Winter into Spring II: the Majority Student Community

Yesterday I took a general look at the student work I have been involved in. Now I want to reflect on the home student context, i.e. the majority student community in the places that I have visited. My perception is going to be biased towards those I spent more time with, i.e. those who showed more interest in what was going on. The British students that I talked with often seemed to sense both the supreme importance of the message and the cost involved in accepting it. I do not recall any conversation I had with a British student being flippant.

My perception of the students in the Netherlands, however, was not the same. Of course, my experience in Utrecht was short so I may be wrong, but my hunch is that it is harder to attract students to events there. Perhaps, then, Dutch students are lagging behind their British counterparts. Not that they are further back – if anything it is the other way around – but they do not show the same interest. Perhaps because there is more nominal Christianity there still. 

I would characterise many of the British students I met as ignorant, curious, reserved, and longing. Let me explain.

Many students at our universities have never heard a presentation of the claims of the gospel before. A core goal of the events weeks is to inform those who are ignorant. There can be no commitment to Christ if there is almost no knowledge of who he claimed to be. I had nearly an hour with a young man from a bicultural background who knew very little indeed and asked lots of thoughtful questions. Some may be tempted to dumb down their answers to such questions. But if someone asks penetrating questions about the Trinity it is important to be able to answer that question and show from the Bible where such an idea comes from.

Ignorance is matched by curiosity. Students see the marquee and wonder what it is that drives some of their peers to want to be so public about their beliefs. So many of them want to visit to find out more. But their curiosity is tempered by a reserve. I think there is a real fear of rejection or at least embarrassment. That can be overcome through personal contact: it is best if someone they know invites them along, but even being given a flyer by a friendly stranger can be a significant moment.

The CU member in charge of flyers this year at Dundee was far from God a year ago. Someone handed him a flyer, he stuffed it in his pocket, and went on a night out. In the early hours, walking back to his room and realising the hollowness of having just slept with a woman whose name he didn’t even know, he came across the flyer, found his way to an event the next day, and came to Christ.

That is unusual. Most of those who profess faith do so in the weeks and months following the events. It takes time to learn even the basics, when you are starting so far back. The follow up arrangements, then, are vital; groups to look further at Uncover John or Mark, for example, seem to be just right for many who have started on a journey to faith. As is also the offer to be taken to church, especially on the Sunday following. It is important, therefore, that every effort must be taken to ensure that the CU doesn’t take off for a weekend away immediately following the week. I know it is difficult in some situations to avoid this, but it is such an important time for continuity of witness.

I think there is also a longingin many for the message of Jesus to be real. But what prevents a student from immediate acceptance of the message, when it is presented so cogently and winsomely? Could it be that so many of our young people have had their hopes dashed too many times already? Is it the pain of family breakdown, or the broken promises of a friend, or the dispiriting effects of a lifetime of social media? For the most part I have not found the students attending events to be hard-nosed cynics. They are sceptical, to be sure, but not in a bad way. They throw out questions, but my impression is that these are not usually with the goal of tripping someone up.

Winter into Spring: Reflections on Student Ministry 2019

As winter turns to spring, it has become my custom, over the last three years, to focus my energies on student evangelism. This year it has been my privilege to be involved in four universities. My first trip was to Aberystwyth (my alma mater) to speak at a special Globe Café; after that I joined others to speak and help out at events weeks in Dundee, Newcastle, and Utrecht in the Netherlands. As in previous years, I was invited to these events especially, but not exclusively, in order to help the students with their outreach to international students.

As I experienced in 2017 and 2018, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and tired myself out in equal measure. I was impressed again with the hard work and dedication of the students in each of these universities. A significant core of leaders were joined by others pitching in to help with the many practical jobs that make an event like this work.

These students were ably supported by their staff workers (UCCF in the UK, and IFES, Ichthus, and CFSR in the Netherlands). One or two decisions that were made by the students might have been better had they consulted their staff worker or experienced guest speaker more closely, but it is easy to see this in hindsight, and I am sure the CUs will learn from experience for future years.

In each place, the students created an atmosphere of warm hospitality; there was a true community feel, which a number of guests remarked on. This is surely very significant. By doing this they are creating a ‘plausibility structure’, as Newbigin called it, for the gospel: as people are welcomed into a room or tent by a group of students who share a love for the Lord Jesus, they are presented with an apologetic for the gospel even before anyone opens their mouth. And as public life becomes increasingly rancorous and nasty, such honest friendliness stands out all the more.

I was struck again this year by the importance of the development of ongoing long-term relationships by CU members with their unbelieving friends. So many students I talked to told me that they had been brought along by a friend and in some cases by one with whom they were already reading the Bible. It is lovely to see the patient plodding of CU members rewarded with the acceptance of an invitation to a special event.

The Utrecht mission – Passion Week, as they call it there – was the first for me in Continental Europe. It was only the second Passion Week they had run – the idea is still quite new in the Netherlands. The week was run by a few keen students who worked well together.

The student scene in the Netherlands is complicated: not only do you have Agape (Campus Crusade) and the Navigators operating on campus (just as they are on a few campuses in the UK) but there are also multiple organisations affiliated to IFES. Ichthus, the group that was mainly running the Passion Week has about 120 students in Utrecht but only about a dozen were really involved in the events. The Passion Week has the potential to make a big impact on the university, but it needs to be brought front and centre of what Ichthus are doing, rather than continue as a side show for a special interest group. The result of the lack of wider involvement was a poor turn out for the most part, although, and I don’t know why, the last night was unexpectedly packed.

One of the key issues for the events is the venue. In recent years many CUs in the UK have hired a marquee. In both Dundee and Newcastle, the marquee was pitched bang in the centre of campus. Handing out flyers and inviting students along was easy. The sheer fact of the tent was a draw, but the value goes far beyond that. The CU make it their home for the week – the hard-core sleep in it overnight to keep any equipment from being nicked – and there is always coffee on the brew so people to drop in for a chat. It comes at a high price – Dundee paid £3.5k for theirs but the Student Union paid for Newcastle’s – but it is well worth it.

In Utrecht the group hired a large open room in the main campus building – a sort of balcony of the refectory – for the lunch bars, which also worked well. I was surprised to find, however, that some students struggled to find it.  Such venues need to be well sign posted. In the evening we met in a welcoming church building in the city centre, which I thought worked fine.

I am impressed with the quality of the talks in these events. This year was no exception, though one talk I heard mixed psychobabble with gospel creating a confusing message in my opinion. How important it is to ensure the speakers are up to the challenge of appropriate engagement with faithful content. When the message is clear and true and warmly delivered it is dynamite. I lost count of the times I heard a student say something like this: “I have never heard anything like that before!” How easy it makes the job of the student friend or CU guest as they seek to answer questions and urge them to consider the claims of Christ further.

We had quite a few interviews in Dundee and Newcastle and I was involved in some myself, as the interviewer. These were a mixed bag. CUs need to be careful who they ask to be interviewed. A guest interviewee who has a dramatic story may get carried away and give precious little for the interviewer to grab a hold of. Or the student might be so nervous he is constantly looking down at his script and it all looks so stilted and wooden. As the majority of guests these days are not from believing families, it is best to carefully limit the number of interviewees who have parents who took them to church from their infancy. It simply doesn’t connect with the experience of the listeners. The best interviews I listened to this year were of two students who, just a year before, had been invited along to an event and had trusted Christ. What a testimony!

Enough for now. In the coming days I shall comment on the students I met – national and international, secular and religious.

The People God Uses

I mentioned in a previous post that attitudes in the Majority community in Indonesia have been hardening towards the gospel.

I will try to write about three contrasting and instructive stories I heard during my stay in Jogja (as people usually call Yogyakarta). Each is representative of a type of witness being undertaken by brothers and sisters with a heart for those who do not have much access to the gospel. 

Firstly, the couple I mentioned here are working among hard-line reformists in one of the other large islands. They have pursued their ministry in a traditional way, despite the opposition from their Arabising neighbours, talking directly with them of Allah (as both Christians and Muslims alike call God), sin, Christ, and salvation. 

“Many of the women have a full veil,” the wife told me, “but I am not afraid of them.” “They tell me, ‘You Christians are better than we are. We hide our discontentment under our veils. Inside we are angry and are always fighting with our husbands, not like you people.’” 

I was humbled at their love for the Lord, their evangelistic zeal, and their evident love for the people, all far more important than strategy and methods of cross-cultural communication. It is easy for someone like me, who thinks a lot about evangelistic approaches, to miss the significance of ordinary believers taking steps of faith in difficult situations with their limited understanding. 

“But,” as the Apostle Paul tells us, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Cor 1:27-29). We need to ponder that regularly.

A Hardening of the Categories

Technological progress in Indonesia has had a big impact on lifestyle, especially, as in other parts of the majority world, in the cities. Over the past few decades, and in response to that change, the Majority community and the Christian minority have reacted largely in opposite ways: the one retrenching and becoming more fundamentalist and the other largely capitulating to modernity. I think there are multiple reasons for this. For one thing the Chinese community (represented disproportionately in the churches) is overwhelmingly urban.

But this alone is not sufficient to explain the difference. Despite its Reformed roots, the evangelical church in Indonesia is ill-equipped to engage with culture. The reason for this, I think, should be found in the theology of religion espoused by the Dutch missionary Hendrik Kraemer, who advocated, in the 1930s, for a compete break from traditional culture by the Indonesian church. It was, if I understand correctly, his emphasis on the ‘antithesis’ – the conflict between, as he saw it, two incommensurable systems – that led to this ideology. The consequence is that people coming from traditional religions have had to adapt to foreign ways of worship and witness. And as changes to lifestyle come along, they are ill-equipped to critique those changes and the philosophy that has given rise to them. Is this why nearly all the Christian meetings I went along to were characterised by megadecibel poppy praise songs, some complete with smoke machines? Such an uncritical acceptance of the new is surely a capitulation to modernity. It is hardly surprising that the preaching of the Word left much to be desired: I am not talking about heresy, but I am talking about error.

The Majority community are horrified. So, they get their women-folk to wear the hijab (a recent development) and chant all the more vehemently through the loud-speakers adorning their mosques. Members of one family went even further and blew themselves up in three churches earlier in the year. I am not saying that suicide bombing is the churches’ fault. I am saying that it does not all come down to satanic fanaticism.

There has been, then, a hardening of the categories. Reaching out to the Majority community has become fraught with difficulties. The days of the largely folk-religious turning to Christ, with little societal opposition, may have largely gone. It is not all bleak, however. Followers of Christ have sought to respond to this new situation in creative ways. But more of that later.

Needed: Integrative Theology

As I fly home, I want to write down a few reflections on my time while the memories are still fresh. It’s been a privilege to have had these two weeks. I have enjoyed my time in Indonesia very much. My hosts in both places were very kind and went out of their way time and again for me. Indonesia reminds me of South India and Sri Lanka with its tropical vegetation and hot and humid climate. The people are friendly, always ready to smile, and a smile goes a long way in Indonesia: they say you will be forgiven many a mistake with a smile and a simple ‘sorry’. A ‘nice’ person is a good person. I wonder how that affects notions of sin and guilt, justice, crime and punishment.

Bandung Theological Seminary was founded, with the help of missionaries, by leaders of churches with a Reformed emphasis. These churches are dominated by Chinese, who form a significant proportion of the evangelical movement in the archipelago. My impression was that the seminary and denomination are well-heeled, being sponsored by wealthy businessmen. The students are well educated, their facility in English giving them unparalleled access to theological resources in their 60,000-volume library. Some of the students in my class are in ministries in which they might find it hard to benefit from my teaching, struggling with nominalism and apathy in the Christian community, rather than the joys and complexities of interaction with those of other traditions. Other students, however, seemed to find the challenge to their theological paradigm of religious pluralism very stimulating, and are considering how it might impact their ministries, especially among the Majority community and modern, secularised city dwellers.

Many of the students at ETSI in Yogyakarta, by contrast, come from far-flung, technologically less developed islands, with, I was informed, a corresponding inferiority complex. Relationships between faculty members struck me as very warm and collegial. I had lunch with the principal and two other faculty members one day. All three had turned to Christ out of Islam in their youth, when to do so did not usually carry with it the same social stigma as it does today (not that it was easy for them). All had gone through the rigorous system of the seminary and had the stories to share. Many of them had done their PhDs in American seminaries, with Dallas having quite an influence.

My approach to the course in both institutions was to give a lesson in contextual theologizing – that is, reflecting critically on modern thinking as it is expressed in both the West, from where the tradition of academic theology has spread across the world, and in Indonesia, where the national ideology of Pancasila stands over its six official ‘religions’.

Many seemed to find my approach stimulating. I was told that the leadership of the seminary in Bandung had revised the curriculum in order to get the students to think theologically on current societal issues but have found it difficult to recruit teachers. The lecturers are happy to teach systematic theology (both Berkhof and Ryrie are in Indonesian) or books of the Bible but don’t want to take on the challenge of more integrative courses. This fits in with some previous encounters with theological education in Asia. Taking on a new module and preparing it from scratch demands a lot more thought than going through notes from one’s own training. But the more I learned about the religious context in Indonesia, the more concerned I became that even seminary lecturers seem not to want to do the creative work. The missiological dimension is crucial in this. If we are going to reach the large number of people who have little or no access to the gospel, including in the Indonesian archipelago, we must do the hard work. Neither Berkhoff nor Ryrie, I ventured to guess, had much to say about honouring ancestors, spirit possession, or idolatry.

More Notes from Indonesia

I’ve been in Yogyakarta for a week now, teaching at the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Indonesia, and what a joy it has been. In contrast to the class I taught in Bandung, few students here have much facility in English. I had 28 men and women, and what a variety of faces in the room: Indonesia really is a land of diversity, ethnically as well as linguistically and religiously. There were students from nearly every corner of the country: a Batak tribal from Sumatra in the west, three men from Papua, two or three thousand miles to the east, and others from many of the islands in between: Borneo, Sulawesi, Maluku, Nusa Tengara, and of course Java, where the seminary is.

The seminary, and Immanuel Christian University that shares the campus, were started by a dynamic Indonesian leader called Chris Marantika in the 1970s. His vision was that the seminary would be a hub for church planting across the archipelago. Students would go each weekend to outlying places to share the gospel and gather believers into churches. They would not be allowed to graduate until they had baptized 15 people from unevangelized communities. They saw tremendous fruit for years and even multiplied seminaries in far-flung locations to extend the work.

In recent years, however, resistance from the majority community has made it difficult to function quite so openly, so students often work within already established churches, though other, more sensitive work has also begun.

I taught, as in Bandung, on Biblical Perspectives on Pluralism, only, this time with translation. The first day, we looked at the question of theological method, or how we go about addressing the question of pluralism, focussing on what we mean by terms like ‘religion’, ‘religions’, and ‘pluralism’, and exploring the influence of the Enlightenment on Western thought and how that has had an impact even in a place like Indonesia. The students were patient, but I think they found it heavy-going. 

Day two, and we looked at a number of relevant texts of Scripture, such as those that tell us about creation and fall, Babel and Melchizedek, Peter with Cornelius, and Paul in Athens. This was more up their street. They were brighter and more attentive, reading out the texts in Indonesian and asking intelligent questions.

On the third day, we looked at how we might respond missiologically to the context here in the light of the way religions are lived out, focussing on Primal and Majority communities. The students were so receptive and gave me such warm appreciation when we finished (as well as presenting me with a fancy batik shirt).

During the week I met with some of the students and faculty and heard so many extraordinary stories. I cannot begin to recount them all, and some are so sensitive I have to think carefully before sharing them at all.

For now, two related stories will suffice. I met a brother who works in Palu, Sulawesi, which was where the earthquake and tsunami occurred at the end of September. Sadly, he lost nine of his extended family as their house was swallowed up by the earth in that terrible soil liquefaction. Being a follower of Christ does not automatically protect you from danger. My friends here have been able to channel aid to this family and a whole lot of others.

The second, really remarkable story came from a married couple of master’s students. In March, as Febee told me, her three children each had a vision. They were not dreaming, it was in broad daylight, and all three saw it. In the vision, the children saw what they thought was a woman with long hair and in a dress - their mother perceived it to be an angel, carrying a scroll, tied with a red ribbon. The angel threw down the scroll, which then turned into a bowl and landed upside down on the earth. The children and their parents were much affected by the vision, though their father, who had been away at the time, was cautious about its significance. Their mother, on the other hand, felt at once that it was a warning of impending disaster and immediately began to visit her neighbours, to recount the vision and pass on the warning.

In August they moved here to Java for their studies, with one of the children, leaving the other two in … Palu. Imagine their horror as they saw the news and tried to find out if their other children, staying with grandparents, were safe. Thankfully, they were all saved from tragedy, experiencing a dramatic near miss from falling furniture. What effect has it had on the community? That, sadly, I could not find out. Perhaps they also do not yet know, as they have not yet been able to visit. I am a sceptic at heart but find it very difficult to dismiss such a story. Nor do I think it is necessary: God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform. Pray for them and for their community. 

Notes from Indonesia

I am in Indonesia for two weeks as a guest of a couple of seminaries. My first week here has come to an end and I am on the train from Bandung to Yogyakarta, sitting next to a pleasant Muslim lady in her headscarf. The train preparation staff all stood in a line and bowed to us as we pulled out of the station – match that Bridgend! We have been passing through recently-harvested paddy fields and villages. Banana, coconut, papaya and bamboo and some other tropical trees are growing between the fields, and the long train trip gives me an opportunity to reflect on the week. 

This is my first visit to the country and the first time I have crossed the equator. I was a little fearful I would find it too hot, but Bandung is very pleasant, being about 3000 feet above sea level. It has rained almost every afternoon in typical equatorial fashion, sometimes hard with lightning and thunder. So that has kept the heat down too. And I have never been far from air conditioning. So, it has been easy, actually.

I have not found the seven-hour time change easy at all. Several nights I had only two or three hours of proper sleep. I hope my teaching did not suffer too much. It is better now.

I have been staying in the guest lecturer’s room at Bandung Theological Seminary. Each morning I have been going for a walk in the neighbourhood. I like getting out of the compound to see the life of local people, and exchange smiles and greetings. Bandung is a city of three million people. It has an old colonial centre with grand buildings and pleasant boulevards. Out of the centre, the few main roads with their shiny office blocks and hotels are terribly congested and the people live in densely packed neighbourhoods of one- and two-storey houses with neatly swept but tiny courtyards, beautiful cage-birds singing, cats prowling, small shops selling fruit, cigarettes and other necessities and, seemingly, a small mosque on every corner. The narrow streets and tight lanes of my morning walk throng with women and men going to work on their scooters and motorbikes – nobody seems to walk or cycle if they can avoid it –, uniformed children being taken to school, hawkers selling foodstuffs from their trolleys, the old lady selling ghastly-looking medicines, the man directing traffic at the junction and collecting coins from drivers for his pains, and rubbish collectors. Given the conditions, it is remarkable how clean and orderly the neighbourhood is. But I have yet to see one item being recycled: like many other developing countries Indonesia clearly has a garbage problem and one I hope they get on top of soon.

On Thursday my hosts, Dwi and Shanti took me for a trip to the local volcano. At around 6000ft the air is cooler. To my surprise there was a car park at the crater rim – it last erupted in 2013. From there we walked around the rim of the main crater and then down into one of the others. The smell of sulphur was powerful. Amazingly, trees and other plants grow even in the dusty ash soil of the crater. The Minahasa tree is amazingly resilient – its bark gets burnt black by the fumes, but it still produces tasty fruit – a good sermon illustration I reckon.

I was invited to teach a module on Biblical Perspectives on Pluralism on the MTh course. Dwi and her co-leaders there have recently reshaped the curriculum, putting more emphasis on interdisciplinary studies appropriate to their context. Sadly, they couldn’t find anyone in the region to teach the pluralism course (something I didn’t realise until I arrived and very disturbing) and hence the invitation. I spent two months in preparation and found it both challenging and rewarding. I was afraid I had bitten off more than I could chew and would not be very helpful, especially when I discovered that pluralism is a central cherished plank in their national ideology, expressed in the motto ‘Unity in diversity’!

I had 13 students: 10 men and 3 women. All with significant ministry experience, several pastors (one with a congregation of a thousand!), two lecturers, one woman working in conflict resolution, coming from various islands of the archipelago.

We spent a total of 25 hours in the classroom together. The first day we focussed on how we go about creating a theological foundation for addressing the topic. This was vital for what we were about to do as it forced us to ask critical questions about our pre-understanding – What do we mean by ‘religion’? and so on.

We then worked through various key biblical passages interacting with significant theologians as we went. Then we sought to answer some central theological questions that had arisen from our studies: Can anyone be saved without conscious faith in Christ? Can we learn anything from other religious traditions? etc.

Finally, we addressed missiological consequences of our studies, focussing on (by their choice) ministry in Muslim and secular societies.

I found the students very attentive and a joy to teach. They taught me much too. Some struggled to work in English. Others engaged very well; they are very well-read and familiar with nearly every author I would mention – Carson, Grudem, Bavinck, Conn, Keller, Stott, McGrath; the Reformed heritage is strong. Some are in mainline denominations, battling liberalism, others in evangelical churches that are the product of a movement to Christ in Java among the Chinese two generations ago, supplemented by a huge influx of people escaping the anti-communist death squads of the 1960s (you avoided suspicion by identifying yourself as a Christian). Nominalism is rife. Nevertheless, the desire is there to reach out to other communities who are largely untouched by the gospel – the main area in which I sought to help them.

I have a week in Yogyakarta now, where I have been invited to teach three evenings to a mixed group of MTh and BTh students. I am also to speak in the chapel of Immanuel Christian University on Monday.