TSCF Lincoln Jesus Week

Jesus Week 2008 for Lincoln Uni has come and gone. There is much to encourage, and also much that needs to be worked on to help the students be clearer in proclaiming Jesus to their campus.

The week was arranged around the theme of 'slavery'. To raise awareness of physical slavery throughout the world today, especially in SE Asia, and to highlight that we are all slaves to sin and in need of Jesus the Saviour.

LUCF did well in the first part of that - watching the movie Amazing Grace; sausage sizzles and petitions against slavery (in conjunction with Stop The Traffik). Here is petition gathering in full swing:

It was interesting to chat with students from round the world. It quickly became apparent that the vast majority were surprised to learn slavery is still a 21st century issue (even those students from countries with the biggest problems such as Cambodia, India, Thailand) and very happy to sign the Stop The Traffik petition. In addition, Kiwis generally took a lolly and no booklet about Jesus; internationals took both. Another observation was that of the two tracts we had, international students went straight for the one with 'Jesus' in the title.

Last year, the highlight was txt 4 toasties - late night free toasties for halls students in exchange for a question about Jesus. This is something the CF does from time to time and is very good at. Sadly, there's been uni management 'discussions' about the weekly toastie town all year and no established venue yet. Join us in praying for this - this is the time of the week during an 'average' LUCF week that Jesus is most clearly corporately proclaimed.

Instead, the students put on a sit down meal with after dinner speaker. Encouragingly, half of the 70 people who gathered I didn't recognise. A local church home group did wonders with food, and the speaker, Robert, had a captivating story of working for IJM going round the world gathering evidence of child slavery as prostitutes and giving said evidence to the local authorities. He was clear his motivation for that work was rooted in the character of God.

There was a slave auction too - retiring LUCF leaders sold off publicly as 'slaves' (eg 'bake for me for a month'); raising about $2000 for Cambodian Hope

Many Lincoln degrees have practical fieldtrips and practical work placements (anything from 1 day to 35 weeks). Unfortunately, Jesus Week crossed one of these undergrad 'field trip days'. Many undergrads were off and about on fieldtrips. For those that weren't, a few of us headed to the mountains for a wonderful day skiing/boarding. I had the pleasure of meeting Arporn, new to NZ just two weeks previously, from Thailand. She had never seen snow before, nor it transpired, heard about Jesus. It was great to introduce her to both!

It was extremely helpful to have my colleague Ben Carswell with us for the week. He found it helpful to see a new campus (he'd not been to Lincoln before) and I found it helpful to have 'fresh eyes' on evaluating the impact of Jesus Week both on LUCF and the wider campus. His report will be helpful as Sarah & I work with the new LUCF leaders at their vision weekend in a few days time.
Ben even blogged about me (a world first!) - Ben's blog

Ben emphasised that the relational aspect of LUCF was amazing. Justin & Micky set up the sausage sizzle under the 'Lincoln University Christian Fellowship' banner and happily talked about CF when mates came up for a sausage. Relationships is a key strength of LUCF. Yet the jump from talking about physical slavery to spiritual slavery wasn't as forthcoming as it should be - there was not as much actual talking about Jesus as there needs to be. This is where TSCF staff will work to encourage for the future - this week, next week and throughout the year. A big thanks to those who've prayed, supplied food, and asked students & staff of the uni, and TSCF staff too, about how Jesus Week went.