Occasionally, you may ask yourself the question ‘Who am I?’. Understanding your identity helps you to understand your purpose; it helps to set your direction and priorities in life. Your identity is influenced by so much: your background, your experiences, your context. What if we were to ask the same question of our own church community: ‘Who are we?’. How would we answer that question?
We can answer this question, in part, through St Andrew’s vision statement: ‘We are a community devoted to Jesus Christ, who share his gospel, calling on people to follow him, and seek the flourishing of Hong Kong’. Our identity is primarily defined by our relationship with Jesus Christ.
Our identity is primarily defined by our relationship with Jesus Christ.
We can also answer the question through an often used description of our church. We’re an Anglican, evangelical, and international church. ‘Anglican’ describes our denomination. The Anglican Church is an historical, liturgical, and episcopal (led by bishops) communion of churches. ‘Evangelical’ describes our strong emphasis on the preaching the gospel of Jesus. More particularly, St Andrew’s is low-church (less formal) and has an emphasis on expository preaching (preaching consecutively through texts of scripture rather than topically). ‘International’ describes the background of our community. Our services are in English and Putonghua, but our people are from many nations.
We’d like to go a bit deeper in asking, ‘Who are we?’. That’s why next Sunday 24 October, we’ll be conducting a church survey during each of our services. A link to the survey will also be sent through our weekly email in the week afterwards for those who aren’t able to attend one of our services on Sunday. The survey will be anonymous and done electronically. The information gathered will be strictly for church use.
The purpose of this survey is to know our church community more deeply. We thank God that new people are joining us all the time. However, with growth comes the need to be more intentional in how we understand our community, since it’s harder for people to get to know everyone personally. A survey provides more up-to-date and accurate information about our community, so that we can more effectively plan our ministries, to serve you better.
So whether you’re new to St Andrew’s or you’ve been here for over 30 years, we look forward to your participation.
