#BHM:Q&A with Dayalan

Written by Sonya Kayson on Oct 18th 2022

For Black History Month, we wanted to profile a number of key folk from across Crown and celebrate what they bring to us. Today we’re introducing Dayalan who lives in Hillingdon and has been at Crown since 2021. Thanks to Dayalan for taking time out of his busy life to answer some questions and allow us to get to know him a bit more!

Gavin: Can you tell us a bit about your background, your family and where you grew up?
Dayalan: I am a proud born and bred Londoner! My parents are from Sri Lanka and came over in the 1970s and a lot of our extended family are Christian. My wife’s family are from Barbados so we have a nice choice of destinations for family holidays.

Gavin: Can you tell us about your education and work experience before joining Crown?
Dayalan: I’ve spent my whole life in London apart from the few years I went to University of Warwick. You know the famous school in Harrow? I went to the one next to it. After university I joined the British Airways graduate scheme (I mean 90 per cent discounts on flights, who was going to say no to that!) before moving into the property sector. I set up my own property business after that which I continue to run today. I also work one day a week for the Evangelical Alliance, an organisation that supports local churches, Christian organisations and individual members all over the UK. In particular, I work within their One People Commission team, which actively connects together the ethnic expressions of the UK church in order for their distinct voice to be heard effectively.

Gavin: How long have you been at Crown and in what capacity do you serve?
Dayalan: Myself, my wife and my mum have been attending Crown for about a year now. I serve on the welcome team and also help with organising events such a quiz night we have coming up on 1st November.

Gavin: What does Black History Month mean to you?
Dayalan: For me, Black History Month is an opportunity to actively educate all of us on some of the history of Afro Caribbeans both here and abroad, much of which had been under-told or untold altogether. I believe we can only truly love and welcome others from different cultures by taking active steps to understand the essence of who they are, which in turn allows us to better empathise with their life experiences and heritage.

Gavin: What do you like about Crown?
Dayalan: I love Crown because it’s a friendly, dynamic church whose ethos is to help everyone grow in our faith by living out the Bible, genuinely support each other through their life journeys and together influence the local community.

For more information about Crown Church’s response to the ongoing issues of race and justice, please see our sermon series Amazing Race together with footage from our International Celebration Weekend. For those wishing to further explore issues of race, we would recommend Ben Lindsey’s book We Need to Talk About Race and Crossing the Divide, by Owen Hylton – both authors are dear friends of Crown. Owen heads up Reconciled Churches Group and Ben leads Power The Fight, which works to reduce youth and gang violence, supported in part by Crown Church.

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