Assignment 4- Organisation

The organisation I joined is part of Hillsong Church, and is called a connect group. Basically what it is, is a group of people aged between the age of 18 and 25 get together and have a lesson of some sort. I got involved by just going to the church and the church is really big in being involved outside of just Sunday services, so somebody came up to me and asked what I usually do on Wednesday nights and invited me to join a connect group.

The group consists of people from all over, with nobody actually being from London. There are people from Naples, Germany, Australia, and then us Americans among other locations. We usually meet up in Café Nero about 20 minutes away from where I live in the center of London, but we have also met in one of our leaders’ friends house for a guys night because the girls in the church had a special night with just them, and also had a big meeting with other groups in a bar/club type atmosphere and just hung out for the night. When we meet in the café, we will start by just talking and having a cup of coffee or something then we will start into a lesson the leader has prepared for the night. It is discussion based, which is nice because the classes we take aren’t exactly discussion based, so it’s nice to have something a little more like I’m used to in the states.

I’ve met a young man named Jamey, who has a lot of energy and is very entertaining. I talked to him for over an hour one night just talking about basically the United States and his experiences there. His favorite part is American candy, with nerds rope being his favorite. He said him and his friends were driving across America and it was his turn to drive in the middle of the night and he had a nerds rope and was wired for the rest of the night.

One thing that being in the group has made me realize is that although people in Britain are generally reserved and don’t talk much, there are some people and some groups that will go out of their way to talk to strangers and introduce themselves to you. When they find out you’re from America, they get all excited and ask questions about different things and what we thing about Obama and all the things like politics that I’m not too into, and they end up knowing more about American politics than I do myself.