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The Third DegreeRELAY - discipleship training in a student contextRelay is UCCF’s training and discipleship programme for new graduates. Each year, around 60 students leave university and begin the ten-month scheme, centred on serving Christian Unions and growing in their knowledge and love of God. I am writing on the penultimate day of the third Relay Training conference of this academic year. 63 of us have gathered at the Quinta for the final week together — partly a debrief and partly a commissioning for whatever lies ahead. This week much of our time has been devoted to reviewing our year on Relay. We have honestly laid out the struggles, celebrated the joys and rejoiced together in God’s grace to us in the gospel. Each Relay worker prepared a three-minute presentation to share their experiences of the past year, and many testified to how God used difficult or surprising situations to edify, build faith, and proclaim the gospel. Growth the hard way‘I’ve had a hard year, but I’ve grown through that and I can look back and see how — in a strange warped way — it’s been a blessing. As hard as it’s been, I was challenged to rely on God. I’ve had to do that because he was the only person I could rely on. I’ve been made more aware than ever of how true the gospel is, and how without it there is no point to this life. That’s good news! Though it’s been hard and painful to realise the truth of the gospel in that depth, I guess this year has made me not only ache for heaven but also long for God’s glory while I’m here on the earth. I long to see people come to know him in this lost and broken world’ (Ceryn Oakes, Relay worker in Portsmouth). Discipleship is the goal of UCCF’s vision. It is not only seeing students come to faith, but also that they continue in genuine obedience to Christ. Natural progressionDrew Hunt has been a Relay worker with arts students in London: his story demonstrates that discipleship is integral to spiritual growth. ‘As a new Christian, the CU at university was a really great encouragement to me in my faith, and it equipped me with the truths of the gospel. Meeting up with my Relay worker was great in helping me think through biblical truth and its relevance to my life. From this, Relay was a natural progression for me. At the end of my year on Relay, I now know that the gospel is truer than I ever thought it could be and that God is bigger and more loving than I thought possible.’ Passing on the batonThe Relay programme is rooted in the conviction that the transmission of the gospel is through faithful men and women who are trained and developed in the context of grace. As this year’s crop of Relay workers prepare to pass on the baton, the staff involved in training and supervision roles are planning for the next set of conferences, the next year of sharing highs and lows, and of mentoring disciples in order that they, too, may become disciple-makers. God’s grace‘Listening to the 63 Relay workers reflect on their year makes me more and more confident that it is understanding and experiencing God’s grace that transforms us to live for Christ. This is at the heart of UCCF’s mission of student discipleship. Many Relay workers get to the end of the year saying that it wasn’t the year they would have chosen, but confident it was the year God chose for them’ (Maurice McCracken, Relay Co-ordinator). For more information about the Relay programme, information on how to apply and ways you can support Relay workers, please get in touch with Andy Magowa, Relay Administrator, atm@uccf.org.uk. Dan Hames,
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