Just walk across the room

Phil Jenkins | 22:10, Thursday, 01 March 2012

I went to observe Friday prayers in the mosque about two hundred yards from our church. It's strange to think that I had served as a missionary in Africa for more than twelve years and yet had never entered a mosque in my home city of Cardiff. The visit was organised as part of the Friendship First course currently being held at Highfields and so I joined with a group of about twenty of us as we took off our shoes and stood at the back of the mosque while 150 men followed their customary prayers.

It was a fascinating experience on many levels. We were warmly welcomed by the Chairman of the mosque and the Imam. When prayers were formally over, we were given chairs to sit on while the basic tenets of the Islamic faith were explained to us. Hopefully this will be the first step in a journey of friendship and better understanding between our two communities as people made in the image of God.

For me it was a graphic reminder of the massive step it must be for people from an unchurched background to enter the doors of Highfields for the first time and join us in worship. It also reminded me of Bill Hybel's challenge to us as Christians, to "just walk across the room" and leave our circles of comfort, extending hands of care, compassion and inclusiveness to people who need the touch of God's love today.  After all, we follow one who took a walk across the universe some two thousand years ago into vulnerability, misunderstanding and rejection in order that we might be changed by his transforming friendship.