The End of Relay...

It is a sad time when I have to write about my last Relay conference.  I really wish it didn't have to end.  For those of you who don't know Relay is a 10 month training and discipleship programme run by UCCF:The Christian Unions for recent graduates.  I am now in my tenth and final month and have just returned from Relay 3 (the final conference).

At the conference we were spending time looking at 1 Corinthians 12-14 and the theme of Church.  This was really quite helpful as many of my readers will know that I have been thinking a lot about the church over the past months.  In addition to this we were able to spend much time chilling out with each other and learning about each others year on Relay.  Three sessions of the conference were dedicated to End of Year Presentations.  Beforehand I thought that 60 odd 3 minute presentations would be a nightmare to sit through as everyone would be saying the same thing but I was totally struck by the creativity, the honesty, the differences between amazing relay years and difficult relay years.  I reckon that these sessions were by far one of the best things about Relay 3.

So without further-a-do here is my End of Year Relay Presentation.  Sit back and enjoy.

Thank you to all the people who made my Relay year so amazing.  I love you all.

God Bless

Day 1 of "Pointless?" NCU Main Events Week

Well Main Events Week at Northumbria has well and truly started and I've just arrived back home from Day 1 of Main Events Week at Northumbria Christian Union (my former CU) where I have the privilege of being able to train, equip and support the students in the CU with the power of the Gospel and call it work. 

We started the day by "Talking to God before talking to people about God" (Gram Seed) which was a blessed time.  Getting excited about the Gospel and sharing it was so much fun.  The CU has bought a Gazebo which we put up in the wonderfully sunny but still rather cold Quad in the middle of the university.  We put up a few tables with gospels and a quote from Lady Gaga about love which people could come and assess whether they agreed with the quote or disagreed.  The quote was about love and we were asking whether people thought this was real love.  

"I want the deepest, darkest, sickest parts of you that your afraid to share with anyone because I love you so much"

Lady Gaga

This was a really easy way to get people thinking about what real love is and then talk to them about the theme of love that comes from the Gospel.  We had some really interesting responses to this quote - some largely because of how they viewed Lady Gaga :)

We had people playing acoustic music in order to draw attention and create a buzz which was an awesome idea.  Some of the CU members got stuck into questionnaires with students around the quad which brought about some exciting conversations and invitations to the rest of the weeks events.

The best part of the day had to be the conversations we were able to have with people when we invited them to write down on a massive roll of paper their answer to the question "What is your purpose in life? - Beer/Sex/Jesus/Something Else?"  There were some 'interesting' answers to say the least but I managed to butt into a conversation with one of the CU members and two Muslim guys.  We stood around shivering while having a really interesting conversation about what we believe and basically having the opportunity to give an answer for the hope that we have in Christ.

We estimated that we must have spent an hour chatting to these guys from topics ranging from Trinity, to authenticity of the Bible, to literal and figurative translations of things in the Bible, to what grace is all about and why we trust in Jesus Christ as our God and our Salvation.  Massive topics and much for me to come home and look into so that I may be able to answer some more of the questions that come my way from our new friends.  I pray that we may have knocked down some of the barriers that were preventing our friends from seeing the Truth.  I am thankful that it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that these sorts of miracles happen and I pray that massive miracles will happen on Northumbria Campus this week and into the future.

Throughout the week I'll try and write about what amazing things have been happening and any specific prayer requests.

But for now much praise for the ideas and planning that has come to fruition and the response we received today - Praise The Lord [ PTL for short apparently :) ]