God is Faithful

Between now and my last update I sent out a quick prayer request which was the start of what has been quite a full-on few weeks as the semester has started.

Clubs & Societies Day

I have been utterly amazed at how many students we have been in contact with recently. In the current sad state that the university is in (which showed again on Clubs & Societies day), it is quite remarkable how many Christian students are keen to get to know each other. So far we have connected about 13 new students into our community with 27 individuals attending our recent gatherings. To compare this with previous years (even before 2020), we would normally expect around 3-5 new students.

Considering the struggle at the end of last year (read about it here), this has been a great blessing and a huge answer to prayer for the ministry. Now that we have met these people, our focus will now be on helping them feel like they belong in our community and encouraging them to see the value of what we do. The first full week of classes has just finished, so it is early days to see if they will continue coming, but all thanks to God, it is looking very promising.

Here is one of the student's thoughts over the past few weeks as university has started up again.

Meet Alannah

Hi! My name is Alannah and I am in my second year of a Bachelor of Education specialising in Primary and Early Childhood years. I started coming along to Uni Fellowship last year, and found it to be such a great time of growth and getting to know other Christians around campus! I am on the student executive this year and have been so encouraged to meet many first-years who have come along to our events so far. We have begun the semester studying Galatians in our bible groups and I am excited for the time we will spend together unpacking this part of God’s word.

Kickstart

We were unable to get many students to Launch in Hobart this year, so we have tried running a local pre-semester day/conference. Kickstart was an awesome but long hot day together. We started the morning with a sermon from Psalm 26, followed by a session on how to start university well. The rest of the day consisted of some evangelism training, with games and the students choosing to watch 'The Princess Bride' to finish in the evening.

Being the first time running it, there are a few things we would change next time. It seemed to be a bit full-on for most of the students but it was definitely worthwhile in building some initial relationships which have seemed to continue to grow since.

During the past two years of my apprenticeship, I have seen myself more in a position of providing life support for the group. Now that I have more time with the students, I believe it is time to provide more attention and clarity, in order to grow the effectiveness of the ministry in serving more students.

In order to do that, here are some of the goals that I personally hope to focus on this year.

• Meeting 1-to-1 and disciple 5 young men with leadership potential.
• Organise a way for the women to be discipled by other mature women.
• Bring more thoughtfulness and consistency in equipping the students for evangelism (particularly in our main gatherings).
• Providing more opportunities to give helpful coaching and train students in leadership.

As the university year begins please pray with me, as there is much to thank and ask God for.