UCCF
UCCF: The Christian Unions are all about working with and getting alongside those who are best placed to reach students, students themselves, in order that every non-believing student has an opportunity to hear and respond to the good news about Jesus Christ. Christian Unions are non-denominational mission teams that operate at the very heart of university and college campuses. They are students reaching students: living for Jesus, speaking for Jesus, loving the gospel, loving the campus, reaching out and inviting in …
Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ in the student world. Our vision is that every student in Great Britain is given the opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We work alongside students helping them live for Jesus by submitting their lives and their thinking to God's word, and living in dependence on his Holy Spirit, and to speak for Jesus by communicating the gospel to other students in a way that is meaningful, relevant, clear and persuasive.
Our values are confidence in the truth, urgency in evangelism, passion about unity, commitment to the local church, motivation from grace and generosity in world mission. The truth of the gospel is at the heart of our identity. We are confidently committed to understanding, celebrating, and defending it (as summarized by our doctrinal basis). We believe in creative, engaging and persuasive proclamation of Christ crucified. We are committed to unity gathering Christians around the essential truths of the gospel. We promote involvement in the local church as the lifelong and primary place of Christian ministry and discipleship. We rejoice in our salvation, and this is our motivation in serving one another and loving the lost. We endeavour to reach out to the students of the world, giving and sending to world mission.
In Leicester in particular we work with Leicester University CU and De Montfort University CU, as well as various other FE and HE CUs around Leicestershire. Our CU staff Worker in the Leicester Region, Akatu Odeh, meets up with members of the CU to equip them in various ways so they can live and speak for Jesus. Some CU members will attend Forum our annual student conference; others will have training at New Leader Training Weekends to equip them to lead the CU biblically and with an evangelistic focus. Some may attend Biblical Evangelism Conference if they have a particular gift for gospel proclamation. The CUs will put on events to proclaim the gospel such as lunchbars and mission weeks, as well as loving their particular friends and seeking to share the gospel with them. They may also engage in training to help them live for Jesus with integrity such as Pure, our sexual morality course. They may download talks and articles from our theology network website (www.theologynetwork.org.uk) or from our apologetics website (www.bethinking.org) so to engage with theology and culture in a way that will feed into their discussions with their friends. There are also various resources for them to use such a fresh packs (Bible studies for freshers) and Transition (guide to moving into the work place and living and speaking for Jesus there). Finally 2008/09 is very exciting as it is UCCF are undertaking a gospel project and so the students in Leicester will join students from all over the UK distributing 350 000 copies of Mark's gospel, entitled FREE and designed to appeal to students, and seeking opportunities to read it with their friends.
The donation that Holy Trinity gives to UCCF is used to support both UCCF's general fund, and the work of Dan Hames who works on the theology network website. The Holy Trinity link person to UCCF is Cally Scholes. Further details about UCCF can be found at UCCF's website.