29 August 2024
As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways & my thoughts than your thoughts. - Isaiah 55:9
There’s no better verse than this to describe the formation of the Hutton East Asian Group.
Hutton East Asian Group meets in Hutton Parish four times a year, bringing together those of East Asian heritage and their families for food, celebration and worship at key times in the Lunar calendar.
The group is led by Licensed Lay Minister (LLM), Tino To, who had an aspiration to build a Chinese congregation in the parish. Tino explains how the group has grown:
“Eight years ago, when I entered the selection process to become an LLM, all the candidates had to present a short talk on ‘What would you like to see from your church in 10 years time?’ At the time a couple of Chinese friends living in Hutton told me the nearest Chinese Church was in East London and they had to travel every Sunday to worship. This started my dream of having a Chinese Church in Hutton for local Chinese Christians to worship together.
“When Fr Andy Smith and his family came to Hutton Parish in 2017, he was very encouraging and supportive when he heard of my dream. However, I put it aside due to the workload of
LLM training but continued to pray.
“In 2020 at the beginning of Covid, we started a group with some Chinese people from Hong Kong. The group grew as they invited their friends and family, we soon had people from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines join the group too. God indeed widened my vision as many of their friends, family and spouses were English.
“In September 2021 as we were coming out of the lockdown, we had our first community get together with around 20 people. We gathered again in February to celebrate Chinese New Year. After the two feasts we decided to develop future gatherings to include a small worship of simple testimonies and hymns before each feast and cultural activities to be inclusive of Christians and non-Christians.
“We started as a small group and now have more than 90 members of different East Asian heritage and their families. They are all welcome into our Church family and we hope to welcome others too.”
Find out more
Hutton East Asian community
Hutton East Asian Group next meets on 21 September in Hutton Parish for the Autumn Moon Festival. For more details email tinoto@rocketmail.com.
We Pray
This article has been taken from the latest edition of WePray, our quarterly prayer diary which brings together our Cycle of Prayer and stories from across our Diocese.
