Coffee at Formacion
From 25th July to 8th August I was in Poland, as you will know if you’ve been keeping up to date with the blog/prayer letters. I have been helping at IFES’ Student Leadership Formacion which is a two week conference for student leaders in IFES movements across Europe.
To save you getting bored, I won’t write a massive essay. Instead, I’ve asked myself a few questions about the conference. If you want to find out more, ask me another question in the comments and I’ll answer it too!
Formacion’s a weird name for a conference, why’d they call it that?
Galatians 4:9 says “…until Christ is formed in you.” Formacion is the Spanish word for formation, and it refers to the many different ways we can grow into being like Jesus Christ: physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. The conference was about us (students, community group leaders and staff) becoming more like Jesus Christ in all these ways.
What sort of things did you get up to besides “leading a community group”? (As you so informatively wrote in the last blog post)
My main job was to lead the community group with my co leader, Zhenya. As a community group we met daily to discuss the teaching on Mark’s gospel, we also did activities together (bike riding, spider webbing and canoeing) and I met up individually with the group members to discuss how the conference was going and what they were learning.
Apart from that I co-led a group for students who were studying Science at uni, a group discussing worldviews in music, and generally tried to encourage students from across Europe. It wasn’t all hard work though: even though we had our first prayer meeting at 7.30am each day, there was quite a bit of space for chilling out and socialising.
So, how many people were there?
There were about 180 people there: about 140 students from about 40 (?) IFES movements across Europe and further afield; about 30 community group leaders (like me); and about 10 people on the planning committee.
We were pretty spread out – some people lived just 30 mins away and there were some students who travelled from the other side of the world. We had a good contingent from the Middle East too, which I thought was really great!
What was the most exciting thing that happened?
In my opinion, by far the most exciting thing was that there were 140 students who left the conference grounded in Mark’s gospel – they knew it, they understood it and they could even recite it! Andrew Page from Above Bar Church in Southampton (and of Mark Drama fame) taught it to us, explained it to us, and most excitingly of all, after showing us how it all fits together and how to remember it, got people to memorise the whole gospel. Having done this, we spent one evening acting it out to each other – letting the gospel punch with huge force, showing us how good the good news about Jesus really is.
The reason I think this is so exciting is that across Europe there are now 140 more students who are confident in using Mark’s gospel in evangelism – they know how it fits together, they know what comes next, they know what Mark is trying to say through each part. They could easily get a Bible out with a friend, and go to any point in Mark’s gospel, ask a couple of questions and discuss it with their friend. Or the students who come from countries where it’s illegal to open a Bible in university can now discuss Mark in their Christian Unions. Or they could tell their friends about Jesus in Mark’s gospel without having to open a book in front of them.
I think that’s so exciting because the Bible (God’s word) is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12) and the more people in Europe that wield it properly, the more we will see God at work in Europe again.
Chilling out in the afternoon
Sounds awesome. But what have you learnt?
I learnt a lot about identity. In a couple of activities (the ones I was not so good at) I was really aware that people knew that I was bad. It was not nice feeling like a failure. As I thought about it, I realised I do this all the time. I place my identity in what other people think about me: when people are impressed, I feel good; when people aren’t impressed, I feel bad.
But as Christians, this is so wrong! God doesn’t look on us and judge us on how we’ve done. As Christians, God puts Christ’s good works and righteousness on us as if it were a cloak. When he looks at us, he doesn’t see how good we are or how bad we are; he sees Christ and how good he is! Because Jesus doesn’t change, and because God says that he will always look on us in this way in the Bible, God’s opinion of me will never change. And when I think about it, the only opinion that really matters is his!
The biggest lesson I learnt was to remember that my identity is in Christ and to keep reminding myself of that.
What was the hardest thing?
The basketball tournament (when I realised about the identity thing) and the mosquitoes!
I am terrible at basketball – I can’t jump and I can’t throw.
And I’m also pretty allergic to mosquito bites, so I spent the first week with really swollen bites on my legs until one of my friends lent me some anti histamene tablets.
Niiiice. What was the most enjoyable part of the conference?
For me it was meeting so many people from all over Europe (and some from even further afield) and hearing their stories of what God’s doing in their lives. In so many ways Europe is the biggest mission field in the world: vast swathes of it have no established Christian groups to tell people of Christ and yet so few missionaries get sent there. So it was really encouraging to hear that God is still at work in Europe even if it sometimes looks like he’s completely forgotten us. I heard exciting stories of what God’s been doing in English camps in Bulgaria, through friends and in families in Portugal, amongst students in Siberia, Belgium, the list goes on…
Fun with my Community Group in canoes
Finally, I hear you are not the world’s best linguist. How on earth did you cope in a Euro conference?
God is a merciful God and I did not have to cope at all. Almost everyone at these conferences speaks English to a really high level, and all the teaching is in English but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to communicate with other people. Admittedly, it’s easier for me than for people from other countries, but I found I had to be really careful not to fall into the trap of saying things people wouldn’t understand. Can’t complain though – I will find out what everyone else felt like when I go to things in Athens.
One last thing: Did you meet any Greeks?!
Yes!!! And I realised I knew a lot less Greek than I thought I did… It was great to meet some Greek students, to get to know them and to hear of the good and bad points of what’s going on in the Greek Christian scene. Looking forward to seeing you guys in a few weeks!
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