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The Third Degree

Gospels or baked beans? - Student life

Which will you buy? That was the challenge UCCF presented to its supporters earlier this year — well, sort of. 59p will buy you a tin of Tesco Organic Baked Beans, but it’s also the cost of putting a copy of Mark’s Gospel in the hands of a non-Christian student. It’s all linked to ‘FREE’, our project to distribute 400,000 copies of Mark on university campuses across the Britain in the coming academic year.

We’ve got nothing against Tesco’s baked beans, but we think that Mark’s Gospel will do students more good. Our supporters seem to agree.

Pouring in

Within days of announcing our plans for ‘FREE’ and inviting people to become partners in the project through their prayers and gifts, money started to pour into the Leicester office. In less than six weeks, our original budget target had been met and money kept coming. Since setting that budget, however, two significant things have happened.

First, we discovered that additional unforeseen costs had arisen, particularly for storage and distribution of the gospels. Second, we received a request from sister English-speaking student movements in East Africa and the Caribbean for supplies of gospels. God is sovereign and through the generosity of his people we have been able not only to meet those extra costs, but also to respond positively to the request for gospels from these other IFES movements. 50,000 gospels will be sent overseas to help students elsewhere to hear the good news, too.

Offerings

One of the exciting aspects of my job at UCCF (there are several!) is working with new staff to help them share the vision for student ministry with their families and friends and invite them to become partners in it. In doing so, I always refer to one of my favourite passages of Scripture, which I believe is relevant to the subject. Exodus 35 relates how Moses, in obedience to God’s command, tells the people of Israel to bring offerings for the building of the tabernacle and then entrusts those gifts to skilled craftsman to carry out the work. The people begin to respond by bringing all kinds of materials, from gold to goats’ hair. Then they hit a problem.

At this point, I usually ask our new staff workers what they think the problem was. Those who are not so familiar with the passage, not surprisingly perhaps, suggest that work had to stop because they ran out of the necessary materials. I love being able to show them that the real problem was the exact opposite. The workmen had to down tools and ask Moses to tell the people to stop giving because they had too much! The text actually says that ‘the people were restrained from bringing more’. ‘Wouldn’t it be great’, I say, ‘if we had that problem?’ Well, just now, on this project, we have. Praise the Lord! And thank you to those EN readers who have given. Be encouraged: God is still ‘able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine’.

People on the ground

But just in case you’re wondering, yes, we do still need people to give for our wider ministry. If our gospel distribution is be truly effective, we need more people on the ground to help support and train Christian Unions. That is still by far the greatest need and that costs a whole lot more than a tin of baked beans, even 400,000 tins.

Whatever you do, please don’t stop praying. The real challenge has yet to begin, as gospels go out on campus and non-Christians start to read them. But more of that in future Third Degree articles. Watch this space.

Alan Hewerdine
Senior Development Officer, UCCF