Thoughts on New Word Alive

April 7, 2009

Last week I was lucky to attend New Word Alive Week 1 as a steward. This meant I paid the princely sum of zero pounds sterling to attend the great conference and only had to do a few hours of work each day. Win.

Loads of people have already blogged on New Word Alive. I may have missed the boat in offering a general review of the conference, but I thought I’d share five highlights of being a steward at week 1 of the conference!

Five Highlights

1. The great teaching. I was fortunate enough to be stewarding in the Great Marquee for the Morning Bible Readings and the Evening Celebrations, which meant that I got to hear all the great teaching that went on in there. Particular highlights were Vaughan Roberts on 1 Corinthians, Krish Kandiah on the parable of the Good Samaritan and Don Carson on the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

2. The fun we had on the stewarding team. April Fools jokes on the radios, changing our names on our badges, Texas T-shirts, hanging out on the beach…. the list goes on. It was a fun week!

3. The worship. Stuart Townend and Phatfish led us and we refused to let them stop on Thursday evening (fortunately my night off in the Great Marquee!)

4. Seeing Christians from many denominational backgrounds and traditions come together, setting aside minor differences and uniting around the gospel.

5. Catching up on sleep. It’s been a hectic term and having the afternoon off was much appreciated!

One disappointment

And finally, one disappointment. For a conference that aimed to unite people around core beliefs I perceived that there was still a bit of suspicion and segregation.

I’m sure it was mostly a result of the fact that because it was the “student” week a lot of Christian Unions came as groups, but I did see a few instances when people were already seated and then moved when someone different in age came and sat down next to them. There might have been valid reasons for moving, but it sure felt a bit weird having a conference that united different people around the same core beliefs and then people separating themselves off like this.

And then handing out a newspaper that proclaimed New Word Alive as the premier conservative evangelical conference in the country doesn’t really help to make our charismatic brothers and sisters feel welcome.

They’re minor quibbles. And I’m sure they’ll be ironed out in the future. Having one week which everyone attends next year will certainly help and I reckon we’ll all learn to get along better as New Word Alive continues. But I guess we could all make an effort to go out of our way and be really accommodating and loving towards people that are different to us, be it in age, background or theology.

Looking forward to next year

I’m really really really looking forward to next year, when I am hoping to be able to pop back from Athens to attend with my church and hear some more great teaching. Apparently Wayne Grudem has been confirmed, along with Jerry Bridges and Becky Pippert – should be great!

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Dawkins to launch Secularist societies in university campuses

February 26, 2009

Apparently Richard Dawkin is launching a campaign to start secularist societies in every UK university. UCCF have stated that it “will excite CU members, who are keen to share their faith and raise the spiritual temperature amongst students.”

Read the full press release.

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FREE, New Leaders Training and Daniel

February 16, 2009

It’s about a week since I last posted on here. Time for a bit of an update!

Last week was University of Salford Christian Union’s gospel distribution week. Here’s a few numbers for what happened:

5 days of gospel distribution
Nearly all CU members heavily involved in it
15 hours of having a stall in the foyer of the main building on campus
100s of good, gospel focussed conversations
1000 gospels distributed
1 in 20 students in Salford University now have a FREE gospel

It was a fantastic week and the CU members are really pleased (and pleasantly surprised!) with how it went. It was really encouraging seeing CU members step out of their comfort zones and doing questionnaires and handing out gospels. Great work guys!

This past weekend was the annual New Leaders Training conference. At this time of year, all the CUs in the country change leadership, so UCCF gets all the new CU exec members together in their regions for some training. This year we held our New Leaders Training in Leyland and Justin Mote joined us to teach us from the book of Daniel. The Staff and Relay workers pitched in to help train everyone for their new roles.

It was a brilliant weekend with fantastic teaching. Daniel is a wonderful book and is incredibly relevant for students today – its the story of four young Jewish men as they live with the challenge of living and speaking for God in an alien culture that’s hostile to their faith.

One thing that encouraged me was seeing the new CU leaders became more and more excited about the gospel through the weekend. Being on exec is not about serving men or the CU, it’s about serving the Lord, and the only way to motivate yourself to do that without being legalistic is in joyful response to the wonderful gospel.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Colossians 3:23-24

This week Salford CU has their events week, so please pray for us that we’d be confident in sharing the gospel and that God would show Salford students that the gospel is true!

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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…

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Relay 2 Karaoke Fun #1

January 27, 2009

The North East’s contribution to the Karaoke fun.

“I can be your Relay Worker, but I’m not your CU slave!
I do more than go for coffee, every day’s a Relay rave”

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Relay Bloggers 08/09

November 17, 2008

Due to the wonders of the Facebook application Blog Networks, I’ve just discovered a few more Relay Workers who are blogging their way through the year! So, to celebrate, here are the other Relay bloggers that I am aware of.

Bescot42 – Andy Jinks (Liverpool)
The Cornerstone – Craig Taylor (Newcastle)
Dear Freedom – Ed Rogers (Newcastle)
The Grace Race – Gethin Jones (Bangor)
Living Stones – Cat Hare (Exeter)
The Race – Mo McCracken (Relay coordinator)
Spider’s Scribblepad – Peter Williams (?)
Threelay – myself (Manchester), Jez Poyner (Manchester), Craig Taylor (Newcastle)

If you’re aware of anyone else, let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

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Really Relay?

November 2, 2008

Judging by the many half completed draft blog posts I’ve written on what I’ve been doing so far in my Relay year, I think this post is long over due!

The other day I was on the bus heading up to the station to travel out to one of my universities and was not in a particularly good mood. I think I was pretty tired and didn’t really feel as if I could be bothered to go to the CU event that was going on… But half way there it suddenly struck me just how fortunate I am to be doing Relay. I couldn’t help but smile and think that I was, in my opinion, the luckiest person on that bus.

Get this: I get to spend my time studying the Bible for myself and meeting up to study it with Christian students. I get to spend time discussing the gospel with students who don’t believe. As well as that, I get to look at the Bible with other older, more mature Christians, all of whom are much wiser and godly than I am at the moment. On the side, I’m learning a language in preparation for years 2 and 3 of Relay Homestart where I will hopefully be working with a certain IFES movement in Europe. On Fridays, I get to spend a whole day looking at Systematic Theology and the Great Commission.

In my opinion, this is a flipping awesome way to spend your time. So, in an attempt to celebrate the first two months on Relay (1/5th of the way in) these are five highlights so far…

1. Relay 1. Seriously, this is the best Christian conference I’ve been to. It can be summarised in that beforehand I thought I got grace, afterwards I realised that beforehand I really didn’t! I’d still not say I’ve completely got it, but from what I know, it’s more amazing than I ever dreamt. I’m not going to say too much more at the moment, because I’ll post on it in the near future.

2. Glad You Asked. After a slow start, we now have a few students who attend – some don’t believe and some do. What a privilege it is to be able to discuss spiritual truths with them and see them come to a deeper understanding of the Good News as they look at things for themselves.

3. Studying the Trinity. Mindblowingly amazing stuff. God is so incomprehensible, but that only deepens the awe at who he is. I blogged some of my thoughts on the Trinity over at threelay. Take a look!

4. Meeting up with students to look at the Bible. I’m currently meeting up with 4 students at different times and we’re looking at Mark and Romans. What a privilege it is to point people to Christ in the Bible and see them realise just how awesome he is! It’s also great because I get to study these great wonderful books and it actually counts as work!

5. Studying Hebrews. I’ve never looked at this book before, and it’s also blowing my mind! I’m also really fortunate that I get to meet up with two absolute legends, Zac (legendary Staff Worker) and Judith (legendary Relay Worker) to look at it. We’re really getting into it and, just like a fine wine, we’re savouring it: 5 weeks of studying it and we’re only in chapter 2.

Note: It should also be said that this also has absolutely nothing to do with persuading any final year students about doing Relay next year ;)

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Free – what it’s all about

October 15, 2008

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UMCU vid

September 29, 2008

My old CU, the University of Manchester Christian Union have been asking students on campus what they would ask God and who they think Jesus is.

They’ve also got a rather swish new website!

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What is a CU?

September 23, 2008

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