the Asian collectivist culture. While serving overseas seems more difficult in the current climate, I do think about what it might look like to serve people from asian international backgrounds in Australia. The EU has helped me to see that God really is the God of all nations.

*Names have been altered

Compiled by Ira Fung

FOCUS Howie