The Red Egg

It was my birthday on Wednesday (Feb 10th)I got some cards from my kids which I treasure and some dress shorts (which is very handy in the warm humid environment of Auckland) and I had a very interesting experience which for me illustrates what Dave Gibson calls ‘Third culture” in his book ‘the Monkey and the Fish: liquid leadership for a third culture church’. I got given a red egg.


StudentSoul the church I am involved with planting here in Auckland had its first Worship on Wednesday and one of the Chinese students who is part of the group gave me a red egg as a birthday gift. It was a hardboiled egg which had been dyed red. she bhad been down to the supermarket and purchased it and some red food colouring and then bought the egg is a bag full of the food colouring. In Chinese culture this is a gift that is regularly given to people on their birthdays. She wanted to share her culture with me as a gift (she also wanted to do a western thing as well so bought a chocolate cake which went down very well).

I was actually quite touched and thought that here is was a third culture moment in our little church group. People bring who they are as a gift in Christ to the group and share it with the rest of us.

Happy Chinese New Year for the weekend as well...