Special Feature: Identify God’s Calling–GCF 65th Anniversary Refocus (Issue 489)
Herbert Lee
GCF Staff
[email protected]
This year marks the 65th anniversary of Graduates Christian Fellowship of Hong Kong (GCF) and FES. Confronted with pandemic, energy shortage, price inflation, Russia-Ukraine war, etc., the world is facing the domino effect, no corner of the globe is left unaffected. Hong Kong further needs to face serious problems including immigration, social unrest, brain drain and succession gap. As Christians, how should we navigate and respond to these changes? Can the workplace mission we are promoting at GCF open up a dialogue with graduates of all ages and put this evangelical movement into practice together?
Taking advantage of the 65th anniversary of GCF, we tried to explore the actual situation and experience of graduates of different age groups in the workplace through Design Thinking, and let them share with their peers from different professions and listen to each other’s journey. We then tried to create a persona, which means a representative character created by many participants, resembling their age group, based on the multiple experiences and feelings they shared. Our higher goal is to find a problem statement, through the discussion process, that can tell the difference between the real situation and the expectation of the persona. Through this problem, we hope to start a dialogue and response that is closer to the actual situation of the graduates.
GCF has invited four different age groups to participate in four workshops between September and December, including graduates in the 20+, 30+ and 40+ age groups. At the same time, we invited a group of experienced workplace pastors to look at the difficulties of pastoring workplace believers. Among them, we found that the 20+ participants’ identity in the workplace is rather ambiguous, feeling that they are only small potatoes and still in a state of searching for how they can survive and adapt. Among the 40+ participants, they have a more defined workplace identity and are well adapted to their environment, so they have a better orientation in their practice of faith. Clearly, “identity” is very important for us to “focus” on practicing our faith in the workplace.
GCF 65thAnniversary—TELL ME YOUR STORY
Part 1: Gospel and Contexts—Raymond Fung X IdeasFung
Part 2: “Journey of the Times” practicing faith in the Workplace
Date | 29/01/2023 (Sunday)
Time | 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Venue | GCF venue
The above Design Thinking workshop is not only a single networking event and celebration of GCF’s 65th anniversary, but we intend to make it an opportunity for GCF to welcome graduates of all ages and build a community of sharing, listening and support. We hope that the graduates can rediscover their own identity and “refocus” themselves on how they should face the workplace. We need to recognize our “identity” to “refocus” and “reposition” ourselves for the future.
If we lose our identity and focus amidst of turmoil, uncertainty and oppression, we will have difficulty hearing God’s calling. May we be able to identify ourselves, identify God’s calling.