The University of Staffordshire Christian Union has started streaming evangelistic meetings live on the internet for students to enjoy from the comfort of their own hall of residence.
The Christian Union — which is made up of just 12 students — decided to live stream CU meetings because of the high tech and internet savvy nature of Staffordshire University students.
Taking the gospel to the students
Ben Harris, the CU President, commented: ‘As a CU, our main purpose is to spread the gospel of Jesus to students on our campus. We realised that as we are a technology campus, most of our students are online! It seemed right that the CU went to where they were in order to connect with them more effectively. We run our main meetings as an interactive TV show where the audience can ask questions or play back our show on YouTube if they missed it’.
Speaking about the effectiveness of the online meetings, Ben said: ‘Our CU had around 12 regular members before the Online CU. Within two days of the first show going online to YouTube we had 200+ views from all over the UK and other countries, and this was without advertising around the university’.
Christian Union Staff Worker Chris Simons commented: ‘The Stafford CU members decided, after much prayer, to try something totally new. They are currently going through the six evidences [passages] found in Uncover [Luke’s Gospel] and have had many responses coming in via live question forums. This has been a really encouraging endeavour into a niche mission field’.
Meeting in person
According to the CU, live stream viewers will be given the opportunity to respond to what they have seen and heard by meeting up with CU members in person to go through an Alpha course and an Uncover Seeker Bible Study.
