A church not exactly like a church

Sunday 23rd April, 2023

A new friend of mine from the office, Haripriya, invited me to visit a church in Bandra. Now visiting a church is not a new thing to me. Occasionally I visit the Resurrection Church – Don Bosco, which is a few minute's walk from my home. I have visited many Churches, Cathedrals and a Basilica in my travel stint. So, what made me write about this one. Read on. Going back to the call from Haripriya, I thought we might be visiting Mount Mary Church or St. Andrew's Church, for I knew those are the famous ones in Bandra. Now for a person staying in Virar, travelling all the way to Bandra on a weekend, the body says no while the mind is ready. A day before, Haripriya called again to confirm whether I was coming the next day, shared her rented home address, and asked for my food preference. This girl is not mentioning the name of the church and asking whether I eat Veg or Non-Veg! At midnight she texts me on whatsapp to come an hour early to the decided time since she is volunteering! I have never gone so blindly anywhere; I always plan a bit. But when you trust a friend, you trust completely. She said, "You need peace of mind. You will find it here". I boarded the Bandra slow train, got off at Santacruz and took an auto to search for her home. Google Maps can sometimes be misleading, had got this experience just a week prior while finding a vendor's office. Somehow, I landed up on the gate of her building. She stays on the first floor. While she got ready, I walked through her room. We left her home and took an auto for Bandra. We stopped at the WeWorks building, BKC. The suspense continues, she leads, and I follow her. We reach the 4th floor and I see this event board. Hence the title of this post.

The New City is a Protestant Church: Celebrating Jesus every Sunday morning (11am) is the perfect way to start afresh and prepare for a long, hard week in the city! But here’s the catch, you don’t have to be a `Christian’ to join us in the celebrations, music, worship and inspiring talks every week. Now we reached there an hour early at 10am. There was a breakfast buffet on the other side of the event. I was warmly welcomed by the lead Pastor, Mr. Anand Mahadevan and his beautiful wife Ajitha (everyone lovingly called her Aji). While having the breakfast, there were a few thanksgiving speeches. This 4th floor is turned into a musical setup with a band playing instruments and two singers to sing the prayers. 

There is a chair setup for the audience. Now Haripriya was volunteering to change the slides of the presentation. I grabbed a seat in the audience and started google-ing on this church. The initial speech was started by the lead Pastor. This church seed was planted by him, his wife and a few more friends on the Good Friday of 2013. Today they were celebrating 10 years of the New City, a church for the city of dreams. The lucky me! 

The Sunday service includes part of bible reading, worship songs, hymns, speaking about the gospel (teaching of Jesus) and sermons. What I loved the most was that it was a musical reading led by Felix, the Assistant Pastor. We had to stand up for this. The audience consists of Followers and Explorers (like me). Communion will follow the service – this involves taking bread and wine to remember the death and resurrection of Jesus. So, there were small wine cups, with a piece of bread at this top. The usual Sunday service is for an hour but today it was for two hours. There was a video presentation showing the whole journey from 2013 to 2023. There were nostalgic speeches from the initial church seed planters (the ones who started the New City). We had the cake cutting at 1pm and interactions with others. The lunch was served at 2pm. 

We enjoyed the lunch listening to the guitarist and rappers and then left the church at 2:30pm. Well finally I had some peace of mind.