A quick sketch of the needs and opportunities in student ministry in the Hellenic world

February 10, 2010

An interesting post from my team leader, Jonathan Clark. Anyone interested?

We’ve just been talking with our friends and team mates Joel and Bekah, and did a quick sketch of the needs and opportunities in student ministry in the Hellenic world. I thought I’d jot it down before bed.

Let’s imagine that we had in our house this evening five people or couples or families who were:

1. Willing to set aside 5-10+ years
2. Up for learning a notoriously tricky language (especially for anglophones)
3. Flexible enough to learn the ropes of life and work among Greeks
4. Committed to Christ and his gospel word
5. Keen to proclaim him among students (most of whom don’t want to listen) and disciple the small number of those who already know him

then we’d hire a big van and drive from Athens to Patras to Ioannina to Thessaloniki to Volos and back to Athens, leaving one in each place with the remit to get stuck in for the long haul. We’d also put one on the plane to Cyprus.

And that’s just scratching the surface.

The reality is that, even if we did make God’s plans for him, we don’t have any of those people at the moment, either Greek or non-Greek. In 10 years time we hope to have some Greeks but perhaps in rather fewer years we might have some non-Greeks (ξένοι) and so I thought I’d put this up here, to begin actively floating that boat…among those who might read this…perhaps this little thought might enter your minds, or the minds of faithful people you have influence over…perhaps…

Leave a Comment » | Greece, IFES | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by opentoesandals

Greek Universities and Freedom

May 16, 2009

As many of you know, I was in Athens for 4 days earlier this week visiting the Clarks and seeing the city which will be my home from September. Over the next few days I’m going to post some observations on Greek studentdom.

Political activism in unis

A couryard in one of the university buildings. It's six stories high and is covered in political posters.

Since the 1970s, when the army entered a university campus in central Athens to quell a student demonstration and ended up killing students, it has been written into the Greek constitution that the authorities aren’t allowed onto campuses. The consequence of this is that you are free to do whatever you like on campus and no one can stop you.

As a result, you get a strange mixture of things going on in university campuses. Students do their demonstrations, drug users do their drugs and no one stops anyone. Apparently, last year the students blockaded their university for ages in response to a government policy which they didn’t like. Again, the police couldn’t do a thing.

One thing that really struck me as we looked around the university campuses in Athens was the vast amount of political graffiti and posters around the place. Around the main campus in town, there were vast numbers of students milling around their stalls campaigning about this and that.

Eλευθερία ή Θάνατος (freedom or death) is a motto from the Greek war of independence. Judging from the all the political posters and the amount of anti American graffiti, the Greek desire for freedom evidently continues – this time it’s not freedom from the Ottomon Empire but from the perceived cultural imperialism of the US.

Freedom is a good thing, but these Greek students need to hear that the freedom that is worth dieing for is the freedom from sin, the freedom from the justice that we all face from God and the freedom to be in a correct relationship with God. And you don’t need to die for that as someone else has already done it for you.

One of the things that particularly excites me about working in Athens from September is that we’re free to get onto university campuses and explain this to students!

Leave a Comment » | Greece, IFES | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by opentoesandals

When preparation is preaching to yourself

February 7, 2009

Today I was privileged to be able to go back to my old university CU, University of Manchester Christian Union, to do a seminar looking at God’s role and our role in evangelism. I’m going to post my notes in three parts over the coming week, looking first at Our role, then at God’s Role and finally at some great truths we can hold onto as Mission Weeks approach.

But before I start posting, I thought I’d say that preparing for it was wonderful.

It was great to have an excuse to spend time re-reading JI Packer’s brilliant Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, which I think might be one of the most influential books I’ve read so far as a Christian. It’s one of those books that are available via Amazon’s market place at a few quid, so buy it if you haven’t read it and are involved in evangelism in some way!

And it was also a timely kick up the butt to remember that evangelism is not about me. It’s God who gives belief (Ephesians 2:8), who gives repentance (Acts 11:18) and who rescues us (Colossians 1:13). We don’t do any of that, all we do is tell people the gospel (Matthew 28:18ff). God saves. We do not.

It was a timely reminder because for the next three weeks I will be in some way or another involved with a CU mission week in Greater Manchester.

Next week is the Distribution week at Salford Uni CU, where they are aiming to hand out a couple of thousand FREE gospels (Mark’s Gospel in trendy covers!) to students in Salford. During the day we’ll be spending three hours chatting to students around campus, whilst in the evenings we will be knocking on doors in halls of residence.

The following week is Salford CU’s Events week, where they will be holding three evening events during which Tim Hanson will explain the gospel to students. The events are a JazzCake (jazz and cheese cake, a bizarre combination which Salford students seem to love!) evening with a talk, a Grub Crawl with a talk, and a talk over tea and coffee. You might notice that CUs love providing food! I’ve yet to find an atheist society that is as keen to feed their fellow students!

The following week is Week 1 of the Manchester Mega Mission (University of Manchester CU, Man Met Uni CU, Royal Northern College of Music CU) during which I will be a CU guest, supporting the work of University of Manchester CU as they try and reach students with the gospel. I will be seconded to a few hall groups to support them in their evangelism in their halls of residence, as well as doing first contact evangelism on streets around the unis and talking to people at events.

So, it’s good to remember that in these weeks that when I become progressively more exhausted (which I will!), God still remains strong and, as it’s him that saves, I can remain confident that he will be at work convincing students of the truth of the gospel as I tell it the them.

There were some other amazing things that God really taught me as I worked through the prep, but you’re going to have to wait for me to upload the talk for them…

Leave a Comment » | books, evangelism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by opentoesandals

A reasonably exciting day

November 25, 2008

Today at Bolton CU we had a bit of a discussion about God’s word and evangelism.

We read 1 Peter 1:23-25 and saw that it is the living and abiding word of God that causes us to be born again. We found out that this word of God is living and imperishable, and that it was the good news that was preached to us!

We also looked at Romans 10:11-17 and saw that for people to be saved from God’s judgement they need to call on the name of the Lord – to trust and believe and seek mercy from him – and to do that we saw that people need to hear the good news being preached to them: faith comes from hearing, and hearing comes through the word of Christ!

There are around 11,000 non believers at the University of Bolton and these guys need to hear the good news and they need to receive God’s word. Imagine my excitement as this tiny CU (7 students meeting in a small room) began to think for themselves about how they can go about getting God’s word into students’ hands!

They’re now in the process of discussing how they can put on their first evangelistic event in years and how they can practically go about distributing as many FREE gospels as possible to their fellow students.

They’ve also decided to get a weekly prayer meeting going – as one student pointed out, without God involved, it’s all pretty pointless! There are some really exciting ideas in the pipeline for how we can get these FREE gospels into peoples hands (watch this space!) and most CU members are thinking of personally handing out FREE gospels to their friends.

And, as if all that wasn’t exciting enough, on her way out of the room where we meet one of the CU members got chatting to a random student and handed out our first FREE gospel: God’s living and abiding word that brings rebirth is now in the hands of one more student in Bolton University.

So, if you’re in the mood for praying, we’d appreciate prayers for…

  1. the student who recieved a FREE gospel earlier today.
  2. Bolton CU as they begin to think about ideas for how to distribute these FREE gospels.
  3. God to work through this CU and to encourage them as they begin to do evangelism.

Leave a Comment » | Bolton University Christian Union, Free Gospel Project, evangelism, update | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by opentoesandals

Some Interesting Discussions on Evangelism

August 24, 2008

There’s some interesting blog posts on evangelism out there at the moment. They’re all well worth a look…

Dave Bish explains how DISCO is the reason he doesn’t do evangelism…

Hugh Bourne is thinking about how we need to engage with different student mindsets in our evangelism on campus… He’s started by thinking about how we engage with students who are really success driven.

Mark Driscoll talks with Philip Jensen about Sydney and, amongst other things, how we’re going to get young men into the church. He’s talking specifically about Sydney, but I think some of it still applies to us here in the UK… (be warned this is a 25 min video!)

Gaz Leaney wonders how to teach the Bible effectively to people that struggle with reading…

Leave a Comment » | evangelism | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by opentoesandals

Some thoughts on University #2 – Witnessing

June 26, 2008

I finished university a couple of weeks back so I thought I would share some thoughts on university and how it has affected me. If you’re at uni or starting uni in the Autumn, please listen to my advice!

I’m working in a school at the moment. It’s great fun and a real eye opener. One of the things that has been really hard is sharing the gospel in a different work context. I’ve had a few opportunities to talk about what I believe with some of the other students that are doing the same placement as me, but I’ve not had any with the proper teachers, and this is a little bit annoying. One of the things that I’ve noticed that has harmed my witness to the teachers is when I see pupils who are Christians acting no differently to the other pupils by misbehaving in class and being rude to the teachers.

I remember one of my friends at church, a retired lecturer at the university, telling me of how frustrating it was for him to try and share the gospel with his colleagues and then for them not to take the gospel seriously because they’d come into contact with Christian students who had been a bad witness.

One of the reasons I’m not going to focus in too much on what the Christian boy at my school did is because I realise I’ve been absolutely no different.

At university, I wasn’t a great witness to my teachers. I know of other Christian lecturers in the department wanting to share the gospel with their colleagues and how frustrated they must be when they saw me not handing in work, not trying hard in class, not treating my studies properly. I wasn’t a terrible student, and I didn’t do these things all the time, but I didn’t study properly for the whole three years.

I think we as students can become so obsessed with being good witnesses to our fellow students that we can forget that the teaching staff need the gospel too. It might not be us that actually gets to share the gospel with them, but the way we act and treat our studies can have a bearing on whether those lecturers take the gospel seriously or not when they hear it.

Titus 2 talks of how good behaviour can “adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour” (2:10). It’s not a replacement for sharing the gospel, but the way we act can underline the gospel. Conversely, the way we act can cause the word of God to be reviled (2:5) which is quite worrying really.

It’s so important to remember, so I will say it again, whilst acting properly is not a replacement for the gospel, it can underline the gospel and if we’re not acting properly, we can even cross it out.

So, what do I want you to remember? If you’re a student, I’d really urge you to learn from my mistakes and take my advice: you can be a great witness to your teachers through the way you treat your work and your studies, so study hard, hand things in on time, don’t lie and treat lecturers with respect!

Leave a Comment » | evangelism | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by opentoesandals

Fantastic news

March 7, 2008
Fantastic news from the recent UMCU Grill a Christian event. God is great!

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by opentoesandals

Being a part of someone elses evangelistic efforts

February 28, 2008
Two amazing things have happened this past week. You may remember that I posted a while back about a conversation I had with some Muslims about the gospel. It turns out that one of the girls I spoke to is a friend of Fay, one of the girls in CU. Later that week, they ended up having a really indepth conversation about the gospel in which Fay was able to explain to this girl how it all works! How amazing is that? There I was thinking I was talking to some random students, but God was working behind the scenes so that the conversation we had was the catalyst for the opportunity that Fay needed to be able explain the gospel to her friend!

The second amazing thing that happened this week was that I got to explain the gospel to my Personal Tutor at university! Wow! He told me that his sister recently became a Christian and although he read the Bible a bit over Christmas he couldn’t understand how to reconcile it with his scientific understanding of the world. He had loads of questions which I was able to help with. I went in expecting to get my exam results (I did!) but I left having also told him the gospel and how I could believe in it as a scientist. I suspect that this conversation wasn’t a flash in the pan conversation but part of a much bigger evangelism chain that his sister had already started – I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t his sister who’d encouraged him to read the Bible over Christmas.

These two things made me think. Jesus talks in John 4 about how one person sows and another reaps. Chains of evangelistic opportunities will happen in peoples lives – I’ve been part of two this past week! This has really encouraged me. We’re not working individually in sharing the gospel with people – in the same way that I was able to explain the gospel to someone’s friend or relative, there are people out there who might be right this instant explaining the gospel to my friends!

After very few proper opportunities to explain the gospel to friends back home before I left for university I’m tempted to feel like giving up on any hope of seeing them come to faith in Jesus. But how wrong is it of me to think like that?

If you’ve had a similar experience to me, pray for your friends! I’m praying for my mates. We should obviously seek opportunities to continue explaining the gospel to them, but we should also be praying for them and expecting someone to come into their lives to explain the gospel to them! God is more than capable of bringing people into their lives who can continue explaining the gospel to them!

But before we start to think that we can forget about doing evangelism ourselves, flip this idea around. Do you ever have random opportunities to share the gospel with people you come into contact with? Do you ever pass up on these opportunities, thinking it’s not really your place to tell them the gospel or that it’s not a good time? I know I am definitely guilty of this. But just think, this person I have come across might be just one conversation away from putting their faith in Christ – how do I know? Telling the gospel to this person might be an answer to someone else’s prayers or it might be a catalyst for someone else closer to them to be able to explain the gospel!

So next time you have an opportunity to share the gospel with someone, do it! And if you lose contact with friends, don’t lose hope of them coming across Christians and hearing the gospel again – pray for God to bring people into their lives who will share the good news with them!

Leave a Comment » | evangelism | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by opentoesandals

First Contact Evangelism

February 20, 2008
Just finished Action Group with University of Manchester CU. Before heading out we looked at God’s part and our part in evangelism. We learnt that our part is essentially just to get out there and tell people the gospel (Matthew 28:16-20 and Romans 10:11-17) and that it’s God’s job to save people (Acts 4:10-12 and Revelation 7:9-10) – what a well timed reminder for us just before we head out to the daunting task of telling complete strangers the gospel!

Seven of us headed out in pairs and a single. We had some pretty cool conversations with many different types of people. I spoke to Muslims for a half hour showing them how that as God is both a perfect judge and loves us perfectly, the only way he can reconcile these two characteristics and forgive people of their sins is through Jesus taking the punishment for our sins on the cross. How exciting to be able to tell this to Muslims on campus!

Several other great conversations were had and we all became more confident in sharing the gospel with students.

Leave a Comment » | University of Manchester Christian Union, evangelism, uccf | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by opentoesandals