TRW Conekt  Christian Group

Interview with Peter on the TWUK exhibition stand at Spring Harvest 2009

Peter works for a company called TWR Connect in the West Midlands. Below is his testimony.

What sort of company is that? What do you do?
It’s a big automotive system supplier based in America but our little part of it is a small engineering consultancy in the UK.

How long have you been working there?
Rather a long time nearly 25 years.

So I guess you’re fairly well known amongst people there!
Yes fairly, I’m known to most of the people in the organisation.

When you started work was there a Christian group to join?
No there wasn’t.

Tell us how did it come about?
Well, what happened was the company that I worked for, which was called Lucas, merged with an American company (and there were large job losses at that point) some how a large number of Christians just found each other and began meeting together. I came into it a few weeks into them starting up.

What do you do when you meet together?
We look at the bible, we try and pray about once in three or four weeks. We listen to CDs or watch a DVD series, anything that will provide a forum for discussion.

Is your group purely for Christians or do you seek to reach out in anyway?
No I’m not sure we’ve had the confidence yet – but would be great to do at some point.

You mentioned to me that you did some Christmas events...?
Yes we’ve been doing these for about 5/6 years now. It started off as a Christian service and that essentially is it. We try and put a bit of drama into it now, have an outside speaker, show a video of the Christmas story. We try and be a bit creative.

If I worked in your company would I find out about your Christmas event?
Yes – our HR department have been sympathetic. We put up posters. We’ve put out adverts on the news part of the email system and I usually send out a general email on the day of the event so people have every opportunity to find out about it.

That’s good news. It sounds like you’ve got a good relationship with HR – how did that come about? 
The management wanted to get the workforce to socialise a little more and so put on a series of workshops on how we might improve the workplace. During these sessions one of my colleagues who was actually involved in the Christian fellowship was answering some questions about the social groups that were going on within the building. He managed to get in the fact that there was a Christian fellowship that meets. From there the Christian Group seems to have found it’s way into the introductory pack that makes it’s way into the hands of new graduates. God was and is directing our steps. He really is doing it somehow – it’s totally outside of my control.

Wow exciting! Can you tell me why you go to your group? Why is it important to you to give up a lunch break?
It’s an odd thing isn’t it really, because the people that come along have all got their own churches and home groups but I like to see something that encourages us in the workplace, to be motivated to be Christians in the workplace – that’s what I’m motivated by. Church isn’t about what we just do in the evenings and particularly what we do on Sunday. Our faith should really impact what we do at work because so much of our time is spent there.

In your Christian Workplace Group I guess you’ve got people from all sorts of different Christian upbringings and denominations. Do you ever fall out?
Ummm well... we don’t on the whole. We did have one bloke who was a bit funny with us but I never got to the bottom of that.

Why is it that you don’t have disagreements - what holds you together?
It’s the common belief in what we’re doing. Because time is so short we can’t afford to come to an argument in that way. In terms of the ‘stuff’ that we look at and study – I tend to be a little sensitive about some issues that might be divisive and are just not important and keep the focus on Jesus as the unifying factor.

If there was someone readying this article right now, an engineer in another company thinking of starting up another group – what advice would you want to give to them?
I would say – do it because I do think it’s important for Christians to meet together. I’m not sure that you get the encouragement to meet together at work from your church – you might do – difference churches are hotter on this stuff that others.