Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Conversational English and the Gospel

We're almost at the end of our 6-week stay in the apartment complex. What has surprised me the most hasn't just been how loud footsteps from the apartment above can be, but how cosmopolitan this apartment community is.

Much more than anywhere else I've lived, the nations are gathered here. This is largely due to the homogeneous (read yuppie) neighborhoods I lived in for most of my adult life.

I've heard many different languages while walking the dog near the community pool and tennis court. Last week I started asking some of the people about their backgrounds. There are a lot of Asian families, some Africans, and even one Arab family that I've seen so far.

These families have been friendly and enjoy meeting other people that live here. For many of them English is a second language, this seems especially true for the young mothers I've seen. It seems that a church could easily reach-out to this multi-ethnic community by offering conversational English classes to the ladies. Through the relationships that would be formed over time, this could be a great opportunity to proclaim the gospel to other cultures.

2 comments:

Barbara said...

That's a very good idea Tim.

Tim said...

Thanks Barb!