An update

I'm beginning to get into the swing of things now as Team Leader with UCCF in the North East.

This past week was a week of building gospel partnerships. There have been a number of meetings with other Christians: I met with representatives of eleven different mission agencies earlier in the week. These mission agencies come together to think, along with UCCF, how world mission can be better profiled and promoted amongst CU students. I came away with a lot of thinking to do - lots of exciting prospects ahead.

I've also met with a number of church leaders this week. Perhaps the highlight of the week was meeting the Yorkshire gathering of Newfrontiers ministers. I love the heart for Jesus and his gospel these folks have, and how that transfers itself in strong relationships and a commitment to church planting. It was exciting to hear about two plants that will happen in the next few months. I was also really encouraged by how many there wanted to develop stronger partnerships with CUs.

These were two very different gatherings, but I've spent the week reflecting on the second half of Galatians 2 having studied it with Hamish in Durham. How wonderful it is when Christians recognise that - above all, and through all of the differences - we have our justification in Christ in common.

Next week I'm heading back down again to Quinta in Shropshire; this time to speak at Durham CU's 'Freshers' Getaway'. There will be about 70 students coming away, 40 of them new Freshers. I'm really amazed at how this whole venture has come together and really excited by the thought of encouraging these Freshers to thrive as Christians during their time at university before they even start. To that end, I'll be teaching from the book of Daniel. Do pray that as I speak the Spirit will speak and reveal more of Jesus.

Pastures new

It's been a while since I last wrote anything on this blog - a combination of a holiday and moving house has meant that my Internet access has been minimal.

In the mean time, I've started a new job: I'm still working with UCCF but I'm now Team Leader in the North East region. That means I'll be responsible for leading the team of Staff and Relay Workers across the area as they seek to resource and inspire students to live and speak for Jesus during their time at university. I'm somewhat daunted but also excited about the months and years ahead. Linda is also seeing her career change: she's retraining and doing a PGCE at Sheffield Hallam University nearby.

We've settled into South Doncaster Community Church, and have been blown away by the reception we have received. It's so nice enjoying time with a church family, having the conviction that even when we don't know each other well yet, we have so much in common. Our new church family have welcomed us well, supporting us and seeking to meet our practical needs. Our new pastor, Alistair Gooderham, has a blog worth scanning sometime.

I've had some more thoughts on unity and a range of other issues and will seek to record them here in the coming days.

Lessons from New Word Alive

I have got back today from a week at New Word Alive in Pwllheli. Here are some things that particularly struck me.

1. Going through the parables in Luke's Gospel was a treat. The evening celebrations each focused on one of Jesus' parables recorded in Luke's Gospel. It's amazing how clearly these parables speak into everyday life and psyche of the Christian. Terry Virgo reminded us from Luke 15 of how the relationship God wants with his people is based on grace, as a father to a son. Don Carson spoke of the eternal consequences that the gospel has from Luke 16. The other messages were also top drawer. Perhaps my highlight was the exposition of the parable of the Good Samaritan by Krish Kandiah, who reminded that that although salvation is by grace, life in the kingdom will always show itself in radical neighbourly love. (I also attended a seminar from Dewi Hughes of Tearfund who made a similar point). We in the evangelical church have sadly often failed to meet the very real needs around us in the name of doing evangelism alone. But the heart of Christ is a heart to meet all needs - both temporal and ultimately eternal.

2. The doctrine of justification is to be treasured. I attended Mike Reeves' morning sessions on justification. I have left with more clarity on the doctrine itself and what it means to have been united to Christ and with a heart singing of Reformation truths. There are many ways that this doctrine can be weakened or removed from centre ground - but it is the bedrock of Christian life and spirituality. I had a brilliant conversation with a student who'd understood why joy was such a feature of the Christian life - we cannot fail to be joyful when the wonderful gospel truths saturate our hearts.

3. North Wales is beautiful. We were so fortunate to have a week in the sun. And the drive back today was truly awe-inspiring.

4. Conferences are great. God has not left us to be Christian hermits. His primary design is that Christians encourage each other, worship together and engage with the world through local churches. But I was struck this week by the very unique ministry opportunities that conferences bring - a teaching quality that can be rarely reproduced, a wealth of expertise, singing that engages the heart in a way not often seen in local churches, time to spend with friends, conversations with people you'd never otherwise share and so on. It's easy to arrive with a cynical attitude at a conference, but I for one think they're great.

5. Evangelical unity is worth fighting for. The group of students I took from Lancaster University and Uclan CUs were incredibly diverse - at least seven university churches were represented. It was brilliant to see students who'd previously written off believers from other Christian backgrounds actually treating each other like brothers and sisters for the first time, centring around the core truths of the gospel. Gospel unity is an incredibly attractive thing - and vital to demonstrate the joyful truth of the gospel to the world.

New Word Alive 2010 will run from 13-18 April. Confirmed speakers include Wayne Grudem, Jerry Bridges and Rebecca Manley-Pippert.

The deeper gospel

I'm writing from the last day of the first of two weeks of outreach events at Lancaster University. As ever, it's been a mixed time: frustration and heartache is inevitable, but there have also been great encouragements. I'd encourage you to check out things from the perspectives of Michael, the speaker this week, and Sarah, one of the team of CU Guests.

I've also found that this week has made me reflect more on my own walk with the Lord, and what it means for me to be a Christian. This is my fifth mission week at Lancaster University, and so it feels that reflections have been inevitable both in comparison with the first, four years ago, and the most recent, a year ago.

It was during my time as a Relay Worker that I think I realised that the gospel was really real. Not just in an existential kind of way, not just as truths in a spiritual subsection in my mind, but really real, more real than anything else. And that conviction has just kept on growing over the years since.

In the past year, I think I've seen that Jesus' diagnosis of humans is really real too. I've written about this before. I think I used to have two categories of Christians in my head: those that were basically sorted, and those that were basically unsorted. The last year has helped me to see that all of us are basically unsorted: struggling with sin, knowing hurt and feeling sore under the effects of the sin of ourselves and others in our lives. And knowing this truth in experience has had a whole number of different knock-ons: knowing that we are broken and hurting jars of clay offering other broken and hurting people hope (and don't need to be 'sorted' to first offer this hope), and knowing that only Jesus can clear up the mess.

So this mission week has felt like it's been in a richer colour. I'm grateful to God that he's helping me to see and feel these basic truths more. The gospel that I'm aware we're offering is rendered more deeply. I'm praying and having to ensure that this doesn't spill over into frustration with other Christians that appear to have a much smaller (more clinical) gospel. I'm desperate to see the gospel changing lives, in bringing people into the kingdom and then in changing lives. Because that is the ministry that, with the Holy Spirit's help, we have.

Playing the long game

Today in Lancaster we had autumn term's CU leaders' day for Lancashire CU leaders. It's strange thinking that this will be the last of these particular days that I'll have organised as CU Staff Worker here.

It's made today strangely nostalgic. This is the third of these annual gatherings (there's also been another set in summer term), and so I guess it's natural to look back two years to how things were then. The situations in the CUs I work with have changed almost beyond recognition in the past two years, and almost all of the students have changed since then too. Two years ago, the CUs considered themselves to have almost nothing in common. Now they see themselves increasingly as partners in the gospel.

Perhaps it's this longer-term-ism that dictated a conversation that Linda and I had over dinner with my former Relay Worker, Nick, and Adam, my colleague in Carlisle. They were both down to help out at the leaders' day. It was great to chat about a whole load of different subjects. One of the things we talked about were the difficulties that we've found in forming deeper long-term relationships with non-believers in Lancaster.

Linda and I both know plenty of non-believers here, but it's been difficult making these relationships very deep. Now as we think about the fact that we now have less than a year left in Lancaster, we're feeling tinged with sadness thinking that some of these relationships will never get as deep as we'd maybe hoped that they would. Perhaps our expectations were too high. (For both of us, Lancaster was the first move away from Bristol, where we'd been students - and student life makes it very easy to form deep relationships quickly). Perhaps we've not spent enough time with other people engaging in hobbies and passions that we really care about. (I've done a couple of evening courses, but these have never really in subjects I've been particularly bothered about, and so perhaps that's prevented me from forming genuine deep relationships. I kind of feel that sharing a passion automatically deepens a friendship).

I think that we've certainly learnt lessons that we'd like to carry into wherever we live next. In all likelihood, we'll be in our next location for many years. We'd love to bed into the local community and form relationships that matter.

Support Sarah's crazy sheep drive

And now for something completely different...

Linda and I have a remarkable friend from university called Sarah, who went sharing anecdotes often starts, 'It was the funniest thing ever...'. And often, it is. (The story involving Sarah's cannibal fish Betty and suicidal eel George still makes up chuckle out loud from time to time).

Back in February, Sarah found herself nominated as Freeman of the City of London and came up with the crazy idea to organise a sheep drive across London Bridge, re-enacting the Medieval right that Freemen had to drive their sheep across London Bridge without having to pay any tolls or taxes.

Having rallied a team together, last Friday her dream became a reality and together Sarah and her team organised for 500 Freemen, representing 70 different livery companies to drive 15 Romney Sheep in a relay back and forth across London Bridge seven times. The event was organised in aid of The Lord Mayor's Appeal 2008 and the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress kindly opened the event. The Honourable Artillery Company’s Pikemen and Musketeers escorted every drive after completing their 'Charing the Pikes' salute.

The event attracted much publicity and spread like a rash across the US newspapers on Saturday from Washington and California to Hick Town! By Sunday it had made its way to the New Zealand press and went global via the International Herald Tribune. However, having been madly busy organising the event, Sarah failed to have time to adequately seek sponsorship ahead of driving her own sheep and as such is only getting round to it now!

I'd strongly encourage you watching the video of the event below and consider sponsoring Sarah by making a donation to the Lord Mayor’s charities, Orbis and Wellbeing of Women.

For more information about the charities please visit http://www.thelordmayorsappeal.org/ and to donate quickly and easily, you can visit Sarah's own website: http://www.justgiving.com/sarahscrazysheepdrive

You know you're up north when...

On return from Forum at Quinta (see Dave Bish's liveblogging here), we stopped for a quick bite to eat in Warrington (a town I find strangely endearing). Here's a taste of the return to northern culture...

Toast cost 10p less if you had a crust
Use of a tray cost an extra 30p
The cafe toilet was in an outside shack about 50m away from the cafe!

It's nice to be back.

We are family

Over the past couple of days I've been reminded of how wonderfully encouraging other Christians can be in reminding us of God's grace.

Often this comes through our local churches, where we rub shoulders alongside other believers who are seeking to be disciples of Jesus in the places where he has placed them. Often it's very 'mundane' and 'quiet' ways in which God's sustaining and transforming grace is seen.

In the past couple of days, however, it's been stranger encounters that have been particularly encouraging.

In Exeter, I bumped into Ben, an old school friend that I'd not seen for several years. Having chatted for a while, Ben revealed that he'd become a Christian through a in London after graduating. What an encouragement!

Today I received an email from a missionary couple in China, telling me about a Chinese lad who is coming to study at the University of Central Lancashire. He has recently become a Christian in China, and is interested in being 'mentored' during his time in the UK. The missionary couple contacted me to see if I might be able to arrange this. Again: a brilliant reminder that 'the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world' - and a great reminder of gospel partnership.

Praise God for these little encounters that remind us of his powerful hand at work in the world!

The return to Bristol

Over the past three days, Linda and I have been back in Bristol. It was the longest visit I'd made since leaving Bristol at the end of my year on Relay more than four years ago.

It was excellent to see several ex-university friends from Bristol days over our time there: Andy and Hannah, Howard and Kate, Jonny and Charlotte, Phil and Gemma, Tim, Kevin, Dan, Dave and Mike. Add Dan and Emily, and Gareth, who we saw last week and we've managed to see quite a number of folks (although, as ever, there's others that we'd love to see if time and opportunity permitted). It's encouraging to see people who were radical Christians as students still seeking to live radically in a whole range of different situations - in local churches, in the workplace, in thinking about going abroad and, for some, even as UCCF staff workers!

A few things struck me whilst back in Bristol.

Firstly - it's really weird walking around a place that's so familiar yet also so unfamiliar. In certain parts of Clifton, nearly every pace of each street had a memory attached to it. Yet I also had a strange sensation of life really having moved on. A return to church was strangely familiar and strangely unfamiliar.

Secondly - a feeling of culture shock. Life in the north of England is really different from life in the south, especially amongst graduates. The pace of life is different, people's hopes and aspirations are different and there's a different feel about the place.

Thirdly - it's good for us to be away from Bristol. Linda and I both had an excellent time during our Bristol years: for both of us, they rank as amongst the happiest years of our lives. It's sometimes tempting to long for the nostalgia of years past. Yet on our most recent trip, we both independently realised that Bristol is not where God wants us. We're called to pastures new.

Things I didn't know a year ago

In no particular order...

• I didn't know that this past year wouldn't be my last with UCCF.
• I didn't know that there would be so many encouragements at the University of Cumbria.
• I didn't know that CUs could be included in fayres as part of a 'well being week'.
• I didn't know how fun it could be hanging out with 16- and 17-year olds at Myerscough College.
• And I didn't know that you could study motorsport engineering there.
• I didn't know what it felt like to sing Mis-teeq in public.
• I didn't know what it felt like to be in a motorway service station at 4am.
• I didn't know that refereeing a football match would have such consequences.
• I didn't know that knowing an aggressive atheist as a friend can be mightily rewarding.
• I didn't know that studying church history could be so good for the soul.
• I didn't know that an evangelistic event in Lancaster would lead to someone hundreds of miles away becoming a Christian.
• I didn't know how welcoming students can be to people that are nothing like them.
• I didn't know that we were not going to be able to exhibit at the NUS conference.
• I didn't know how messed-up this world really is.
• I didn't know the extent to which you can rely on God as the God of all comfort.
• I didn't know how difficult it was re-affirming the gospel of grace to a lapsed Christian when you've been hurt by the actions of their lapse.
• I didn't know the extent to which the death of loved ones so profoundly affects people.
• I didn't know that Christians could divide over such petty issues.
• I didn't know that I'd love my wife more now than the day I married her.
• I didn't know that I'd learn to like the book of Proverbs.
• I didn't know that it was possible to make so many analogies to Blackburn Rovers to illustrate spiritual points in Bible studies (cheers Nick).
• I didn't know the extent of the height and depth and breadth and width of the love of Christ (it's something I'm still learning...)

June, oh June

I have a love-hate relationship with the month of June.

On the plus side, there's normally great sport: Wimbledon, and biannually the World Cup or European Championships. I love the smell of barbeques, and I love the greater opportunity to just hang around with people, especially students who've finished exams.

But it's also a month of goodbyes. And I'm not really a fan of saying goodbye.

Last night was the last meeting of the year for Lancaster CU. There are about 30 students that have been CU regulars that are leaving. Some of them - including Shaun, Holly, Emily and Rob - have become Christians through CU in recent years. Others have been close friends and those that I've been privileged to see more of Jesus formed in - I was particularly gutted to say goodbye to some. I'll miss Mike, who I did a 1-1 Bible study with for nearly two years. I'll miss Andy, who's been a friend for four years. And the goodbyes go on: at lunchtime, the final meeting of Myerscough CU of the year; tomorrow, the final Relay Supervision of the year with my colleagues and friends, Sarah and Nick. Many of those I'm saying goodbye to, I will see again - but in the short term, it will be far less frequently.

It's sometimes tempting to want to somehow 'pause the moment'; to hold onto what we have at any given period in time. Yet I know that history is heading towards the new creation which - as the hymn puts it - is the place of 'solid joys and lasting pleasures'. Sometimes our danger is to get nostalgic about things as they are. Far better to commit my friends to Jesus, then to have my focus fixed on that which is unseen but permanent, living in the light of eternity with God.

Greetings from Hungary!

I think that this is the first `international´ post on this blog.

I am currently sat in the lobby of the Hotel Eger in Hungary, here as a delegate to the European Leadership Forum. I´m not exactly used to the Hungarian keyboard, and so this post will be brief!

We have been made to feel very welcome here. There is an incredible team of Americans (all from the same church I think) who are staffing the conference warmly and effectively. Our favourite conference moment so far was when we were met off of the plan in from Manchester ("Manchester? Say, isn´t that near WIGAN?").

It has been great to have already had a chance to rub shoulders with people involved in all sorts of ministries across Europe. Look forward to more of the same in days ahead, and I hope we´re able to encourage others too.

Things kick off here in earnest tonight. Lindsay Brown is the main speaker and will be taking us through Colossians. I am on the European Evangelists´ track for the second time and can´t wait for the input from Michael Ramsden et al. There is also a packed seminar schedule, given by folks who are genuinely world experts in their fields. I am struck by the enormous privilege of being here as one of the delegates from UCCF.

Please pray that Linda and I get time to process what we are taught, that we are changed and that we have an opportunity to think about how it all can make a difference in our church and in our work amongst students at home.

One year on

It's been one year today since I started this blog. (You can read my first post here).

The past year has been quite a significant one for me - not least, having got married last June! I'm really glad to have had people who've been able to share some of the experiences I've had, and also to have helped me as I've dived into Scripture. Thanks all.

According to Google Analytics, here are the more popular posts from the last year that you might have missed:

• My book review of Will Metzger's excellent book on evangelism Tell the Truth (not well known in the UK), and the news that there's a free online interview of him with Mark Dever;
• A celebration of UCCF's fantastic graduate discipleship scheme, Relay;
• A comparion of gospel and religion following Tim Rudge and Alison Williams at UCCF's Forum conference;
• A film review of the recent movie Juno;
• A couple of sermons: Matthew 1:1-17 on Jesus' genealogy and Isaiah 53 on the Suffering Servant given at the height of the debate regarding penal substitution.

Thanks for your support - here's to the next year!

April update

It's been a busy week since my last post.

Tuesday was, perhaps, one of my all-time favourite days as Staff Worker. We had a wonderful team day with fantastic and very stretching teaching on Genesis from Martin Downes, lots of sunshine and good food (amazingly our hosts for the day paid for us all to enjoy a swanky three course meal in Chester!). A time of feeding in many senses of the word, very good for the soul.

On Wednesday, I met up for my weekly meeting with Relay Workers, Sarah and Nick. Amongst other things, we've been listening together to Don Carson's series Reaching an Untouched Generation. We've all found it very stimulating in thinking about reaching Biblical illiterates for Christ (the mp3s are free online here). It's been great putting some of what we've learned into practice through outreach on Wednesday afternoons at Myerscough College, an FE college full of mainly 16-19 year olds who know little or nothing about Christ. I was also struck by some of what Dr Carson said as I prepared a talk for Cumbria CU on Thursday night.

Later in the week saw the start of interviews for our summer team to Moldova. I really can't wait for this trip. It was excellent interviewing a whole number of students who are willing to sacrifice their comfort, time and earning-potential over the summer through volunteering to help run the English and Bible camp in Moldova. I found it particularly heart-warming to hear of how many of the students in my patch came to Christ - a great reminder that we're all wired differently and that God is big enough to work through different circumstances and temperaments when he calls us!

Finally, yesterday was our patch training day for CU leaders in Lancashire and Cumbria (quite possibly the last one ever, as my friend Adam Beattie will be starting as Cumbria Staff Worker from August). Marcus Mosey, from Christians Alive church in Lancaster (and a great partner in the gospel here) spoke on being a grace-filled leader, and we also devoted time to thinking about Freshers' Week outreach, the FREE Gospel project and to praying for each other. It's encouraging to see, under God, many students taking up the challenge set in the Gospel project, and some exciting plans developing!

Can't wait

Off to spend the weekend with my wife's mum and stepdad, then off to ... New Word Alive!

I've been looking forward to this conference for quite a while. It promises to be an excellent time: certainly there are excellent Bible teachers, evangelicals from a wide range of backgrounds, a brilliant emphasis on evangelism and serving the church and a great student programme. I'm also looking forward to seeing old friends and family, chatting to the students from Lancaster and Cumbria about what they've been hearing, getting excited about what God is doing through CUs nationally... the list goes on...

I'll see many of you there :)

Off to do some cleaning

I'm on holiday this week. One of the things I love doing whilst on holiday is ... feeling useful and doing some tidying and cleaning.

I love my job - but the nature of full-time paid Christian ministry is that there's rarely anything that you can start and finish on the same day, and see some effect of the hard work you've put in. It's rare that you get to a point where there's nothing else that you can do for a particular person or project. Additionally, the times where you can finish something as a job well done are few and far between - and, of course, it's only eternity where the fruits of our labours will be seen.

For these reasons, and for a change, I find it quite therapeutic to be able to do something practical, where a difference can be seen. It's nice to have that feeling of satisfaction, whilst at the same time being reminded that giving oneself fully to the work of the Lord will never lead labour in the Lord in vain.

"In this way, love is made complete among us..."

I was very struck this week by a talk on 1 John 4:7-21 at Lancaster University CU this week by verses 16-17.

The verses say this: 'God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgement, because in this world we are like him.'

Of course this passage is in the context of the very famous verses about God's love: that God himself is the definition of love, demonstrated through sending the Son as our propitiatory sacrifice. Verses 16-17, however, remind us that God gave his Son not only to save us but so that we might be brought into loving community with him and with others. This is, of course, what God is doing in the world: gathering a people to be his very own for ever, in fellowship with him and treating others in accordance with his character. So often we speak about what we have been saved from; so rarely (it seems) we speak of what we have been saved to: a community of love.

I was also struck by what this means. When we find ourselves loving as God loves, then we can have confidence on the day of judgement. The community love that is made possible through Jesus' atonement and the Holy Spirit's work in our lives gives us deep assurance that we really do belong to God and are his.

I've written before about how evangelicals so often seem to fall short. We soak ourselves in Scripture but so often fail to live in loving community. I found the reminder that this is what we have been saved for as a new spur, with the Spirit's help, to love the unloveable.

Lost and found

I lost my only copy of my car key today. My car is sitting at Lancaster University - and it won't be moving for a while, alas.

Amazing to think whilst retracing my steps (sadly, in vain!) that God compares himself to a woman searching for a lost coin. I can say for sure that I'd be pretty happy if my keys turn up. Amazing that God thinks similarly about the time any sinner repents!

On holiday

I'm away on holiday with my wife getting some sunshine - I'll return to blogging when I get back to work in early September.

Wedding sermons

This morning I'm writing the sermon for the wedding of some friends of mine that were students in Lancaster, Greg and Alex.

Greg and Alex have asked that the message is evangelistic, as they'll have lots of people at their wedding that aren't Christian. I'm finding it quite tough - because whilst they want me to speak about Jesus, I'm figuring that most people there will want me to talk about Greg and Alex!

Fortunately they've picked a great passage - Matthew 7:24-29 - which tells us of Jesus' incredible authority in his teaching. But please pray for me as I put this talk together!