Not In This Alone

I’ve been in City Harvest Church for a spectacular 10 years now and I love it! You may ask me why. The answer simply lies in the fact that the people here are my family! Every year I grow as a person and every year we grow as a community. I don’t have to look too far to find people who are as committed or even more committed to this cause than me. It’s definitely not hard to fall in love with this church.

When I first started serving, I was in Attributes (the church bookstore ministry) in the old church building. There, I organised books, counted stock, and carried them to shelves. Mostly, behind-the-scenes work. Perhaps it was because I didn’t look too pretty back then! I was often tasked to fetch books for customers from the storage room. Our storage space was limited but we had a lot of products. The books were actually kept under a staircase and the entire space was illuminated by a single fluorescent light that often didn’t work. Hence, for the first three years in my serving, I would use my old Sony Ericsson phone’s light to navigate through the stacks of books. It definitely wasn’t glamorous work.

If you want to get the juice, you have got to squeeze.

Then somehow when I was eighteen, I was suddenly given the opportunity to lead a team of 300 people for Emerge (the church’s youth competition). I can still remember the gush of emotions when I first got the news. I was so nervous because I didn’t know that many people in church at the time. I could only thank God that we were grouped according to our universities. I only knew 3 people in church from Monash – Darren, Dic Vinn, and Wei Shen – and I knew that this would push me to make new friends. I told them that I was excited but I had never done this before. Then Darren simply turned to me and said, “Don’t worry, that’s what we are here for. You are not in this alone.”.

The most meaningful friendships are not perfect ones but friendships that are scarred with adversity, covered with forgiveness and healed with commitment. We are just stronger together.

Just like that, we became the committee for our cluster! We worked on making a mascot until 6AM in the morning, learnt how to fry nuggets for fundraising and begged people to buy them, argued, fought, forgave, made up, and kept moving forward.  If you want to get the juice, you have got to squeeze.  We had to learn from our mistakes. We did a lot of learning. We gave it our all to bring home the trophy. After all that radical effort, we came in last that year. I may have lost the competition but I gained some lifelong friends.

That was 4 years ago. Today, the four of us are still the best of friends. We still serve in this church. I am not in this alone.

Don’t worry, that’s what we are here for. You are not in this alone.