On Sunday 11 September, Jessie Tang was licensed as Intercultural Ministry Director by Bishop Martyn at a service at the Church of the Martyrs in Leicester. The service included worship led by a band comprised of members of WEC Arts Releases’s Resonance Band UK and Songs2Serve UK, with God’s praises being sung in Farsi, Urdu, Shona, Spanish, Arabic and mandarin Chinese.
Bishop Saju preached, taking his text as Acts 11:19-21 and Bishop Martyn led a collect in French.
Jessie was presented for licensing by Revd Dr Mohan Seevaratnam, a bi-vocational GP and churchplanter with Mosaic who Jessie has previously worked with. After the service Jessie said “I am delighted to be working alongside some passionate people in such a pioneering diocese. I hope my background and experiences in intercultural worship and church planting will inspire the collective embracing of a vision which goes beyond tolerating into requiring all cultures and voices in a church to be welcomed and seen. I would like to see intercultural services as more than a one-off event – it should be a weekly reality as churches develop into worshipping with one another’s cultures.”
Jessie was presented with gifts by members of each of the Intercultural Worshipping Communities from the diocese and by members of the diocesan Intercultural Worship team. Creating intercultural worshipping communities and enabling churches around the diocese to better engage interculturally is one of the stated priorities of the diocese, as we seek in our churches to reflect the richness of ethnic and cultural diversity that exists in our city and county.There are currently five designated Intercultural Worshipping Communities in the diocese.
Jessie’s position is made possible by money from the Church of England’s Strategic Development Fund.
To find out more about the Intercultural Worshipping Communities project click here.
