If you change the university, you change the world.
The world around us today is being shaped by the students of yesterday – nearly every business person, politician, academic, media presenter and opinion former started out as an undergraduate, their worldview formed and shaped by their university experiences. It follows logically that to shape tomorrow’s world, we need to shape tomorrow’s leaders today. That is why the witness and ministry of Christian Unions is so vital.
Training tomorrow’s leaders
In September, 1,000 Christian student leaders attended our week-long annual National Leaders’ Forum at the Quinta Christian Centre in Shropshire. Training these leaders to lead their CUs well has a disproportionate effect not just in terms of immediate CU evangelism, but also in preparing these leaders for a lifetime of leadership.
Steve Brady, Chairman of Moorlands College, recognised this incredible potential when he preached from Isaiah 6, and invited each student to stand and declare: ‘Here I am Lord – send me!’. The work of CUs is not just for now – these leaders will go on to plant churches, to pioneer mission work overseas, and to be apologists in the public square for Jesus’s name.
There are so many more ways that this commitment is worked out. Christopher Ash preached compellingly from John’s Gospel, refreshing us with the truth of the message, but also helping each student to build their worldview solidly on the gospel. There was also training available during the week for specific ministry needs. Our Theology Network team proactively supported and mentored evangelical Theology students faced with the liberal Theology faculties of our universities. As a result of attending Forum, these future theologians have been both connected to a local TN group and resourced to be culture shapers in their universities. Tracks at Forum also spoke to disparate groups – from engaging with sport, or science, or law, or social justice – in each of these areas Christian students are being developed to influence their world in Jesus’s name.
Positive feedback
The mentoring impact is immediate as well as long-lasting. Students who have provided feedback have been uniformly positive about the impact of Forum, saying that they now feel better resourced and equipped for campus mission. These newly emboldened CU leaders are now fanning out across Great Britain to their university campuses, ready to receive a new cohort of students, many of whom will have never heard the gospel or known a Christian friend. The training and encouragement they have received will be reflected in freshers’ week events that are high quality and, indeed, award-winning. I spoke with one CU exec at Forum, who said their CU has gained favour from the university’s authorities because, uniquely among the student societies, the CU makes the effort to engage with every university campus, not just the main site.
Such gracious, God-given favour is even more important as the threat of militant religion abroad potentially leads to greater restrictions on expression of faith in the university. In UCCF’s latest annual review, our director Richard Cunningham acknowledges that Christians today live in a season that, to quote Dickens, is both ‘the best of times’ and ‘the worst of times’. The opportunities and the challenges on our campuses prompt us to rejoice and to be concerned in equal measure. We are certainly rejoicing that the 1,000 student leaders who came to UCCF’s National Leaders’ Forum have returned to their CUs ready to witness to their peers and better equipped to be the culture shapers of the next generation.
