Visit our new British Pakistani Christians website

Visit our new British Pakistani Christians website
This site will no longer publish new material. Please join our new website www.britishpakistanichristians.org

Wednesday 19 January 2011

Working in unity can be hard but it is necessary.

Unity a pleasant thing when it is based on good foundation - let Christ be the rock!

Pakistan Minorities Rights Organisation (PMRO) organised a meeting in the greater London area recently, to assess the strategic response of Pakistani Christians living in the UK, to the recent events in Pakistan. A discussion also ensued on the overall situation of persecution due to religious intolerance. The meeting was held at St Paul's Church, Slough at 7:00 pm on Wednesday the 12th January 2011. This was a follow up meeting to a similar seminar conference held by Christian Social Link at the Heston united Reformed church, on the 7th January.

John Bosco kindly invited us to his meeting at Heston United Reform Church and we duly attended leaving a local hospital campaign early. Wilson was invited to speak on stage. It was a fairly productive meeting and contributors put forward a range of positive suggestions on how to highlight the situation in Pakistan and to bring about real change.

Disagreements arose (not just with Wilson) and although I was not sure a petition or protest was a good idea at this time. I offered the use of our sound equipment and promotion of our blog of any proposed event as a sign of our commitment to solidarity.

A notepad was placed on a table and people were asked to place their contact details within the book, if they were minded to continue the joint effort and attend future meetings. The BPCA wishes to be part of any cooperative body of Pakistani Christians and Wilson was the first to sign the book. You can imagine it was a shock to be informed by a colleague that another meeting had been arranged and we were not invited. Despite the shocked look on faces at the meeting at St Paul's, Wilson contributed what he could, arraiving late due to road major road works and an accident that forced the closure of one side of the A406.

We area aware that a protest has been arranged for February and are still awaiting further details but will cascade them to you.

One very positive outcome of the two meetings is that the Chairman changed at both meetings, the first was chaired by John Bosco, the second meeting was chaired by Asif Mall. Perhaps inadvertently we have found a solution to our problem of internal warring? Rather then selecting a leader from our ever growing list of worthy candidates, should we just ensure that a different leader chairs every meeting so that all leaders can basque in the glory of a unity, they have created by avoiding the selfish endeavour and divisive process, that a leadership challenge naturally induces?

Just thinking out loud - although I did mention this at St Paul's ...what do you think?

I hope that the administrative error that saw us precluded from the list of invitees to the St Paul's meeting is now corrected. If not just pray for greater unity and forgiveness amongst our brethren including us. Hey we still love you all...

1 comment:

  1. Hi Wilson - I'm agreed with your point to ensure that a different leader chairs every meeting so that all leaders can basque in the glory of a unity. John Bosco

    ReplyDelete