October 2006 - Vol. 1

Window of Opportunity

speaking to university students about the Gospel

by Nico Angleys

A while ago, when I was the Director of Koinonia, an evangelistic outreach to university students in London, UK, I was reading the London Student, a weekly student newspaper, and came across an article about a lesbian who was trying to sell her virginity for £10,000. With the money, she figured she could avoid having to do part-time work and could focus better on her studies. A jarring world-view. Allow violation to your very person for the sake of your future.

The university world is often a bewildering place. Students enter it as teenagers and somehow are supposed to emerge ready to take their place in society, able to bear the responsibilities of family and career. Often it doesn’t happen, as evidenced by the front pages of the non-student newspapers – failed businesses, failed marriages, lives in grave disorder.

But, university can be a window of opportunity for establishing or reestablishing contact with God himself – a time to strengthen the foundations in Christ that will last a lifetime.

In our student outreach we’ve hammered out a few simple goals for our work:

  • To help students grow into a full relationship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
  • To help students embark on the road to radical, lifelong discipeship and
  • To help students discern the call of God in their lives and respond to it.
The work is not easy.  The influences of the world are a lot more compelling than even a decade ago. Western society has pretty much left the road of Christian wisdom and behavior. But we believe that God still issues his call – to this generation of young people as to every other –  “Come, follow me.” And we’re determined to speak of his good news to others at university, in season and out of season – with God’s help.  The words of the Lord Jesus ring in our ears as we meet students daily who know nothing of God: “Behold the fields are white for harvest.”  The Lord longs still for people to come to know him and be established in him and find real life.
 
Nico Angleys, a member of the Servants of the Word, served for three years as the Director of Koinonia, the student outreach of the Antioch Community in London, United Kingdom.  He is presently working with several University Christian Outreach chapters in the United States, providing training and consultation for chapter mission leaders.

 
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