UCCF's contribution to the Worldwide Church

UCCF celebrated 75 years of student ministry this year. In a two-part article, Lindsay Brown reflects on its contribution to the church. This month he looks at the UK.

I served on UCCF staff nearly 25 years ago and, as I write, I cast my mind back further, to my own student days in the early-mid 70s. I carry a deep sense of gratitude to God for the Inter-Varsity Fellowship, now UCCF.

Building on my youth fellowship days in Merthyr Tydfil, the Christian Union fostered in me the importance of evangelism, a love of Scripture and a grasp of the world-wide Church. For the first time, I found myself having fellowship across denominations. Through reading and discussion, I was being stretched to apply a Christian worldview to my studies.

A Japanese colleague of mine once used the metaphor of 'piling' (from construction engineering) to describe student ministry. It is gradual, it is energy-consuming and labour-intensive, and it is unseen. But it provides a vital and solid foundation for the building. For Christian students, our work - in partnership with the Church - is to lay that solid foundation in their lives.

Students need to be stretched in learning to relate their faith to their academic work, and in seeing the wider ethical implications of the gospel. A few CU members will rise to positions of high influence as MPs, senior civil servants, academics or government advisors. But all can rub salt and shine light into society. As they learn how new life in Christ bears on their studies and their lifestyle, so they learn how to love God with all their 'heart and mind and soul and strength'. UCCF staff need our prayers as they 'pile' in students' lives.

Creative evangelism

One of the great things about students is their creativity. I love to see them think imaginatively about how to bring the gospel to their campuses. Vinoth Ramachandra once told me that, from his perspective on UK church history, it was the IVF which gave the church confidence that God could use amateurs. He was using the term in its literal sense. God can use anyone who loves him! People do not need to be theologically-trained to make a contribution. We may take this for granted now, but that way of thinking was not always the case.

Here are two heart-warming stories from this term:

* The CU at Durham University distributed 3,500 evangelistic CDs. As well as explaining what it means to be a Christian, these CDs carried two student testimonies, and short answers to some tough questions. The last track explained how to find out more. The project cost £2,220 - raised by students with the help of others. Earlier this year both Cardiff and Bath University CUs produced similar CDs for their mission weeks.

* Imperial College CU ran a late-night coffee stall for clubbers leaving the Union in Freshers' week. Their first meeting of term offered these new students an evangelistic talk and a free curry!

Bringing the gospel of Christ to postmodern students is a huge missiological challenge. There is something distinctive about the Word in an age of image; and of using the whole gospel text in an age of soundbyte. UCCF has always sought to maintain a clear biblical edge in its methods of evangelism, while helping students to explain their faith in ways to which postmoderns can relate. The staff have an extremely demanding role here.

UCCF is embarking on a major gospel project this year called LIFE. The plan is to give 'an eye-witness account of the life of Christ, written by one of his close friends', to every student on campus. About 200,000 have been printed (with the aim to print 200,000 more, subject to finance), with a brief comment to set the context, a glossary of terms, and a website for those who want to find out more. It is the fourth time UCCF has done this in the past ten years, and over that time several other student movements around the world have adopted the idea. Christian students find their confidence in Scripture grows as their friends are drawn to the person of Christ from its pages. In addition, they learn the uniqueness of Christ as they relate to friends of other faiths.

Contending for the truth

UCCF was originally a break-off movement from the SCM, which had lost its edge evangelistically because it lost its anchor doctrinally. From Cambridge to the World, co-authored by former General Secretaries Oliver Barclay and Bob Horn, explains how this division occurred. It illustrates from the history of the Cambridge Christian Union how we must keep on contending for the truth, not in an arrogant way, but out of thankfulness for what we have been taught.

Oliver Barclay once wrote: 'We need to proclaim the truth vigorously, but also to take time to contend for it and defend it. Many evangelicals do one or the other, but we need to do both.' In an age where experience is king, let us learn from the contribution our forefathers made. This kind of robustness of theological thinking is lost in much Western contemporary evangelicalism. UCCF works to keep truth both central and sharp. Its doctrinal basis, while often derided, has influenced many other Christian endeavours in the UK. It was formulated as an anchor, to keep us moored. That is why CUs invite all their speakers to assent to it, as an act of celebrating unity in these essentials. (To read it, see www.uccf.org.uk).

All truth is God's truth. Once students grasp this, they see it undergirding their academic disciplines; they also come to recognise its call for godly living. It was because of this conviction that all truth is God's truth, and that God's truth is to be upheld in the public arena, that IVF first started its professional groups. About 15 years ago, the student Executive Committee added 'Commitment to Truth' as a fourth aim of Christian Unions. Once students really grasp that God is our sovereign Creator as well as our Redeemer, things change. For this foundational truth has profound implications for their studies. They now make new sense of Paul's words: 'in Christ are hidden all treasures of wisdom and knowledge', for the eternal Son was the agent of creation. Whatever is thrown at them by their tutors, this truth is something by which everything can and must be judged.

Day after day, tens of thousands of students pass through gates proclaiming in English or Latin that 'the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom' or 'The Lord is a light to my path'. Many universities were founded as Christian institutions; UCCF is seeking to draw students back into God's truth, so they in turn will live in the light of God's truth, and teach God's truth.

Ethical implications

From here we need to spell out the ethical implications of the gospel. We must talk not only of the redemption which God gives, but of how this truth applies to every area of human activity. One of the great contributions of UCCF over the years has been this focus on developing the Christian mind, and there are leading thinkers in a range of disciplines whose minds were first anchored in Scripture in their Christian Unions.

Over recent years, CU leaders have had to take very courageous stands over the gay issue; some CUs have been expelled from the Students Union in their university or college for requiring all office-bearers to declare their commitment to the authority of Scripture. This is not set to get any easier, and students need our prayers more than ever.

Forming Christian leaders

Student ministry has given UCCF opportunity to form future leaders for the Christian church. It is not a para-church movement. I would say it is more an intra-church movement; that is, a movement which flows out of the local church, sharing the gospel in that part of society which happens to be the university, as well as working with the church to prepare students for a lifetime of service.

In the post-war years there were hardly any evangelicals in theology faculties, and, not surprisingly, that was reflected in a largely liberal church. In God's providence this was to change, in no small measure, due to the founding of Tyndale House, UCCF's centre for biblical research in Cambridge. Universities are the seedbed of influence. Tyndale House was to nurture future academics, who would teach in the universities, and who would publish. Academic theologians like F.F. Bruce, the Wenhams and Dick France were all CU members, later helped in their studies through the influence of Tyndale House.

The early vision for Inter-Varsity Press (IVP) as an evangelical publishing house stems from the 1930s, very soon after IVF/UCCF was founded. In 1974 at the Lausanne Conference, Prof. Ian Rennie, a Canadian church historian, referred to IVP as 'a crucial factor in the renaissance of evangelical theology globally since the Second World War.' In the sea of liberal thought, Tyndale House and IVP have been beacons for the veracity of the gospel.

Up and down the country, it is still the case that many of the younger evangelical church leaders with an expository ministry have a background in UCCF. It is a familiar story to hear of their professions of faith in Freshers' Week, or during a CU mission. Older Christian leaders were also formed by the student ministry. J.I. Packer was converted in Freshers' Week at Oxford; David Watson, the well-known charismatic evangelist, in Freshers' Week at Cambridge. Elder statesmen like John Stott, David Jackman, Eric Alexander, James Philip, Geraint Fielder and Brian Moore recall their days in a Christian Union with warmth and appreciation, and their debt of gratitude to IVP for their own spiritual growth. Younger people like Vaughan Roberts, Andy Peck, Carrie Sandom and Dominic Smart do the same. Many key influencers in motivating students for world mission also have UCCF roots. I think, for example, of Helen Roseveare, Michael Griffiths, and Dick and Rose Dowsett.

May God continue to give us student leaders and staff to serve the cause of the gospel with 'all their heart and soul and mind and strength'. Under God, our church and our society will reflect their endeavours.

Lindsay Brown,
General Secretary, International Fellowship of Evangelical Students

UCCF's contribution to the Worldwide Church

Creative evangelism

Contending for the truth

Ethical implications

Forming Christian leaders

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