Patrick Comerford
I spent a few hours today with other clergy in the Milton Keynes Deanery area as guests of the Chinese Overseas Christian Mission in Padstow Avenue, Fishermead.
Fishermead is an interesting area close to the centre of Milton Keynes. The first house was built there in 1973, and at one time Fishermead was known as one of the most notorious estates in Milton Keynes. In the past it suffered from high volumes of deprivation, multiple occupancy housing and street crime.
Now Fishermead is home to one the most diverse and vibrant communities in the city. The three-storey townhouses and blocks of flats house with about 1,400 households and people from many parts of the world.
The Chinese Overseas Christian Mission (COCM) has its headquarters at Padstow Avenue in Fishermead. COCM is an inter-denominational mission with the objective of bringing the gospel to the Chinese scattered over Europe through pioneering evangelism, church planting, training and literature work. The mission’s vision is ‘where there are Chinese, may Christ be there also’.
The Revd Henry Lu, who welcomed us to the centre, has been the general director of the Chinese Overseas Christian Mission (COCM) since he succeeded Mary Wang in 2008. He spoke of its work today, but also brought us back to its origins when the Revd Stephen Wang, a Methodist minister, moved to Britain in 1950 to study theology at Selly Oak in Birmingham.
COCM is an interdenominational mission with the objective of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with the Chinese diaspora and local communities in the UK and Europe through multi-faceted ministries.
When COCM was founded by Stephen Wang, its vision was ‘Where the Chinese are, there Christ must be.’
In the 75 years since then, COCM has grown substantially and the scope of its work now covers the UK and countries on the European continent. Its extended vision has become, ‘Reaching the Chinese to Reach Europe.’
He described COCM’s work in helping people to build up strong and healthy churches and to serve their communities. Many Chinese churches in the UK and in Europe are in the early stages of development and rely on outside resources for their work, ministry and mission.
He spoke of the courses and training programmes COCM runs and organises, we visited the bookshop, which is one of the largest Chinese bookshops in Europe, and the chapel which is used during training programmes and courses but does not serve a regular Sunday morning congregation.
In much of its work, COCM acknowledges the pioneering inspiration of Bishop Frank Houghton (1894-1972), an Anglican missionary bishop in China. He was born in Stafford, educated at the University of London and ordained in 1917. He was a curate in Everton and Preston before going to China as a missionary with the China Inland Mission in 1920. In 1923, Frank Houghton married Dorothy Cassels, the daughter of William Cassels, who had been a member of the ‘Cambridge Seven’ and became a bishop in China.
Frank Houghton was the Bishop of East Szechwan from 1937 to 1940, and returned to England to work in parishes in Leamington and Banbury. He was the general director of the China Inland Mission (CIM) when the mission had to leave China in 1951. He retired in 1963 and died in 1972. The China Inland Mission was founded by Hudson Taylor in 1865. It is now based in Singapore and is an international and interdenominational evangelical missionary society known since 1964 as OMF International or the Overseas Missionary Fellowship.
Bishop Frank Houghton was the first trustee chair of COCM. He retired in 1963 and died in 1972. One of his hymns, in English and Chinese, hangs on banners in the foyer of COCM, on either side of a banner with Psalm 126.
After lunch as guests of COCM, Katie Woo spoke to us of her work with the National Church Hong Kong Communities Enabler, with the Diocese of Oxford.
She spoke of the increasing numbers of Chinese people who are coming to the UK, including Chinese students, who are both Cantonese and Mandarin speakers; families who have been moving from Hong Kong in large numbers in the last five years or so; and the English-speaking ethnic Chinese people who are the next generation who have grown up in Britain.
This third group were born here or moved here in their childhood, and speak a language native to them but foreign to their parents.
The new generation that has arrived from Hong Kong has strong, visible communities in Reading, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol and Nottingham, as well as Milton Keynes. She spoke of her work as a process that helps to move people forward from being welcomed to belonging.
During the day, I also visited Trinity Church, Fishermead, and the neighbouring mosque. But more about Fishermead and its faith communities in the days to come, I hope.
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