In Depth:  Daniel Hames

What’s the slowest thing on six legs? Three Christians trying to get through a door — they all keep saying ‘No, no! After you!’

Such was the mood at week one of New Word Alive at Pwllheli. Surrounded by Christians in an atmosphere of unity, celebration, and enjoyment we basked in the Welsh sun (believe it or not) and sat under God’s Word. Vaughan Roberts’s Bible Readings from 1 Corinthians set the tone each day before guests poured into various seminars, training tracks, and leisure activities.

At Forum last September, UCCF’s fifth Gospel Project, FREE, was officially launched. Around 1,000 students, staff, and Relay workers saw the unveiling of 400,000 copies of impressive new FREE gospels, and more than 20 additional resources.

For many UCCF Christian Unions (CUs) around the country, February means missions.

Today’s university is a dangerous place for young students. In the marketplace of ideas, secular relativism is the unchallenged king, ruling with the strong arm of tolerance.

The gospel is frequently squashed out and silenced, as in the case of the recent ruling against Exeter Christian Union (CU) by Mark Shaw QC, which maintained that an atheist should be allowed to run the CU. The knowledge of the Living God is suppressed, just as we read in Romans 1, and subject to distortions and dubious personal interpretations. Today’s students are a generation without Christ and without hope in the world; taught to ignore him, indoctrinated to deny him.

UCCF has historically been committed to communicating the unchanging gospel into a rapidly changing world.

The challenges of this task can seem overwhelming — a culture that rejects the notion of truth, a society that turns its back on God, a church that seems all too willing to soft-pedal the hardest parts of the message. Yet for the thousands of students in Christian Unions around the country, communicating the gospel is an urgent task that must be done for the sake of those who know nothing of Jesus.

The Christian Union (CU) at Exeter University hit national headlines recently by becoming the first ever CU to take legal action against its student association. The committee of the group filed papers against the Student Guild at the university on January 5, claiming that the university has denied them freedom of speech, belief and association.

The legal action comes after the 50-year-old CU was suspended from the official list of student societies on campus, had its Student Union bank account frozen, and was banned from free use of Student Guild premises and advertising facilities. Exeter Student Guild claims that the CU’s constitution and activities do not conform to its Equal Opportunities Policies, which have been introduced only recently.

Christian Unions (CUs) have been at the heart of Britain’s universities for over 78 years, proclaiming the gospel and giving non-Christians the opportunity to hear the good news of Jesus Christ.

Many CUs enjoy positive relationships with their Students’ Unions or guilds. Recently, however, some CUs have been criticised and banned by their Student Guilds. At the centre of these disputes is the need for Christian students to have the freedom to meet together, and express their historic beliefs which are increasingly rejected by secular society.

Historically, the most exciting and strategic times of the gospel’s advance have been marked by fierce opposition and resistance from those who find its message offensive and foolish.

In Acts, we read of Paul’s encounter with Alexander the metalworker who did him ‘a great deal of harm’. In the 1780s, Charles Simeon, curate at Trinity Church, Cambridge, preached for ten years to a congregation locked out of their pews by angry churchwardens. Opposition is part and parcel of Christ’s call to mission.