Campus ministry at UTAS – Part 2: Citywide Gathering not lunchtime Bible talks

For a range of reasons we began to put a decreased emphasis on our lunchtime Bible talks over the last 4 years. And at the end of 2013, we ended up cancelling our lunchtime Bible talks altogether (also here).

Rather, since 2010 we have been building up an evening ‘Citywide Gathering’ once a month during Semester:

2011 video

2014 video

Citywide Gathering HD from Uni Fellowship of Christians on Vimeo.

Reasons for the Evening Meeting

There are a bunch of reasons why we moved to this model, some of which are unique to our context:

1. UTAS in Hobart has multiple campuses: the largest campus, ten minutes south of the CBD in Sandy Bay and several campuses in and around the CBD: the Conservatorium of Music, the School of Fine Arts, the School of Nursing, the School of Medicine and very soon a large Antarctic Science school.
2. We no longer had a common lunch hour, and more and more classes were in practice being held during the 12-2pm timeslot.
3. Students were not hanging around on campus in between classes anywhere near as much. Partly this is because our city is so small that people could easily go home. Partly it was because there was better food and coffee elsewhere. Partly the mindset of students is that they go to uni for their education, rather than psychologically identifying with the geography.
4. Students were working more hours in casual work and doing more classes online.
5. Increasingly I thought we should see ourselves as closer to a network-ministry, like a CBD workers ministry, rather than as a geographical-ministry, like a school lunchtime Christian group.
6. It seems that the younger generation can see the value of a small group (for community) or a large group (for a high quality experience), but the in-between simple ‘Bible talk’ seemed pointless to them: why not listen online? To bother physically gathering, there needs to be more value.
7. Monthly was often enough to be regular, but infrequent enough that we would not interfere with regular work and church activities. Once a month during semester is a reasonable frequency to give apologies at church growth group.

The Purposes of Citywide Gathering

Citywide Gathering meets a few purposes simultaneously, just like a Sunday church meeting does. The purposes of Citywide Gathering are:

1. It is the total gathering of all those involved in our ministry. This gives us a central focus, a place for community identity and to be refreshed about our vision.
2. It is a great evangelistic event: friends can come along and sit in anonymously. They can have their objections answered and their excuses challenged in a way that you can’t easily do in friendships and small groups.
3. Students get given all sorts of unique opportunities to be trained in ministry skills.
4. Rich, deep teaching can train and challenge Christian students

How Citywide Gathering is Different to Campus Bible Talk There are a unique things about how we do stuff that is important to us.

• We meet in a venue that is near to a restaurant area. For 3 years this was the School of Fine Arts. Now it is the Hotel Grand Chancellor. We want it to be easy for students to socialise before an afterwards of coffee, pizza, ice cream and beer. Also large campuses are dark, scary, dismal and hard to navigate at night.
• We work hard to make the whole event be ‘special’ – we have good lighting, careful run sheets, slick powerpoint, only the best MCs, very high quality music. We go even a bit more ‘spectacle’ than I would feel comfortable doing in a church meeting. This is for a bunch of reasons:
  1. We are wanting to make a unique and exciting place for students to really want to come to and bring their friends.
  2. As with most of what we do, we aim for a ‘professional’ ‘grown-up’ vibe, rather than a Triple J Unearthed, funsy, youth-group vibe. We want to send the message that they are beginning their adult lives, not continuing their adolescence.
  3. We want to train a new generation of Christians to be skilled at running really good events.
  4. We want to make it easy for Christians from charismatic and pentecostal churches to plug in.

   

• We sing 4-5 songs. In the 2000s the accepts wisdom was you don’t have Christian songs at evangelistic events. But my perception is that the non-Christians who come don’t care, they appreciate the ‘vibe’ that the singing gives… and the singing makes the Christians more excited about the event and therefore more keen to bring their non-Christian friends.
• At least once a year we invite one our music students to do a music performance as a part of the meeting.
• I preach for 50-70 minutes a very in-depth sermon. I am a big believer that it is better to do the kind of preaching that is BOTH really rich and meaty for Christians AND engaging and relevant to non-Christians. To run a regular event like Citywide Gathering and to give it momentum, it needs to be fresh and engaging for the Christians. If it were bread and butter ABC gospel presentations, we couldn’t sustain the engagement from the Christians. And I think the non-Christians would feel more ‘targeted’ in an unhelpful way too.
• We do one preaching series each semester. This preaching is spread across our 4 Citywide Gatherings, as well as our other preaching events (see future posts): our student leaders planning day, our Day Conference and our Breakfast Sessions. In Semester 1 this is normally a topical series and in Semester 2 and expository series.
• We also invite recent graduates, local pastors, parents of students to come along, see what we do and boost our numbers 🙂
• We have expo stalls in the foyer before the doors open – we invite local missionary society reps and other organisations who are committed to evangelism and leadership development to come and share what they do with our students.