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More than traditional CofE services

The Church in Chinese

According to census data, people of Chinese origin make up the largest ethnic minority group in North Yorkshire.

Also the majority of international students are Chinese with over 1000 studying at York University.

To serve this ever growing community St Michael le Belfrey Church in York has started a regular Chinese language service.

Dave McClure is the international students worker at St Michael's and he's co-ordinated plans for the new service. We asked him how the idea came about.

"A lot of the team behind the service turned up in the Church all at the same time. One couple who had worked in Mandarin speaking churches in Hong Kong, another couple who've opened a B&B in York both speak fluent Chinese and wanted to be involved in a Chinese church in the city.

"Several international students have got involved along with another member of the church who studied Chinese at university.

"I would say it was a case of God bringing the right components together.

"The timing was right and our Vicar, Roger Simpson was very excited about it and was already thinking about getting another congregation started, perhaps for the Chinese community."

The team's work to contact members of York's Chinese community seems to have paid off. The first service on Sunday 25 April was attended by 170 people with about a third of the congregation able to speak Chinese. It's hoped the service will also appeal to tourists later in the year.

"We invite other members of the church along and a lot of the service will be bilingual. We also have anglicised text on the projectors so non-Chinese speakers can join in.

"Quite a lot of the service will be strange and different to anything else happening in St Michael's. Anyone coming in off the street will be taken by surprise."

Another member of the team, Lloyd Belcher grew up in Hong Kong and became a Christian in a Chinese speaking church. Now married to Gabriella, who's from Taiwan, they both play a key role in the new service.

"We have a real passion to see Chinese people reached with the Gospel and discipled in their own language.

"We've done outreach work at the university and in the city centre, going to Chinese herbal medicine places and restaurants, just to let the Chinese community know about what we're doing.

"We've had a good response, often people are quite surprised to find English people speaking their language - especially in York. There's been a lot of curiosity and I think people are interested in Christianity but they don't have the deep level of understanding because it's not accessible in their language.

"One of the principles of Communism is atheism, that there is no God, and people are brought up on that in mainland China. So we're meeting people who've never even heard of Jesus before."

Despite the impressive language skills demonstrated by the team, they still face some challenges as Lloyd explains.

"One of the practical problems we face is the written language. Since the cultural revolution in China the writing system has used simplified characters. My wife and I learned the traditional characters so we're dealing with different written languages.

"With spoken word although the national language is Mandarin at home most people will speak their own dialect. In Hong Kong Cantonese is the mother tongue so Mandarin isn't always as fluent."

Services are held in St Michael le Belfrey Church, next to York Minster, each Sunday at 14:00.