UCCF is to embark on an ambitious gospel campaign that aims to see 50,000 non-believing students given an opportunity to read Luke’s Gospel with a Christian friend in the year ahead.
Tim Rudge, UCCF’s Field Director, comments: ‘We will ask our 10,000 most active Christian Union members to commit to praying for five unbelieving friends, to give these friends a copy of the Uncover Luke’s Gospel, and to invite them to a Seeker Bible Study (SBS). Our target over the coming 12 months is to see no fewer than 50,000 non-Christian students reading Luke with a Christian friend, either one-to-one or in a small group’.
The Uncover Gospels — as they have come to be known — will be a very high-quality hardback pocket version, with moleskin-style covers. ‘We’ve gone for high quality to encourage students to take the gift of a gospel seriously’, comments Tim. He adds: ‘Quick Response codes (that can be scanned with a Smartphone) throughout the Gospel provide links to two video strands. The first strand addresses the apologetic questions raised by the passage, the other will features a contemporary retelling of seven key passages. The aim is to help students to start interacting with the Gospel and start ‘uncovering’ the evidence for themselves. These videos will be housed on a purpose-built website, which will offer further resources and links to UCCF’s Bethinking website’.
Forum event
The 2012 Gospel Project was launched at UCCF’s Forum event — a week of training for 1,000 CU student leaders. SBS expert, Rebecca Manley Pippert joined Tim Chester and Lindsay Brown as the main conference speakers. Speaking of the 2011 Uncover Seeker Bible Study campaign, she commented: ‘I’m thrilled to see how God has used it. I have seen students gain a fresh confidence in evangelism by seeing how Jesus speaks powerfully and comes alive to even the most cynical’. Becky led SBS training for CU leaders and will also speak at six weekends for students across the UK.
UCCF field staff will be busy training and planning with students at a local level. Becky is also writing seven new seeker studies in Luke (for students who find that their friends want to do more) and a follow-up course that students can use with their newly believing friends. Tim concludes: ‘A secondary but important aim of the Gospel Project is to equip Christian students with a thorough understanding of the Gospel. We hope that through doing this, students will be confident to offer the Gospel to their friends, and confident in its truth, relevance and power’.
Catalyst to open the Bible
Students will be studying Luke in their small groups through the autumn term. Calum Taylor, a geography student at Hull University, said: ‘I’m really looking forward to the 2012 Gospel Project, because, just like Uncover did, I expect it will act as a motivation, incentive and catalyst for the members of our Christian Unions to open their Bibles with their friends’.
IFES
Since the first Gospel Project in 1992, more than 50 IFES movements have implemented similar projects. Already IFES movements from Norway to Australia are using the Uncover SBS guide. UCCF will be making all the Uncover resources available to IFES movements.
To find out more, sign up to receive a free UCCF Annual Review (http://www.uccf.org.uk/pray/annual-review.htm) or visit http://www.uccf.org.uk/uncover
Take a look at UCCF’s latest evangelistic website http://www.uncover.org.uk for great resources you can share with your friends.
Pod Bhogal is Head of Communications, UCCF.
