I was 13 and studying in a mission school when I became a follower of Jesus Christ.
The first church I met with was an unconventional one. Unconventional in the sense that there were no buildings nor weekend services that we would gathered at. It was a fellowship of believers that met after school in a classroom or a hall within the school compound.
The church was called a Christian fellowship and student volunteers ran it. The volunteers came from the teaching staff and the FES. With their help, I learned to pray, worship and read the Bible. We met weekly after school where we would have our worship session, followed by Bible study. Sometimes we even have a student volunteer preach a short sermon.
This church felt more like a community than any church I would meet with later in life. We gathered because of our desire to fellowship and to learn more about Jesus. We often met outside of the meetings for meals (recess) to encourage one another, and whenever one of us faced challenging moments, we would come together to comfort him with whatever Bible verses we had memorised. Our limited knowledge was never a reason to leave a brother to face difficulties alone.
For our regular meetings, everyone contributed by dividing tasks from arranging the chairs to leading worship and Bible study among ourselves. We also did community work like visiting old folk’s homes and hospitals, especially during Christmas. We even organised evangelistic outreach events. With few resources but lots of eager believers, we gathered weekly and experienced church the way we imagined the first-century Christians did.
So What’s Missing?
There were things that we did not do during those Christian fellowship days. I saw these things that the ‘real churches’ did and wondered why they were not shared with us. We did not tithe, nor were we baptised. We never did any Holy Communion nor taught the significance of it.
But regarding fellowship, I still missed this early church experience that I had even till this day.
An Abrupt End…
Sadly, my association with my first church ended when I graduated from Secondary School. (You can only attend if you’re a student in the same school) and that left me with no choice but to seek out a more permanent church to continue in my faith. I took the opportunity to join a ‘real church’ and seeing how a few of my friends attended a popular Methodist church located in the city, I decided to pay them a visit one Sunday…
