The Third Degree

What have been the significant times in your Christian life? For many of us, the few years spent at university have proved to be some of the most influential of our lives.

But how did you find the move from university or college to working life? Did your faith flounder or flourish as your support network changed? It won’t come as news to you that sometimes even the most confident and able students struggle with the new challenges that this transition brings. On the other hand, you might have shot out into working life like a sort of spiritually-guided missile, making the most of every evangelistic opportunity waiting for you at the photocopier!

Big changes

But whatever your personal experience of graduation was, it surely involved a significant amount of change. The Graduate Network is a UCCF initiative to help graduates as they move from the student scene to the working world and beyond. Modern life is making communities hard to come by — people are now just as likely to meet on the internet as in the local pub!

Through the website and the conference, UCCF hopes to provide graduates with a means of easily keeping in touch with their CU support network — a virtual community.

The graduate conference

From November 10 to 12, uccf:thechristianunions will hold their first graduates’ conference. This year’s speakers are Don Carson and John Stott.

The conference is primarily aimed at those not in paid Christian ministry. Through faithful Bible teaching this weekend event has a very specific purpose — to encourage and to train Christian graduates to live and speak for Jesus where he has put them. There will also be number of seminars to help us get to grips with other issues facing graduates today. Jema Ball, recent graduate and UCCF development officer, comments:

‘For many, the years after graduation are a matter of spiritual sink or swim. We want to use this conference to ground people into the truths of the gospel, reminding them that it is the power of salvation for everyone who believes.’

Keep checking the Graduate Network website (see below) — launched in March — for information and details on how to book.

It is also a great way to stay in touch with your old CU and provides a way in which graduates can helpfully partner with one another and those still involved in university Christian Unions through prayer, giving, resources and volunteering.

The website also provides graduates with teaching resources. There are already some articles ready to be downloaded, and we hope to add more soon.

Sign up

Signing up to the Graduate Network via the website, means we will keep you in contact with the work of UCCF at your old university. We’d love it if you could partner with us in this way and commit to praying for the students of today. Bookings are now open for the first conference.

Have a look at the website — http://www.thegraduatenetwork.org.uk — or ring Jenny Mann at the UCCF office.

The Graduate Network

Big changes

The graduate conference

Sign up

Charlie Styles

Main Articles

Other articles