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Why run a CU events week?

Prayer News Article, 13/02/19

Christian Unions exist for mission. Every day. All year. But once a year, many CUs run a week of mission events. They galvanise the entire CU into action. They produce publicity that cuts through the noise on campus. They provide an opportunity for non–Christian friends to ask their questions and hear the gospel again and again in a short space of time. People usually become Christians when they have seen Jesus in the life of a friend, and have heard the gospel not just once, but numerous times.

Why run a CU events week?

 So events weeks are key.  Here’s Gavin’s* story:

Gavin walked through the door again for the last event of the week.  I shouldn’t be surprised when I see God working in people’s lives, but somehow I was in shock.  Over the course of the week he’d gone on a journey.  Previously he’d only been along to a few social CU things that I’d invited him to (as a closed, scientific postgraduate student), so it was his first taste of something more.

The debate on night one he said didn’t really answer any questions for him, but it did one thing: show him that Christians aren’t stupid and can think.  That was enough to see him several times through the rest of the week, despite having a packed research schedule.

Having seen that he didn’t need to throw away his mind, he started opening up and listening to Christian life–stories from round the world.  He’d never considered that you could know God personally in the way these people seemed to – all from different cultures.  Moving towards the end of the week, he came along to one evening event that seemed to be more CU people than not, where a passage from the Bible was read, and the speaker taught from it.

By the end of the week he was ready.  “Could we meet up each week to look at that Uncover thing that keeps being mentioned from the front please?”  Investigating more deeply who Jesus is through history is something I’ve never done before.

A month later and Gavin was even starting to see the relevance of this good news for his friends and family too, inviting them along to meet Christian–Union–type–people and hear more.

Today, he would call himself a follower of Jesus, even through his struggles to see how that works in his hometown, where there is no evangelical church.

UCC I am

Gavin’s story is just one of many.  A few days or a whole week, can not only help increase publicity to every student on campus but it can accelerate the spiritual interest and response of our friends, as they return to event after event, having been intrigued and persuaded by elements of the good news of Jesus. 

Please continue to pray for CUs as they plan upcoming weeks of events, some CUs who have already seen the fruit of such weeks this semester already, and for smaller CUs as they consider running a few days of events for the first time.

 *name changed to protect identity