The week gone

What a week! How can so much life be fitted in to such a short space of time? For those of you who don’t know, last week was the missions week at our university. A week when the Christian Union puts on loads of events with the sole purpose of evangelism, of telling people about Christ in as many ways and settings as possible.

The week was entitled ‘Free Week’, and all of the events were of course free. We served free tea and coffee daily, had a free lunch with a themed talk each day and each evening there was a free event, where either a testimony was shared or a short talk given. The evening events were diverse and the aim was to create a ‘chilled’ and welcoming atmosphere, we had a ceilidh (a barn dance), a pub quiz, a comedian, a classic games show event as well as our usual weekly meeting.

The week went really well, and it was a great encouragement to see how many people turned up to the events and had the opportunity to hear the Gospel. The questions that people asked were good and hopefully many of them will come along to Christianity Explored, which is a follow up course that is being run, looking deeper at what the Bible actually says. Another great thing about the week was the people from the CU who were running and helping out with the events. It is good to see people serve one another and I believe that through out this past week I have seen them grow in the love of Christ and a tighter knit community begin to form.

However when looking back on such a week, it is important to consider where improvements can be made as well as what went well, to learn from mistakes as well as successes. One thing that we learnt from this week is the importance of knowing the people who will be speaking at the events, even when they are last minute replacements. In certain circumstances it might be better to cancel an event entirely rather than having someone inappropriate talk.

On a lighter note, we also learnt that Black Wednesday (so called for the tiredness prevalent and the fact that the end of the week seems far off) may not fall on a Wednesday. This year there seemed to be plenty of energy on the Wednesday; it was on the Thursday that people’s energies waned. I mention this because it is worth remembering that at some point people will get tired in such an endeavour and will need encouragement to keep going, but it was also noted that it seemed to be when we were most tired that God gave us the most opportunities.

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.” 1Cor 1:27-29

It is important to remember that we must continue to rely on God and not our own strength which is bound to fail. So that in all we do God’s name would be glorified and not our own.