Salford goes FREE

This is a slightly belated update on the happenings of Salford Christian Union's events week.

Salford CU held three events during the week:

Tuesday night was the JazzCake event with talk on "Free to all". Salford University's favourite jazz and cheesecake night returned for the third time and about 60 students attended. Tim Hanson talked on how the good news of Jesus Christ is free to everyone. We looked at two facts from the Bible, firstly that human beings matter and secondly that we have all sinned - they've fallen short of the standard that God expects from us. He then showed us that there is a wonderful third fact in the Bible - that in Jesus, we have a solution to the problem. It was a great evening with about 45 non believers present, and many had great conversations afterwards.

Thursday night was the Grub Crawl. We went to three different locations to eat each course in our meal, and Tim did a talk on "FREE but at a price". We learnt that the price of the solution to the problem that was discussed on Tuesday night was the death of Jesus Christ, God's son. We saw that on the cross, the sins of many were put onto Jesus and Jesus righteousness was given to them in return. In essence it's a giant swap - Jesus was punished in their place and they recieve Jesus' obedience to God - and it's free to anyone who believes and trusts in Jesus. Six people attended.

Friday night was a talk on "FREE but costly". Ten people were there as Tim showed us that even though the benefits of the swap that occured on the cross is free to anyone who believes, living in the light of it is costly. Jesus sayst that the believer will repent and believer - that the new way of life is to be lived with God treated as God. This is the opposite of sin: sin is essentially living with ourselves as the most important person rather than God as the msot important person.

Each day CU members met for prayer, which I found really encouraging. It's great to see students really expressing reliance on God during mission weeks rather than drifting into the wordly way of thinking that more work makes things better. As it's God who does the work of saving unbelievers, it makes sense to ask him to work during evangelism!

All in all, it has been a wonderful two weeks of mission in Salford University. In those two weeks about 1100 gospels were given out and at least a couple of hundred students heard the good news about Jesus explained by students, friends of the CU and Tim. During this mission I have seen CU members who have become more confident in evangelism and have been encouraged by the openness of non believing students at Salford to talk about the good news of Jesus.

As is the way with most university missions these days, this mission was much more about sowing seeds rather than about seeing many people come to believe in Jesus. We're in the same situation as described by Jesus in the parable of the growing seed in Mark 4:26-29:

And he said, "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come."

We won't know when these people who have heard the good news and received gospels will begin to believe in Jesus, but the seeds have been sown and there will be an effect at some stage in the future.

There will be an update on the Manchester Mega Mission Week coming early next week.

FREE, New Leaders Training and Daniel

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!

When preparation is preaching to yourself

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...

How to spice up your testimony

One of the things that has really struck me today is just how frequently I think my testimony is dull. I wonder how many people have a similar testimony to mine:

I was brought up in a Christian family, attended a good church from my birth and was a really well behaved kid. Having said all that, I was never particularly interested in Christianity as a kid and treated church as one of the many chores I had to do along with brushing my teeth and having a bath.

I definitely didn't have a dramatic conversion by any stretch of the imagination. To be perfectly honest, I can't even remember when I became serious about Christianity, but it was probably somewhere between 11 and 18. During that time, God gradually revealed so much about him to me through hearing good talks at church, through looking at the Bible in various Christian youth groups and through the witness of Christians at church and my Christian parents at home.

As I said, it wasn't dramatic, I just gradually became more and more aware of how I had removed God from his correct position in my life - being God. In my life, I was living as if I was the most important thing, I did things my way and definitely not God's. This definitely didn't lead to crime or anything really bad, but I just treated myself as being the most important person in my life.

I begun to realise that this really wasn't good and that as the Bible says, displacing God from his positon in this way is rebellion against God and it was going to end up like rebellion against a king - with punishment being dished out on the rebels for their rebellion.

At some stage I decided to place my trust in Jesus to save me from the punishment I deserved for my rebellion. I realised that I couldn't just stop rebelling - I was physically incapable of not living with myself at the centre of my life. I understood that Jesus had died on the cross and that when he did, he had taken the punishment for my rebellion, and that if I trusted in him, my punishment would be dealt with and I would be made alright with God.

I also understood that when you put this type of trust in Jesus, God does something strange - he makes you more and more able to live with him at the centre of your life. It has finally become possible to stop rebelling against God. Having said that, even ten (or so!) years on I still slip up and go back into living with myself as the most important person in the whole world. The good thing is that Jesus took the punishment for this once and for all.

Nowadays I still trust Jesus to save me from my rebellion. I'm getting better at living with God as the most important person in my life, which in practise takes the form of acting as he says in the Bible and not doing things my way. I still struggle though and it's really hard to not slip up and resort to living the way I used to.

To be fair, it's no Paul conversion is it?! Sometimes I've been a little bit ashamed of my testimony and tried to spice it up by making myself seem a little bit worse before I became a Christian. So are you wondering like me about how you can spice up your testimony?

How to spice up your testimony

Sorry for the anti-climax. Actually, I'm not at all! I can't tell you how to spice up your testimony and make it more exciting because my testimony is already incredible and so is yours (if you're a Christian!) There's need (or way) to make it any more exciting or impressive - it is already as impressive as it can possibly be.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Ephesians 2:1-10

Get this: God loves you so much that he chose you before time to save you when you were dead in your sins and trespasses (your rebellion) and on top of this, he has raised you up to the same level of Jesus Christ - God's own Son. If that's not exciting enough, you don't have to do anything except believe it - you are saved by God's amazing unconditional love and it was by his initiative, you haven't done anything to deserve it.

One word: wow.

New Leaders Training

As some of you might be aware, I have just finished serving on the executive committee (exec) at University of Manchester Christian Union and the new exec have taken over. This weekend I am fortunate enough to be able to join up with some of the new execs from around the North West at the annual UCCF North West Region New Leaders Training. It's going to be fun!


Things I am looking forward to:

• Tim Rudge talking on either 1 or 2 Peter - either way, the teaching will be UCCF ace-tastic and I haven't studied either of the possibilities, so double bonus!
• Meeting some of the people on the new execs at Salford and Bolton and becoming even more excited about work with them and serving them next year on Relay
  
• Leading a seminar with Zac Wyse for the new Evangelism Coordinators in the various CUs in the region. What a privelege to be able to help them as they begin to form ideas of what they will be doing evangelism-wise with their CUs this year.
• Cooking! Never worked in a big kitchen before but I'm on the cooking team
• Bookstall. UCCF event always have opportunities for buying good IVP books at low, low prices. Having said that, I will try and hold back from bringing too much conference bounty home.
• Train journeys. We travel from Manchester in approximately 1 hour on a locomotive train. Get to hang out with some of the new UMCU exec.
• Meeting new people. UCCF events are basically large family gatherings and I am looking forward to meet some more of my brothers and sisters in Christ. It's also cool when you get to meet people you've already met at Forum, Biblical Evangelism, last years NLT etc.

Will fill you in on all the delights of NLT and of the Truth? when I get back!

Relay!

Awesome news. Just been officially accepted onto the Relay programme with the North West team. I'll be working in Salford and Bolton universities. Am very excited about it, if a tad concerned about having to do something like this.

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