The Third Degree

Imagine the impact of 1,000s of students, Relay workers and UCCF staff reading the Bible with a non-Christian friend while at university.

Imagine if every student in Britain were given the opportunity to meet with Jesus in the Scriptures.

That’s the vision behind Uncover — UCCF’s latest gospel campaign. Our vision is to see every Christian student involved with CUs inviting their friends to a Seeker Bible Study. Written by Rebecca Manley Pippert (author of best-selling book Out of the Salt Shaker, and internationally renowned evangelist), Uncover is a series of six Bible studies in Luke’s Gospel. Specially designed to be delivered in a relational peer-to-peer evangelism context, it is a resource that can be used in a one-to-one or small group setting. In the pub or over a coffee.

The Bible is about Jesus

The Bible is not an abstract message about how a person can be saved, or simply how we can live in a way that’s pleasing to God.

The whole of the Bible is about a person, Jesus Christ (John 5.40, Luke 24.27), whom we’re called to love and adore. Remember in John’s Gospel when Phillip found Nathaniel and, with overwhelming enthusiasm, told him: ‘We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote — Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph’ (John 1.45). The Bible is all about Jesus and our job is to lift people’s hearts towards him.

So, Seeker Bible Study is one of the most relational ways students can introduce their friends to Jesus. They get to see how Jesus interacts with the religious people, and also with those who are marginalised — the prostitutes and the sick. They get to see Jesus’s kindness, generosity and love for themselves. And we get to see their hearts melt as they interact with our living Saviour and Lord. The vision is to see thousands of students meet and fall in love with Jesus as they read his words, and come face to face with his powerful message of truth and love.

Still interested?

Are Christian students still interested in reading the Bible with their friends?
Dave Normington, a student from Canterbury, invited several of his friends to a seeker Bible study, but in the end only one said he could make it. But God hadn’t finished gathering the group together. Before settling down to look at the Bible there was a need for ice-cream, so Dave and his friend set off for supplies. Dave talked about what happened next: ‘We went towards the shop and bumped into another couple of friends. They asked what we were up to and I said we were going to have a Bible study together and they asked if they could join in’. In the end there were seven students in total, with everyone very keen to take part. David led them through Matthew 21 and everyone had something to say. ‘Some of the questions were heated, others were measured. They liked comparing how we view Jesus to how organised religion works’, said Dave. Two of the group were challenged by what the group discussed and are keen to continue studying the Bible at the start of the new term.

Project launch

Uncover was launched at this year’s national UCCF conference for Christian Union leaders. Becky Pippert addressed over 1,200 delegates at Europe’s largest gathering of Christian Union leaders. She encouraged CU leaders to take copies of Uncover to open up Luke’s Gospel with their non-Christian friends. We were delighted that all 7,000 copies were snapped up. Orders for an additional 3,000 copies came in through the UCCF website. Demand has been so high we’ve had to commission a reprint. We were very grateful for a significant gift that came in from an international network of churches to partly fund printing the additional copies.

We’ve been hearing about lots of students inviting their friends to read the Bible with them. Dan Rogers, a student at Bath said: ‘I’d fully recommend it as a great way of reaching out to people on a very personal level’. Matt Taylor at Kent uni, told us: ‘Tom, a friend who lives on my corridor, and I have been meeting up [and reading the Bible]. He told me he’d decided that he wanted to give his life to Christ, so we prayed together. He really enjoyed the studies and said it was a first-hand way of finding out more’.

Pod Bhogal is Head of Communications, UCCF: The Christian Unions.
Follow Pod Bhogal on Twitter: http://twitter.com/podbhogal
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Uncover: Bible reading with non-Christian friends

The Bible is about Jesus

Still interested?

Project launch

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