On prayer

I continue my reflections on my past campus work with a third post that follows on from this one (1) and this one (2). The connections here to travel, apart from the obvious mentions, are the culture of individualism that has given rise both to travel and perhaps to some of the drive for activism. Keep an eye out and let me know what you think!

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“Travel is wonderful. A near-perfect state of surprise, wonder, and excitement. A chance to challenge your assumptions, defeat your prejudices, and write a new story for yourself. As a traveller. An exile. An adventurer. An explorer. As someone with great stories of struggle, survival, curiosity, courage and reinvention. But the pursuit of those narratives can be harmful, too.

Everything in life is about dosage. I’d gotten the dosage wrong. I felt ready to reprioritise, to commit to [a place], to [a partner], to my job…, to staying when things got hard, instead of running away to some romanticised, mirage, wanderlust new.”

Taken from chapter 13 of ‘Don’t Go There’ (Adam Fletcher)

There are great dangers of parachurch ministry amongst students. Firstly that the ‘parachurch’ bit can often come unstuck from the local church (we’ll come to this at some other point). But also that it is amongst students.

Students are deemed the next generation of world leaders, culture changers, thought shapers and activists. Increasingly much of society is encouraged to think about going to college – what perhaps once before was something just for a certain section of society. The student world is a fast-paced, fast-changing world, full of possibility, challenge and adventure, where the average student is impressionable and has plenty of free time (even if they don’t think so).

And so the role of the CU Staffworker is both a joy and a challenge. A joy, because very few other roles in ministry see so much change so quickly, so much fruit and such quick forgiveness (or memory) for mistakes made. And a challenge, for the same reason as the travel writer above articulated. Just as there are problems when the traveller lives for the romanticised travel-blog life, shaped by wanderlust and living every day as an their own adventure. So the staffworker when not grounded in the ancient gospel narrative, surrounded by the global church and embedded and submitted to a local gospel-preaching church, can quickly get the dosage wrong and forget the calling to which they are living. Let me explain how that looked in my life at times over these years.

“…the staffworker when not grounded in the ancient gospel narrative, surrounded by the global church and embedded and submitted to a local gospel-preaching church, can quickly get the dosage wrong and forget the calling to which they are living.”

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The danger of activism

One of David Bebbington’s four key characteristics of evangelicalism is activism. Evangelicals are activists. We love living out the gospel and letting it shape everything in life. This, unsurprisingly, is a very popular thing these days. Here are 3 examples in the Irish church at large:

1. Within the Church we are having vast swathes of people move from saying “God is building His Kingdom” to talk about how “we bring in the Kingdom of God”. We emphasize our action.
   
2. Within a very young and fragile Irish evangelical Church, students are often infuriated by the lack of zeal and purity and so break off into activist groups who seek to live a ‘more authentic’ life (often seen in groups like The Last Reformation, some Torah-emphasizing ‘Christian’ groups, the lure of subtle cult groupings currently having sway in Ireland, and sometimes just in lone-wolf evangelists, burdened for the lost).
   
3. And in a progressive theological scene which seeks to constantly find new things we missed in the Bible (like every PhD is designed to do), the New Perspective on Paul speaks into the vacuum that occurred when western individualism injected toxins into much of evangelicalism, and seeks to claim that free grace found in being united with Jesus and justified by faith alone is not good enough a motivator to propel us into bearing fruit. (Mr Vanhoozer gives a far better summary.)

So what about when we get the dosage wrong?

Well in each of these three things we’ve seen the disasters that have happened in the wider Church.

In the first, we often had many quick converts – the promise of God’s Kingdom here on earth as it is in Heaven is a juicy one. Glimpses can be seen. But soon people get fed up of how hard life is, how slow spiritual change is in our hearts and others, and many grow disillusioned with all they were promised and wander from the faith. There are better activist groups out there, they think. I have seen this in the many churches who do such wonderful work in communities, and use language like the aforementioned.

In the second, the newly formed ‘authentic’ groups often die off quickly. Partly because they have no identity other than being the “radicals”. And that identity is a fragile one. Either they find flaws within the group and need to split again. Or they start drawing different lines and emphasis to what the scriptures emphasize, and so forsake the gospel. Sadly they often do so having already ruined young believers – giving them a deep disillusionment about faithful gospel churches, or even worse in the case of some cults operating in Ireland currently, also giving them a suspicion of their own family and friends, to the point of cutting connections with them.

In the third, those who fully embrace the NPP, perhaps as a right reaction to this over-individualistic reading of the scriptures, often end up unable to clearly articulate the gospel in a way that doesn’t lose the assurance of faith that the New Testament writers seem to have, and succumb to a bland ecumenism (which seems a wonderful unity until you arrive at it and try and figure what gospel you have left).

<sup>Countries colored with green have cultures that are more individualistic than the world average. Countries colored in red have relatively collectivistic cultures.Reference
Beugelsdijk, S., & Welzel, C. (2018). Dimensions and dynamics of national culture: Synthesizing Hofstede with Inglehart. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49(10), 1469-1505.

TheCultureDemystifier, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.</sup>

But as well as these general trends in church life in Ireland, I found the tug of activism on my own heart as a Staffworker.

1. As a lone staffworker in Munster, I was tempted to think that I needed to work harder and longer, particularly with such short campus semesters. Campus X would not have a gospel presence unless I got there this week and met with strategic leaders and got everything done. That perhaps was true to some extent, and there are indeed times for sacrifice and hard graft (like in any part of life). But living on high doses of such activism without deep gospel roots would soon make me think more of myself and my role that I ought, and would soon lead me to burnout, cynicism and fatigue (as sadly happened with quite a proportion of staff who I served with, in different ways).
   
2. The more I lived like the above, the more I would be tempted to start trying to take short-cuts to make life/ministry simpler and easier. Instead of shaping student convictions by discipling with God’s Word open and letting them lead (even if that meant in weakness or with failures), I would be tempted to primarily give my (good) advice, turn up to every meeting and try and maybe implicitly control the direction of things by my presence or reasoning. Instead of seeing that the longterm way that faithful gospel witness might be on a campus was to develop a sustainable model that didn’t depend on me, I would be tempted to run round trying to be the hero in some ways, receiving praise from many Christians for such “radical, sacrificial living”.
   
3. And the more I was tempted to give myself to activism in small ways and big, the more exhausting it became, and the further from enjoying God’s heart I would drift. His yoke being light and his burden being easy were not recognisable to me in the day to day life I sometimes lived. And if His heart was not that of a generous Father, why would I pray?

…if His heart was not that of a generous Father, why would I pray?

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I found prayer was the first thing to disappear when my hands crafted activism, my heart was enveloped in busyness and my mind chose reason. When I was weary or tired, I was filled with cynicism and bitterness. When I was unsure, my mind replayed scenarios again and again. When I had not completed my task list that day, my hands applied to work longer hours.

None of it brought it to our Heavenly Father in prayer.
None of it brought it to our Servant King ruling on the throne.
None of it brought it to the Holy Spirit for Him to be at work even when we couldn’t be.
None of it enjoyed the freedom of the gospel which meant things weren’t resting primarily on my shoulders.
None of it basked in the gentleness of Jesus.
None of it modelled a life, communing with our Triune God.

I must say that through it all, none of this may have been obvious to the outsider that I was battling and wrestling deep within me to decide each day who I worshipped. I prayed with everyone I met. I filled in work monthly report logs which showed my working hours. I sat under fantastic gospel teaching which sought to persuade my heart that people did not need my good advice (primarily) they needed to meet the living God and hear Him speak. I knew that team life was the ideal. And God graciously seemed to be powerfully at work in the region on the campuses, drawing many to Him. But the tug of activism was still strong.

If you want to hear my full story of how I ended up broken by my own activism physically, I tell it in my book (chapter 2). [Ironically my thoughts on travel were part motivated from long hours living the “activist” life on the road between campuses! How gracious He is to bring good from ugly times!]

• It took many car journeys to turn my cynical thought cycles into hours of prayer on the road.
• It took many prayer letters to persuade myself that I was not the hero telling my story, but that God was building His Church through His ordinary people and their prayers.
• It took many months of realising that God could, would and had raised up many to follow Him, even on the days I felt most alone in that role.
• It will be many years before I will ever be as content as the old ladies in many of my supporting churches, who sit in their living room and pray all afternoon, with sparkling joy in their eyes as they do so.

• I am thankful for the life of my praying mother, always starting each day in prayer over breakfast.
• I am thankful for the life of my praying father, leading the family to rhythms of prayer and worship in different ways over the years.
• I am thankful for praying churches that I was part of who always valued corporate prayer.
• I am thankful for those in other churches I learned so much about prayer from, as we prayed for the nations together each month.
• I am thankful for the example of many fellow-labourers, like the Cork campus workers/lecturers prayer group that met once a week to pray together without fail.
• I am thankful for my first ever supervisor, who suggested to me to take working hours (sometimes days) to spend in prayer alone.
• I am thankful for an older worker from another organisation who took me away on silent retreat to show me just how entwined my heart was to the noise and busyness of life.
• I am thankful for individuals and families who have lifted me (and the work in Munster) up to God for years upon years in faithful prayer.
• I am thankful for those on our island who for generations have been praying for the gospel to go out everywhere.
• I am thankful for those in other parts of the world who have been praying for Ireland, unbeknownst to me, not only in historically Christian parts of the world, but in places like China, burdened for unreached Europe.

And I’m thankful that the good news of a Triune God, played out over all history across all peoples, is a wonderful corrector against individualistic activism done from a restless heart. This, of course, is the evangelicalism I grew up with. A deep-rooted, apostolic faith, founded on God and His words (in the scriptures) which gives us much strength as we live out our faith in light of His finished work on the cross and his intercession on our behalf, and as we act together as a Church on our knees. Will the young church scene here embrace it and grow to participate in that tradition, contextualised to Irish life today? We pray onwards.

On the Big Picture – God’s Glory

As I come to the end of 8 years working in an official capacity with Christian Unions (as staff worker, team leader and then part-time project manager for Christian Unions Ireland), and 12 in CU ministry of one sort or another (including my uni years and Relay internship), I’ve been deeply impacted and changed over this period.  Doubtless for the worse in some ways, but hopefully for the better in far more.  Although the EQUIP festival (now largely online) for hundreds of Irish students was a final ‘hurrah’ for me which left me busy till the last day of contracted working hours, I have been acutely aware over the last few months of a need to reflect on these years, to learn from them, and to give thanks to God for all He has done, both in me, through the student-led mission teams on campus (CUs) and also through my weak and fragile witness.

Doubtless, even for my own reflection, I may well write a few blog posts to help me process some of these years as what would have been known as a ‘travelling secretary’, and to amplify stories of God’s grace that may not have been heard in a remarkable era for the Irish Church. [To those who are here for only travel reflections, I apologise for the short detour – but perhaps it will give you a flavour of what God is doing in another part of the world] 

^{Munster being the southern 6 counties of Ireland – I was located in Cork, or at least was meant to be there when I wasn’t off on the road and sleeping on floors of generous friends and strangers!}

To be around during these years in Munster and Connacht, has been a privilege that I don’t think I’ll fully comprehend.  In the early days, any time I came home frustrated, weary or in tears and phoned my parents (without whose support I could not have done this job), I was reminded of the big picture – not only the big eternal picture of the gospel, but the big picture of where God has taken Ireland from in recent history.

Perhaps only 45-50 years ago, when Mum lived in Munster, a gathering of all the self-identifying evangelical (Bible believing) Christians in Munster may have only filled one hall of a church in Cork (albeit of course there are many who believe outside of those who self-identify as this).  Now, in the same city, the several thousand who worship week by week in evangelical churches are constantly hunting new premises in the city as they overflow in number on a regular basis, and grow in depth and maturity.  And that’s not to mention across the region.

Of course more gloomy pictures could be painted.  Numbers do not mean true Biblical, deep, historical belief, and many have been burnt by the immaturity of the young and rapidly growing church scene we see today.  As well, the Ireland of today that is steeped in Judaeo-Christian ethics and framework (albeit some of it horrendously applied in ways that we are glad to move on from), is rapidly trying to recover from some of that abusive ‘Christian’ past and seems to lack foundation for where to go.  The effects of this on the days to come will be harrowing and deep, depending on what directions are taken.  But at the moment it does not look promising. 

In addition, one senior figure on the university campuses (an academic) would instead say that this is a wearying time of moving heavy stones off the fields, before any sowing (of God’s Word) is possible (humanly speaking).  Doubtless both perspectives have great truth in them.  As a culture departs from the good rhythms that God has set up for the world to flourish, there will be painful days of reaping consequences.  And as that non-Judaeo-Christian system embeds itself into the fabric of society and into the air we breathe, there will be far more to “undo” before humanly speaking there is any chance of reciprocity of the good news of Jesus.

Holding gospel tensions may be one thing during my staff years that I have learnt is essential to the Christian walk.  For two things may at first appear contradictory, but yet still be completely possible to both be completely true.

And that’s the way I came to what I have been privileged to call my “job”.  I hesitantly stated in my early years of working, holding that tension in this way –  I thought Ireland was ripe for the gospel for a short window of opportunity, perhaps a decade or two (humanly speaking), before a stoic-pagan fusion (or whatever follows – most definitely different to the secular trajectory of other neighbouring European countries) took over more fully.

You can decide whether such an outlook was accurate or whether such optimism was naïve (perhaps reading far too much into the years I would be around serving) but I would hesitate to rebuke my younger self completely for such analysis now (perhaps I have repeated it too many times to myself!).  The power of God to use the vacuum in Irish society post-Catholicism to His glory was not to be underestimated.  The temporary nature of thousands coming to know Him, will be proved true or false in due course, but may already be somewhat evident in the slowing of such a church growth rate (amongst native Irish) in Dublin, where faster shifting from a Judaeo-Christian framework has taken place (than outside of Dublin).  For although God is of course free to work outside of human constraints and circumstance (and delights in doing so at times), the regular pattern in history seems to be of Him using such human circumstances by His Spirit.

Regardless of analysis (for which we can spend hours debating and which will doubtless be affected by our eschatology and personality amongst other things), it was those early days that in my first article for the CUI Irish Prayer News, I wrote of a desire to reflect God’s heartbeat for all peoples, that the CUs would soon be in a place where every student could get a chance to hear and respond to the gospel of the Lord Jesus, faithfully spoken and lived out by their fellow students.  That prayer got people chuckling when I first arrived in Cork.  “Who does this guy think he is?  He’ll soon find out how far off that reality we are” some were heard to quietly say.  Yet thankfully the same voices often were the ones who joined me in praying bold prayers for the campuses – our God can do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine.

Of course, for this to happen, it would need far more than a quick evangelism lesson and weekly splurge on campus.  Convictions deep inside of us would need changed.  A full-bodied ‘good news’ would need to take shape in far more than just our evangelistic zeal.  Our hearts, often so comparatively cold to the love that God has for the world, would need warmed by His love until a flickering reflection was visible in every area of life – academic study (9am lectures!), social life (midnight mischief!) and church community (including being sent on to campus to reach out) – to mention just a few.  Particularly, a young, restless and arrogant staffworker, would need humbled and reminded that God was not in the job of using supposed ‘heroes’ who happened to be in the right place at the right time.

The stories and thoughts that follow (in future blog posts) will echo some of how I’ve seen God to be more kind in answering that prayer of early days, than I could imagine.  But will sadly also tell of one (writing) who learnt the hard way that God does not need any individual to be a hero, but blesses ordinary people and calls them to enjoy glimpsing His hand at work in the world through His Church.

All things written of course should be held lightly, given how limited my perspective is, and how much history will tell whether seeds sown bear long-term fruit that lasts when Jesus returns.  But none-the-less, I do want to share a perspective to tell of His goodness, that the Church may rejoice all the more in our God of the gospel.

It seems appropriate to end this first reflection with the words of one student who asked me a question:

“Peter, why do you think God seems to be doing so little in Cork and on campus these days?”

To which I could only smile, knowing that they were only one of numerous students to have come to faith that term (a few years ago now) on that one campus, and knowing how God had used such young believers to go on to reach hundreds, if not thousands of other students with the good news of Jesus through their leadership of the Christian Union.  Not to mention the comparatively recent explosion of the Irish church in size.

That spiritual hunger in the heart of that student (and many others) to see the glory of God, manifested in people responding to the person of Jesus as He walks off the pages of the Scriptures, by the power of the Spirit, was one I would never want to quench.  And that hunger I hope informs these stories too – no matter what imperfect analysis of the past I do, I pray that it will not quench a great expectancy for more as we look ahead and are brought to our knees to pray for God’s people in Munster (and Connacht), both those who follow Him now, those who will follow Him, and those that will be One with Him and each other because of the latter’s witness too.

²⁰ “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, ²¹ that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

John 17:20-21

(Spending 5 years opening John’s eyewitness acount of Jesus’ life on a regular basis with students and staff, made passages like John 17 an even richer feast to enjoy!)

Campus Lights: students living and speaking for Jesus around the world

(Book review: Cawley, Muddy Pearl, 2019)
Disclaimer: As well as knowing the author, I received this book as a free review copy from the publisher, ahead of its release in July. This by no means changed my view of the book or meant that I ought to give it a positive review.

One of the things I love about travel, is the stories one hears from people from all sorts of backgrounds. From adventure stories that thrill us as we start to wonder where truth stops and fiction starts, to heart-breaking tales of messy reality that leave us deeply moved and wondering whether we should be acting differently. Stories inspire, illustrate and capture hearts and minds.

I was looking forward to this book for that exact reason – stories of God at work from campuses around the world. I know the author, Luke, having worked alongside him in UCCF (IFES in Great Britain), and I’ve always appreciated the power in his communication, and his ability to think independently. And I wasn’t disappointed – the opening chapter was of a student evangelistic gathering that was stormed by the Police in a far-off country, and leaders arrested. Boom – I was gripped!

But I was also wary. Have you ever met a traveller who never shuts up? Or someone who really thinks they’ve got incredible tales to tell, but leaves you stretching for you drink to hide your yawn? Having worked in student work and attended conferences and gatherings across Europe and beyond for over 7 years, it’s not just entertaining stories I am after – there are plenty of them around already! But thankfully this book is different.

Launched this coming week at The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) World Assembly, each chapter is carefully chosen to tell of the values that make a great student movement. But when you’ve only 12 or so stories to pick, it could be easy to pick the best, funniest and most glorious that paint IFES in a wonderful light. But Luke doesn’t. And the book is all the more wonderful for it. Here’s just a whisper of what it contains:

Chapter 2: Tales of Proclaiming Jesus (Indonesia and Middle East)
“Proclamation doesn’t work in our culture” is quite often what I get told in various settings where I visit. Setting aside the easier context of Europe, where tens of thousands are hearing the good news proclaimed through small CUs running high profile events and week of events, and where the IFES Europe “FEUER” conference is training hundreds to do so, Luke takes us to the most unlikely of places. Highly relational, highly Islamic settings, where openly discussing evidence about Jesus being God is forbidden. So how might proclamation of good news there work? In its own messy way, Luke tells us!

Engaging the University – what does Jesus say to what we study or to the culture around us?

Chapter 3: Tales of Promoting Justice (Guatemala and USA)
“We don’t have any justice issues here – we just need to preach the gospel” is a line that I again, often hear on campuses in Europe. But somehow in the south of Ireland, one of the largest Christian denominations is largely Nigerian, yet we see few Nigerians in our Christian Unions – why? And somehow in the north of Ireland we claim that we want everyone to meet Jesus, but we’ll refuse to shape our lives round ending the segregation in society to make that possible. Justice matters. Everyone expected Guatemala to be in the chapter. But no-one thought the USA would be here. Luke tells the controversial story of #blacklivesmatter and how Urbana tackled it – was it wise?

Chapter 4: Tales of Engaging the University (Sri Lanka and Great Britain)
If “reaching every student with the good news of Jesus” becomes our mantra, where is the place of equipping graduates to have a full-orbed worldview, a whole-person discipleship, that looks to have Christians in every sphere of campus life, making a difference and living for Christ? Vinoth Ramachandra (Sri Lanka) has been a long-term advocate of this, though it is not his story that is told. This chapter brings a wonderful depth to a good news that ought to impact every area of life, through humanly insignificant ways of lone students and academics.

Chapter 5: Tales of preparing graduates (Kenya and Romania)
The Kenyan tale was great. A business-man creating a prayerful, spirit-led stir across corporations and borders. The Romanian one, I’d wondered whether Luke (based there) had just written about his Romanian mates (a few of whom I’ve met). But out of the fog, came insight. A story that I wondered about where it was going, turned into God using failure, ‘wrong’ decisions and more, to grow something from nothing. The raw authenticity of the story made it utterly relatable to so many stories here in Ireland. Perhaps a model for pursuing life as graduates.

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Training leaders in Ireland.

Here the book takes a turn in emphasis, taking convictions of a student movement, and figuring out to make them sustainable:

Chapter 6: Tales of Leadership Development (Solomon Islands and Mongolia)
What a joy to read something of two messy movements. Both works of God in hard places, but for utterly different reasons. How do we grow leaders from being consumers (or non-Christians) through to leading such movements? Here lies two great examples at varying stages.

Chapter 7: Tales of Financial Sustainability (South Korea and Burkina Faso)
There reaches a stage in every movement where finance is an issue. Luke takes one country that is highly “Christian” but sharply in decline, and another that is used to depending on others for support and shows how things can be sustainable in both, despite challenges. Or rather he doesn’t show us. He tells their stories, and leaves us to work things out – a far better way to help us contextualise!

Chapter 8: Stories from the future (St Kitts)
And before I knew it, 16 hours later (not all spent reading), I’d finished the book. Gripped by many a story. Challenged anew by what I’d read. Even made to think by the way Luke handled the passages he turned to in each chapter in fresh ways.

A new generation of student leaders in Belfast

This was certainly not what I thought it would be – “Shining Like Stars 2″ – a sequel to Lindsay Brown’s great account of God at work across campuses. Nor is it a history of IFES, although it does contain snippets.

But it is both a stimulating read for the thinker, and a call to action. A tale of God working through weakness, and a springboard for us to be used similarly. A collection of apparently random lifestories from round the world, yet of intimately connected, diverse family members who all have a family name written over their doors. And the name is not IFES. The name is Jesus.

I’d encourage any staff member to pick this up and read it, but also any student who wishes to be encouraged by God at work, and challenged by some convictions which they might help shape CU life. And for those of past CU generations? Come, celebrate what God has done and is doing!

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Peter is a Team Leader with Christian Unions Ireland in Munster and Connacht and normally blogs on faith and travel, which increasingly overlaps with the culture of the campuses he works on. You can find his book “Travel: in tandem with God’s Heart” (IVP 2018) in ebook or physical format from any major distributor.

How your Christian Union can make the most of travel

I told one church leader what the seminars were at the Christian Union (student-led, interdenominational mission team on the university campus) Weekend Away:

Travel,
Conversational evangelism,
Community and Hospitality.

“I hope the students choose the one on evangelism – it’s far more relevant to mission on campus than the others” replied the church leader.

But is it?  Should we just cancel the other seminars and have everyone narrow their focus to evangelism?  Asides from the dualism of his assumptions, here’s 5 evangelistic reasons I think he’s missing out:

1. Most people explicitly mentioned in the book of Acts that come to faith, do so while away from home.  There are thousands of International Students on our campuses from some of the most unreached places in the world.  If we understand travel, we’ll understand them and be able to prioritise getting alongside them with open arms and warm hearts.
2. God is a God of all peoples.  He desires that an international band of followers congregate round his throne one day.  It’s bizarre if our churches and CUs don’t mirror that by welcoming in, and even prioritising the “outsider”.  How can we do this?  Well, one way is by knowing and experiencing what it is to be an outsider ourselves, in other cultures, in other lands or even where other religions are practised.
3. The CU who travels together on mission, often not only benefits the culture who has invited them to visit, but learns things they can put back into practice in their home culture far more effectively.  Perspective is an incredible thing that can shape every day – why not get your CU thinking through this travel option?
4. Everyone has questions on our minds and yearnings on our hearts.  That’s what it is to be made human.  But we don’t always express them with our lips, unless experiences in life force those questions to the forefront of our minds/hearts, and unless we have those we trust beside us who we can share deep things with.  Travel allows us to share hours of the day together, to be vulnerable with each other, in a way that little else does.  Why not travel with our non-Christian mates?
5. Travel dominates conversations, fills Instagram feeds and echoes longings on many student hearts.  Know how to relate the gospel to travel?  You’ll know how to relate so much of our culture to the gospel too, in ways that students will be able to relate to and understand.

So what does a CU that loves travel look like?  Here’s 5 further top tips of practical things you can do to help that involve travel, or understanding it:

To welcome the traveller:

• A welcome week!  Whether it’s international students arriving at a far off place, or just Irish students from 20 miles down the road, it’s amazing to be welcomed by a warm community of people.  Speak to your staffworker or Friends International worker about running some basic welcome activities/events or having a welcome pack from the CU/local churches for every overseas student.  Wouldn’t it be amazing if the first person that every first year student met was a Christian, offering a warm smile, help with their luggage and a welcome pack?  Could you even offer the university that there’ll be Christians to pick students up from the airport?  Don’t just duplicate what’s already on offer!
• A homestay program.  The college holidays hit and all local students go home to be with family.  But what about the international students?  They’re left alone and often with days that they aren’t away travelling.  Could you work with your staffworker to link them to local Christian families who’ll offer a warm home to visit around Christmas and Easter?  Often those friendships go far beyond the day that they visit!  And it’s really easy to organise – all you need to do is get word out there – even a 2 person CU can do that!
• An International Cafe community space.  Once a week pick a cultural theme or activity, hang a few flags up, play some music and voila, you’ll have an international cafe!  The purpose of it isn’t to entertain people or to get huge numbers, but to build deep relationships with the local helpers, who are all Christians.  Sometimes a Bible study might run concurrently to it, for the many who want to find out more and are naturally curious.

A homestay program just needs a flyer (even a culturally insensitive one like this one worked fine!!) and a staffworker who can liaise with local churches who can host.

A more-fancy-than-usual event when we partnered with the local Chinese Christian Fellowship for Chinese New Year – they did all the hard work!

To travel with the local student:

• The CUs across Europe that are most effective, are generally those that have community groups with leaders who live in the halls of residence.  Why is this?  Well, because of what we said earlier: people who journey alongside each other are vulnerable with each other too.  And even if that travel is only a twenty minute walk to lectures every day, or a trip to the shop together – the depth of friendship adds up quickly, particularly when people eat together in community too!  So why not start Bible study groups in your halls?  University College Cork CU even had a “3,2,1, GO!” rhythm in place, where they do a Bible study each week for 3 weeks, and then reach out with the good news of Jesus in small ways in their hall of residence on the fourth week (eg: Text-a-toastie and a question about God).
• Don’t have halls of residence in your college?  Some colleges where most students commute in, have car-sharing arrangements or public transport where many of the people are students.  One student in Carlow offered a lift to a lady every day of term, and she became a Christian before the end of the year!  Another deliberately didn’t put her earphones in immediately every day, leaving chance for conversations with people to develop at the bus stop and as time went on.

Some of my first ever smallgroup/hall group, before a once-a-term formal meal which the whole hall of residence went to.

And so we could go on.  Have you seen good ways that we can all be integrating our faith with our travels as mission teams on Irish universities and campuses?  Let me know!

And in the meantime, please don’t just denigrate travel to the thing you’ll never think about, because it’s not as important.  God can use travel to revolutionise your CU and cause ripples across the nations: will you let Him?

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Unity model 3: allowing all things in love

Previously (here) I’ve set-up the problem of Christian unity and suggested that there are 3 ways potentially to solve it.  I use examples of female speaking, power evangelism (healing alongside verbal proclamation) and holding events in pubs.  For models 1 and 2 see here and here.  Here I will examine a third approach:

Decide that no matter what the issue, those leading can practice what they want, as long as it is still keeping the main thing, the main thing and within evangelicalism’s bounds. Want a female speaker to give a prophetic utterance in a pub?  Be my guest!  It’s allowing all things in love

What are the advantages of this model?

• It seems to allow for diversity with a unity.  Some would say the other-person-centred-ness of it is the very thing we find in the Godhead.
• it helps people see what and why others believe what they believe

And the disadvantages?

• again, it’s tricky to define evangelicalism in doctrine and emphasis and very easy to condemn others if some fractional thing is seen to be unbiblical in someone elses’ theology/practice
• it is hard.  To be asked to positively support people who are doing things that you’ve consciously decided are not merited or are unbiblical, is hard.  In practice this often ends up with everyone doing their own thing separately and yet claiming unity.

Unity Model 2: finding the middle ground

Previously (here) I’ve set-up the problem of Christian unity and suggested that there are 3 ways potentially to solve it.  I use examples of female speaking, power evangelism (healing alongside verbal proclamation) and holding events in pubs.  The first model can be found here.  Here I will examine a second approach:

Work out what you’ll concede to each other for the sake of the gospel and realising that you’ve already got the main thing in common. Perhaps there’s one event all year that would work amazingly better in a pub than it would elsewhere?  Perhaps female evangelists and female testimonies can be prioritised over and above female Bible teaching?  Perhaps offering to pray for healing after you’ve been chatting to someone may be good, but not as the first emphasis of why you speak to them?  It’s about finding a middle ground.

What are the advantages of finding a middle ground?

• It probably makes everyone feel slightly uncomfortable and doesn’t seem to favour one “side” over another (apart from perhaps those in the middle ground!).
• It seems to be where some lowest common denominator stuff drifts to anyway, by natural.

And the disadvantages?

• it’s quite hard to define what the middle ground is.  What is the spectrum of true evangelicalism?  How can you have a half-way house on some issues?  Does going half-way on healing completely defeat the purpose of it to start with?
• Are people bound by this half-way mark to all start teaching and agreeing with it, or does everyone teach what they think, but then resign themselves to a middle ground for the mission?
• What is the middle ground if 15 people want one thing and 3 want another?  Do you go 1/5 of the way towards the other side?!

Can I further add again, that this is NOT discussing what issue is right, simply how we can unite people on a mission team who are already determined that Scripture says their position is right, on a given secondary issue.