In Depth:  Dan Hames

UCCF’s mission is to the university. We exist to proclaim the message of Jesus in the student world and see young people becoming his disciples.

To that end, we produce an array of resources to equip Christian students for their mission — tooling them up for the work of mission. A happy by-product of this is that many of our resources can be put to good use in the local church as well: in youth groups, for training, for church-based student work.

The great Puritan pastor, Richard Sibbes, spoke of the Reformation as ‘that fire which the entire world shall never be able to quench’; a bright and blazing gospel rediscovery that shone around the world.

Perhaps Sibbes remembered the prophecy of the Bohemian ‘Morning Star of the Reformation’ Jan Hus (the surname means ‘goose’), who, at the stake, warned his executioners, ‘You are now going to burn a goose, but in a century you will have a swan which you can neither roast nor boil’. 102 years later, Martin Luther, whose family seal was a swan, nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Luther’s Reformation in Germany was the firstfruits of the rest of Europe. Perhaps Sibbes remembered the words of the English bishop, Hugh Latimer, spoken to his friend Nicholas Ridley in 1555. The two men were tied to the stake in Oxford’s Broad Street, and as the lighted fagot was laid at Ridley’s feet, Latimer encouraged him: ‘Be of good cheer, Ridley; and play the man. We shall this day, by God’s grace, light up such a candle in England, as I trust, will never be put out.’

Back in January’s EN, Michael Reeves wrote about the imminent launch of UCCF’s online theological centre, Theology Network (http://www.theologynetwork.org). He promised all the thrill of an old-fashioned sweetie shop minus the sugar — and he explained the rationale for this website: ‘To unleash the best biblical teaching so that students and all users might come to know and love the Lord Jesus in deeper, life-changing, mission-igniting ways’.

Behind the launch of Theology Network was our hope that UCCF Christian Unions would be theologically driven — that is, illuminated, empowered, and consumed by God’s gracious revelation of himself in his Son. We launched with the conviction that when students are captivated by the great gospel of Jesus they would be propelled onward in evangelism and tooled-up for discipleship.

In December’s Third Degree, we introduced to you UCCF’s fifth Gospel Project — a daring initiative to see 400,000 copies of the Gospel of Mark distributed on every university campus where there is a Christian Union (CU).

We asked EN readers to pray for the planning of the project, and to encourage students you know to enter the competition to name the project.

Relay is UCCF’s training and discipleship programme for new graduates. Each year, around 60 students leave university and begin the ten-month scheme, centred on serving Christian Unions and growing in their knowledge and love of God.

I am writing on the penultimate day of the third Relay Training conference of this academic year. 63 of us have gathered at the Quinta for the final week together — partly a debrief and partly a commissioning for whatever lies ahead. This week much of our time has been devoted to reviewing our year on Relay. We have honestly laid out the struggles, celebrated the joys and rejoiced together in God’s grace to us in the gospel.

Each summer, UCCF CUs (Christian Unions) send students out around the UK and the world on Summer Teams.

This year, 16 Summer Teams are planned the world over along with four International Student Outreach Teams which will take place around the UK, reaching out to international students who come to study English. Each team and country visited is unique, but activities may include leading Bible studies for Christians and non-Christians, English lessons, running sports camps, doing practical work, carrying out surveys, or even running campus missions. A key element is meeting with local student groups and encouraging them in their evangelism. Below is a taster of this year’s trips.

In 1919 a student called Norman Grubb began the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union in response to a theologically-weakened Student Christian Movement. Within the space of a few years, new Christian Unions sprang up around the UK and, in 1928, Grubb established Inter-Varsity Fellowship with a vision to see ‘an evangelical witnessing community on every university campus’.

79 years later, nothing has changed except the name. UCCF: The Christian Unions is still focused on making disciples of Jesus Christ in the student world and, just as Grubb had hoped, the gospel is proclaimed by witnessing communities on more than 300 university campuses across the country. This original vision is being powerfully worked out in 2007 as 92 Christian Unions (CUs) have held missions: weeks of intensive evangelism and gospel proclamation on their campuses.

‘Inaccessible’ and ‘impenetrable’ may not necessarily be the first words used by students involved in evangelical Christian Unions to describe the Old Testament, however, it would be true to say that many students can find the Old Testament difficult to understand, easy to misapply and intimidating to approach.