All over the country, freshers are starting their first year at university.
Anyone who has been a student knows the challenge of trying to live for Jesus in those early weeks where everyone is grappling for a sense of belonging, an identity, image, reputation and a group of friends.
This is particularly acute in the enormous world of university sport, where those who gain immediate value and favour within the group are those who either perform well on the pitch/court/track, etc., or ‘perform’ on the club’s social scene.
Honouring God through sport
How then does a Christian sportsperson, someone transformed by the grace of the Lord Jesus, live in a way that honours God in their university team? How can they help their teammates see that what they need more than anything is to know the God who made them and his forgiveness?
Alongside many great Christian ministries in action in the student world, we work specifically with sports-playing students, to help them witness to a lost people deeply embedded in the subculture of sport.
Christian students involved in sport will meet together once a week during termtime, usually early on a Wednesday morning before all the university fixtures take place that afternoon. They pray for sports friends who don’t know Christ, get the Bible open together and apply it to the battles they face and to their witness in sport.
Using resources provided by our staff team, they’ll spur each other on in prayer and evangelism and will run ‘guest events’ to help provoke conversation about Christian faith with sporting friends. It’s a privilege to support them through visiting each group regularly, running morning sessions, meeting individually with students, and through prayer – as well as through our New Year student conference and helping students transition to university (or from it!). Alongside the great work of Christian Unions, we hope this will help drive mission to sports students particularly.
Eating and talking together
We praise God that in the last academic year we have seen him at work mightily! One of the greatest privileges for me is sitting in the living room of Christian students who have invited their club round for food and a chance to talk more and ask questions about Jesus – their boldness is both encouraging and inspiring.
At one such meal with students from a university athletics club, the host ended a brilliant evening by offering that anyone who wanted to think further about Jesus could return weekly to look at a bit of the Bible and talk further.
Fruit
Since then, members of that club met every week of the academic year to investigate the claims of the Christian faith, and wonderfully God brought one of them to faith soon afterwards. She is now considering how she too can make disciples in the world of sport. This is not an isolated case – God is raising up Christians to be bold in sharing Jesus in university sports clubs around the country and is calling sportspeople to himself.
So, as Freshers Weeks become the talk of the student world, we long and pray that we might be able to help many sporty students grasp further what it looks like to live as one of God’s chosen people. Whether that’s on the track, the pitch or at the club initiations, in the gym or on the physio’s bench, on the away-trip bus or on the team night out, we want to help them stand tall for Jesus and speak of him.
