Today on the Evangelist Podcast, we're looking at student missions, the what and the why.
SPEAKER_00The Evangelist Podcast from Revival. Find out what's new in telling people the good news about God, the world, and you. With Andy Brinkley and Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to the Evangelist Podcast. I'm Andy Brinkley, and with me is Glenn Scrivener. Hello everyone. We're looking at student missions and the what and the why, and we're going to look at preparing for student missions. But before we do, Glenn, you you were at uh Edinburgh University last week.
SPEAKER_01Uh I was at Napier University in Edinburgh. Okay. And uh so I went up I went up to Edinburgh, and actually on the on the way up to Edinburgh I sort of uh got a real encouragement evangelistically speaking. Um my taxi driver on the way to the the uh train station. Um didn't know I was a Christian, just started talking, and I said uh was it was a Sunday, and I said, uh was it uh a rough Saturday night? They can be a bit hairy, can't they? And and he said, Well, yeah, it was, but but not for the usual reasons. He said, My my friend has uh Hodgkin's disease and he's sort of stage four and it's it's pretty serious, he hasn't got long left. I said, I'm really sorry. He said, Yeah, but the the reason why he went to hospital last night was he sort of drank himself into a near coma. Um and uh he said uh it's such a shame because he used to be a real man of faith, says this taxi driver. He said he he used to be really religious, he was a Christian. But uh because of the disease he's he's kind of turned from it and he's hit the bottle very, very hard. And uh the taxi driver didn't know I was a Christian. He said it was a real shame actually. Um he was a lot more balanced and uh had a much better outlook on life when he was a Christian. And I said, Well, it's interesting, I'm a I'm a Christian actually, and I'm going up to Edinburgh to speak on a few issues. One of them is is to do with God and suffering, and one of the things I'm gonna say is that with God and suffering, if you get rid of God, you've still got the suffering, but now you don't have the the comfort and the help of of God with you in that suffering. And and the taxi driver said, Yeah, I I completely see that. He was so much more balanced when he was a Christian, and and actually the taxi driver said, I'm gonna drive this friend of mine to uh a a church minister to to see if the church minister can kind of sort him out. Um we kept on talking, and the and the taxi driver said, uh I had some Christians in here about three months ago, and they were really interested in the fact that my name was Luke. And uh these Christians they said there's a book of the Bible called Luke. Is that right? And funnily enough, I just got out of my bag um Luke's Gospel. Um and we'll perhaps talk about why I I got Luke's gospel out of my bag uh in a in a second, but um I'd I'd actually packed Luke's Gospel. And I said, Well you're never gonna believe this, but um I I I threw Luke's gospel onto the onto the dashboard just next to the GPS and he said, Is that the Luke book? I said, That's totally the Luke book. He said, That's the Luke book. I said, Yeah. And here's something interesting. On Friday when I packed that bag, I put Luke's gospel in there and I prayed, God, if there's someone I can give this to, I pray that we'd cross paths. And uh he said, That's amazing. I said, I think God wants you to read this book. And he said, Oh, I I do too. He said, I've been waiting for for this uh Christian couple three months ago to send me the Luke book. They said they were going to, and I've been waiting for it, and they haven't. And I said, Well, God's got his job done in a in a different way, hasn't he? Um and and then I said, you know, you you better watch out when you read that book, because I actually actually became a Christian reading that book. It's very, very, very dangerous. And he said, If I become a Christian, I'm gonna blame you. I said, Well, the the the way that this uh afternoon has unfolded, I think we we see it's it's out of both of our hands. So I think it's I don't think it's about either of us, do you? And he said, No, I'm definitely gonna read that. So uh we can all pray for Luke. Excellent. But the reason I had sort of a Luke's gospel, um, apart from the sovereignty of God, is is is that um so often around the universities in the UK they're they're basing their missions around Luke's Gospel. That's sort of the the gospel project that uh UCCF, the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship, uh has been pushing different gospel projects over the years. I remember back in my day it was sort of Mark's Gospel and and they did some John's Gospels and now Luke's Gospel, uh these sort of free gospels that are being made available to students. Uncover isn't it? Uncover. So it's sort of if you if you get to see it, and we'll per perhaps have a link on the on the show notes, but uh if you get to see these uncover Luke's Gospels, they're very attractively produced, like little moleskin notebooks. And uh they're kind of uh meant to remind you of um like an evidence file that you might use in CSI that you're uncovering the evidence about Jesus. And um in these Luke's Gospels there's um uh QR codes, little barcodes that uh your phone will take you straight to the website uncover.org.uk, which has brilliant gospel videos that take you through the stories in Luke and also answer questions about what about God and science and god and miracles and god and suffering, and did Jesus really rise from the dead and these sorts of things. So it's a brilliant resource, a brilliant package really. And loads of uh universities and and Christian unions around the country uh are putting on these missions and and using these Luke's Gospels as as ways of spreading the good news, and that's that's part of what I was doing uh up in Edinburgh with Napier University.
SPEAKER_02Did you find sort of the the students were open?
SPEAKER_01Wow, yes. Massively, massively open. And I I think student mission is uh a brilliant thing to get involved with. You've got uh people who have just left home and just figuring out what they believe about life, they're being encouraged to ask deep questions about Christianity and about you know the life, the meaning of the world and everything. So there's that and and and also I think university time is is a time when you're rubbing shoulders with a lot of different beliefs and suddenly you're living in close proximity with a a Buddhist and a Muslim and a Christian. And I think Christians living on campus in close proximity with non-Christians happens in a way that it doesn't really happen at other times in life. And I think there's a a tremendous opportunity for Christian unions to m to reach out on campus and to make a real splash and to make people really think. So I th I think student missions are uh are brilliant. And you know, this this year's a hundred different Christian unions are gonna be putting on some kind of mission events, um whether it's for a few days or for a week or perhaps even two weeks. Hundred different CUs are gonna be doing that this this year, and and uh UCCF reckoned that they'll they'll reach thirty thousand students.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_01Um which is something, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So what did you do at uh Edinburgh then?
SPEAKER_01At Napier University, um they were they were putting together some mission events together with um well there was another um university, Queen Margaret University, doing some things as well, and Harriet Watt University were doing some things as well. And uh I was mainly based with Napier University. There's about twenty thousand plus people at Napier University. And uh it was uh a a great week of we'd start with sort of prayer in the morning, I'd do some training after the prayer meeting, uh and then we'd hit the campus and we'd sort of get into conversations via questionnaires or doing a sort of a a question board where people could put up questions that they'd want an answered, and then lunch times we had special lunch talks, and then in the evenings uh various evening events where uh I got to preach from Luke's gospel about Jesus in a more extended way. So it was it was a kind of a a week of saturating the the campus with as much sort of gospel input as we possibly could, and we had we had a great time actually. Uh we saw saw seventeen people tick a box on our feedback form saying they wanted to find out more. We got one guy ticking a box saying, Count me in, I'd I'd like to be a Christian. And you know, who knows what those things mean uh even even within the month, let alone in the in the context of eternity. But it's encouraging. Yeah and it's a good sign that people when they hear about Jesus are engaged, they want to find out more, and um and certainly the the Christian Union we're very uh encouraged.
SPEAKER_02Well we're gonna go into a little bit about uh preparing for a university mission. But before we go on, uh I just want to highlight our free daily prayer bulletin. It's a small twenty-four-page booklet that tells thirty-one stories of what God is doing around the world. I don't know if you hear any good Christian news or whether you just hear all the bad stuff that's going on, but this has got some really good news within it. It's got about the Macedonian mission to the Balkans, or do you know what we have to learn from the Cuban Church? And it says that millennials are the best at sharing Christ. You can find out more by going to revivalmedia.org slash bulletin. So Glenn, we're looking at uh student missions and we're looking at uh preparing for university missions, and that you must find as a speaker to missions to go along and see what the Christian Union has have done in preparation and be interesting to find out what what sort of things you expect to have been done there. So perhaps you could just sort of share with us how we should go about looking at uh university missions.
SPEAKER_01I think the the first thing you should do is uh go to uh mozzy.org. Right. And uh Michael Otts is just the guru on all student missions. He's he's done sort of more than any of us really. And he's put together a a little document called uh the def the definitive mission planning resource. Uh that's available on his website on the or on the UCCF website. And if you are a Christian union and you want to think about how to put on a mission week, just open up this document and uh go through it step by step. It's it's um very thorough and very helpful indeed. I think if you are wanting to put on a a a week of events, I think first of all think about why. Yeah. Why do we want to put on this week of events? Is it just because well a hundred other CUs are doing it, and you know, we want to get we we want to be able to get to the end of the week and be able to say, well, nobody said we we didn't, and we've ticked that box, and now we can wash our hands of our evangelistic obligations and off we go into the rest of our year. Um hopefully that's not the reason why you should do it. Don't do it for the sake of doing it. I think work backwards from what you want to see happen. There are all sorts of other points in your year where you can scatter the seed in your campus, in your university. All sorts of uh opportunities that you can kind of Yeah, scatter the seed, make Jesus known. I think in a mission week what you want to see is a bit of reaping. And of of course it's out of our hands, whether we reap or not, you know, it's God who gives the growth, says 1 Corinthians 3. But God uses means in order to to get his job done, and and the means he uses is to proclaim the gospel in the power of the Spirit, and that's that's what we want to do in these weeks. And so I what I what I would love Christian unions to do is not to begin from the beginning and think, Can I fill a week with events? Because the answer to that question is always yes, okay. But you might just end up exhausting yourself and and not not doing much good if you just think, How can I fill a week of events? If you work backwards from what would somebody need to happen in order for them to make a commitment to Christ, to receive Christ? What would have to happen? And and and I guess at that point, working backwards from there, you're thinking, well, ideally people would have repeated exposure to the gospel. Ideally there would be multiple opportunities for the same person in the same kind of way to encounter Christ in Scripture. Hopefully that person will have heard enough about Christ in order to respond to him. And the only way that they're gonna have heard enough about Christ is if in these mission events there is decent time given to the gospel, decent time given to opening up the scriptures and talking about Jesus. When you work backwards from that, I think your mission week starts to look a little different. I think you start to think of events that give space for a talk, not just quickfire events that might be flashy and might attract more people. Um I think there are all sorts of ways of attracting more people throughout the throughout the year, scattering the seed throughout the year. Mission Week, I think, is more of a reaping week. So work backwards from there. That's that's my top tip. Yeah. Um work backwards from there. Figure out how you're gonna build momentum. Really enjoyed my time with Napier University um last week. One of the s one of the challenges we had was there there were three very uh different campuses, and we'd be on one campus for two days, another campus for two days, another campus for one day. And without fail, the second day on each campus was uh we we got we talked to to double the numbers of people, double the numbers of people came to lunch bars in the first but then you've got to move on. So think about how you can build momentum with events that happen in the same venue with the same group of people, because not only will that build momentum and a crowd will bring a crowd, but also those who keep on coming back are getting that that repeated exposure to the gospel, which is all important. So work backwards from what you want to see. Try and think about how to build momentum. I think try and pray big. Get together as a CU and and remember that we have a father who has always been giving life to his son, who has given his son to this world to bring life to the world, who has given us his spirit, so that we now in the name of Jesus take Christ and His mission out to the world and and God is the great evangelist. It's not that God is the static one and we need to get busy for a week doing mission. It's that, in the words of Hebrews 13 13, Jesus is outside the camp with his arms outstretched to the world, let us go to him outside the camp. Mission is about joining Jesus on his outgoing mission. And therefore get ex get excited uh uh about leaving the comfort zone, leaving the the camp, leaving the safe place, the clean place, going into the unclean place, the unsafe place, the place where God's not known, get excited about that, pray about that. And also figure out how you can use your existing connections. So hopefully, if you're a Christian student, that that you know you I don't know, maybe maybe you're in a band and and therefore an acoustic night is not just like one idea um that you have that might grab people in, but it's an organic way of getting your band to come along and play in an acoustic night and someone else's band to come and play and and there might be a gospel talk or something or a testimony. Think of think of ways that you can involve your life in the rest of of your university life in the events that that sort of happen. And then then one one other thing to think about as you're preparing missions is is talk to experienced mission leaders. So within UCCF there will be like a staff worker uh who's hopefully been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, seen it all before, and will have lots of good uh ideas about things. Uh talk to your church leaders. Wouldn't it be great if the churches uh really got excited about this week of mission and were prayerful for it and gave money for it and and wouldn't it be great if the CU, at the end of this this sort of mission week, were leading people to church? And at the at the end of the week it's uh it was a case of, you know, on the Friday night saying, Hey, we're gonna we're gonna go to church together, why don't you come and join us? And wouldn't it be great if that was the sort of the end point of the mission? So so figure out your your sort of church Christian union links and partner together in that kind of mission.
SPEAKER_02Also important to to for the CU to get to know the speaker as well. You know, it's you might not want to bring your friends to someone who's a bit of a strange speaker. Yeah, absolutely. You know, wouldn't particularly go well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. So much of my work as an evangelist is actually f first going to speak in a place and and sort of reassuring them that I don't have two heads and that you can trust your friend into my care for that, you know, twenty minutes when I give a a gospel talk. So just, you know, on Sunday morning I went up to a church and I sort of spoke in the on the Sunday morning with the view to in a month's time I'm giving an evangelistic talk in a restaurant and and really it's a case of them getting to know me as a speaker and being able to trust me. So certainly UCCF recommends that you sort of do a three-in-one mission, that if you get a speaker, you get the speaker to come in November and do a uh house party with the Christian Union, and at that stage you're doing some training with them and they're getting to know you as a speaker. And then secondly you do a uh Christmas carol event, um a carol service, and that's sort of a a one-off evangelistic event, and they get to see you in that environment, and then hopefully they're building trust, and hopefully the non-Christians are seeing you as well, and and then in the perhaps it's perhaps you'll do um a January or February mission, and by that stage they've got to know you a bit, they've seen you in an evangelistic context, and they and they trust you a bit. So yeah, a good good rapport with the speaker is um is really important. And and and I I might be biased, but I think a single speaker for all three of those events and a speak single speaker through the week is better. Right.
SPEAKER_02Than than separate speakers for separate. Then lots of separate speakers.
SPEAKER_01I mean certain certainly two speakers, you know, perhaps one one speaker who does the all the lunch times and one speaker who does all the evenings, that's that's fantastic again, because in the same environment you're building momentum. But I think I think if you if you just get sort of one speaker for the Monday, one speaker the Tuesday, one speaker for the Wednesday, one speaker the Thursday, again you're not building momentum, you're not building trust. Ideally, ideally I think one or two speakers um building momentum through the week is the ideal.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So how sort of far back would you expect people to start preparing for a mission?
SPEAKER_01Well, uh I've just been asked to do a mission in 2016. Really? So they asked me for 2015 and they couldn't do it, and they thought, well, what about 2016? So don't despair if you uh if you feel like you well, I haven't even booked someone for next week. They'll all have graduated by the way. I know, I know. Yes, you don't you don't have to book two years in advance, but certainly um it depends on when you want to put your mission week. Some some people um prefer a sort of a November time, and some people prefer a sort of a uh February-March time. Those those tend to be there's a bit more of a lull in the academic year in those times, so it's good to good to put those missions there. Some put missions on in Freshers Week and and um quite a few universities have sort of they've almost sort of found themselves doing like a a full-blown mission week in in Freshers Week. Um because uh people just are so up for anything. You know, they're gonna try out anything in Freshers Week. And they've got a lot of time and and so that that can be good. So, you know, obviously if you're doing a Freshers Week mission, uh you need to kind of get talking about that in June before you break up for the for the summer holidays. If you're doing a November mission, then you've really got to hit hit the ground running in September, October when when when the year begins. But I I I think February, March uh is probably the better the better time to have a mission in because you can be um preparing for the the term beforehand, um the term before Christmas. But um so it it doesn't just happen these missions. You it does it does take planning and and if you're a larger CU then then perhaps a committee would be uh the ideal. As you're preparing, I think what's what's quite important is to get talking to your mission speaker or speakers because you might come up with a a hundred ideas that might be great for them to do, but but they've got no experience at you know in in those particular issues that you're asking them to do and that that might not be their speciality and and they will know from their own experience, you know, how they speak best. And so I th I think talking with your mission speaker is uh is really vital in terms of if you want to get the best out of them, ask them what what has worked best for them in the past. Um that's that's really really important. Uh and and deciding on a theme for the week, I I I'm I'm always in two minds as to how important it is to have like a consistent theme because very few people will come to every event, you know, within within the week, and very few people will expect there to be a a huge degree of consistency. But um things like Jesus for skeptics as a as a title, I mean that's I I really like that as a title. I don't know whether it was Michael Green or Michael Otts who sort of came up with that. They they often use Jesus for skeptics as a as a as a title. Uh this last week in Napier University we were doing YOLO, You Only Live Once. Question mark, do you, do, do you, don't you? But even within that, you know, it wasn't as though people were expecting me to deal with the issue of the afterlife every every talk, and uh it would get a bit samey if if I did. Other other talk titles and and themes that uh Michael Lotz uh speaks about and is uh you know how how is God relevant or what kind of God dot dot dot. What would Jesus say to dot dot dot and then you can think about you know what would Jesus say to Lindsay Lohan or Tom Cruise or Richard Dawkins or and then finish with what would God say to me? What would Jesus say to me? Get get thinking about those those sorts of things. Certainly in your advertising and flyering, having a strong brand could be important.
SPEAKER_02Get the marketing students. Exactly to uh Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So when I did Falmouth uh Christian Union, Falmouth University is just full of uh graphic designers and illustrators and and uh yeah they they absolutely loved absolutely loved doing that and and came up with some brilliant artwork.
SPEAKER_02So uh it's really it is really scattering the seed for the whole year. It's not just one week and then back to normal after. It's kind of a time of reaping and and prayer, you know, prayer all the way through sort of undergirding it and Massively, massively.
SPEAKER_01And and you know, it is it is a high impact week. And there is great benefit to having a high impact week. And I and I think that for instance, if you hit the campus and you do sort of questionnaires, spiritual surveys of beliefs and and you get into conversation after conversation after conversation in mission week, it does give you much more confidence on non-mission weeks that you know what, I am only ever a hop, skip and a jump away from a a a gospel conversation. And I can do this, this does happen, and and you can just talk to people about Jesus. And it's it's amazing how the mission week can give you confidence ongoingly that actually well why why not why not talk to people about Jesus a bit more? It's scary, of course it's scary, but but having done it and having done it together and prayerfully and having seen God bless our efforts in this way and that way, suddenly it gives you more confidence for the rest of the week and the rest of the year to be the ongoing people that and the outgoing people that God wants us to be.
SPEAKER_02Okay, well we're gonna look at the how of student missions next time. So we'll leave it there and and pick it up next time. Great. So if you have any comments about today's show, you can just go to revivalmedia.org slash TEP43. You can leave your comment there, uh, and on that uh page we'll have the links to the Michael Otts booklet and uh the uncover gospels, etcetera. Thanks very much for listening and see you next time.