Colleges: 'I've never been as encouraged as I am now'

I have had the tremendous privilege of seeing God at work in colleges and sixth forms up and down the UK for the last 17 years.

The organisation I work for, Festive, supports 16-18 year olds in further education as they seek to live for Jesus and share Him where they study. In all my time with Festive, I have never been as encouraged as I am now.

There has been quite a bit of talk recently of a "quiet revival." Another organisation recently used the term "soft awakening"...

A 'soft awakening'?

Just recently at my church we had three baptisms. One lad summed up the kind of thing that seems to be happening. His testimony? He’d tried everything else, made messy and bad life choices and was feeling empty and in a bit of a pit.

He explained how he had been trying to research about Christianity online for the last couple of years and was hungry to find out more about Jesus, so when two of our "door knocking" team arrived at his door (they were inviting our community to a seekers course) he didn’t just want to wait for that to start – he was ready to meet with our vicar, thrash through all his questions, and go through the beauty of the gospel.

About a week after that knock on his door, he’d given his life to Jesus.

Three weeks later and he was standing in a baptistry pool, radiating with the forgiveness, joy and hope that only Jesus can bring.

More encouragements

At Festive:

• We saw more believing students sign up to our network in 2025 than we’ve ever had.
• We’re hearing of new Christian Unions started with unusual reports of 40-50 students coming along within the first few weeks. A new CU leader in the Brighton area shared: “It was really hard getting this CU off the ground. We faced a lot of pushback…now it’s started – we need a bigger room!”
• More students are asking us to pray for unchurched mates who have started coming along to church or youth group.
• We’re getting many prayer requests from students in tough places (because, despite the encouragements – the terrain is still difficult!). Requests for courage, integrity, favour with college management who may or may not allow them to meet, and for God to use them despite their fears.

As we approached Christmas and looked ahead at the potential for seeds to be sown, the thought that came to my mind was: “Go big or go home!”

'Go big or go home'

In light of the above, we launched a larger-scale sponsored project for Christmas 2025. We ordered 1,000 Luke's Gospels, and 1,000 copies of Is Christmas Unbelievable? by Rebecca McLaughlin (thank you 10ofthose, for the latter!).

Students were invited to place orders for either book (or both) to use in their outreach events. We’d cover the costs and send them for free – as long as they’d planned how they were going to use them.

Keep in mind that sixth form and college CUs weigh in at around 5-10 students on average. Also, they rarely have permission for "on the ground" support from a youth or schools worker. If I am being honest, although I was encouraged by the boldness of students in our network, I did feel that 2,000 books to give-away may have been a bit of an over-kill...

Praise God - I was wrong!

The Lion is on the move

In the end, CUs across the UK requested 1,100 Luke’s Gospels and 1,055 copies of Is Christmas Unbelievable? by Rebecca McLaughlin. They gave books away through "hot chocolate" stands, Christmas carol services and other outreach events.

Here’s a snapshot from one CU leader, Abbey: “Our CU organised a Christmas party, we really wanted to focus on evangelism so we came up with the idea to do a teacher nativity. This worked wonders and nearly 200 people came to the event, the hall was full! I ordered 50 copies of Is Christmas Unbelievable? and at the end of the production a couple of us stood at the door and began to hand out the books - one after another until all of them had gone!

"A few days later I got a message from one girl to say that she had really wanted a book but that they’d all ran out; so I brought in 50 more copies to give to anyone else who had wanted one. All those books went too!

"I am so encouraged to know that people are interested in finding out more about Jesus. I praise God for all that He has done in my school.”

Please join us in thanking God for all He is doing among 16-18s in the UK. And pray too that, like Abbey said, people will be "interested in finding out more about Jesus."

To find out more about the ministry of Festive, visit www.festive.org.uk.

This article is written by Claire Povey, part of the Passion for Evangelism network. PfE exists to empower, encourage, and equip women to share the good news of Jesus with God-given confidence and creativity.