Utumishi Blog

A few questions:

1. Is the Christian Union of a university (FOCUS, UGBR or whatever) a church?
2. Do CUs understand themselves as effectively churches?
3. What is and what should be the relationship between the CU and local churches?
4. How easy is the transition for Christian students from university fellowships to post-university church life? What would help that transition?
5. What about High School CUs? Does a disengagement from the local church start much earlier than university?

Talking to a number of brothers in Kenya I know the answers to these questions will vary considerably depending on whether we are talking about Nairobi contexts or more rural campuses.

Let me say here I’m a big fan of FOCUS-Kenya. They do fantastic work in evangelism and discipleship, training in Bible handling, expository preaching, and in mission mobilisation. In many ways they are one of the most exciting aspects of the Kenyan Christian scene. iServe Africa is very grateful for a strong partnership with FOCUS. All the same I am interested to hear answers the questions above and interested to know whether there is a useful discussion still to be had on these issues.

As a point of comparison, it’s interesting to look at the UK situation though where the understanding of what is a CU is (I suspect) quite different to East Africa. Matt Waldock wrote the following from the perspective of a former IFES worker now on the pastoral team of a city church in the north west of England:

[The IFES-UK] commitment to the local church is the very foundation of [its] existence. Having no students of [its] own, the whole missionary outfit is manned and led by students belonging to local churches. Without the local church, there are no Christian Unions. Local churches are wonderful at working with one another at a student level — they faithfully send their students to work together under the one banner of Christ.

Christian Unions are the missionary arm of the local church on campus, and so the best way for churches to support CUs is to invest in their students — to strengthen the arm that holds out the word of life on our campuses… love your students generously: open up your home; lift them up regularly in prayer; get alongside your younger brothers and sisters and disciple them. I am constantly urging the students who I work with to ask more mature men and women of their church family to meet up with them for Bible study and prayer. I pray for a time when the students don’t have to take the initiative, but are invested in as a matter of course, one-to-one. Christian Unions can only be as strong and mature as their represented churches make them.

(‘How to support the CU’, EN, Nov. 2012)

Now I’m sure there is lot that is determined by social, cultural, historical and geographical context. In England, for example, boarding at high school is comparatively rare; university courses are usually 3 rather than 4 years; CUs at universities number in the 10s or 100s rather than in the 1000s; many (though by no means all) university cities have a high density of good Bible-teaching gospel-hearted churches who have been developing student ministries for many years. But are there some things here that are cross-cultural? What are the functions and mission of the church? When is it ok for a fellowship to be of a single age group? Do we need to have a bit more of a think about what is a CU and what is a church?