Are you a student and would like to grow in the are of witnessing for Jesus and communicating good news? then the following events are for you.
We focus on three areas the coming few weeks: Prayer – Action Group – Training
At this link you can find more information StudentLife activities
A few years ago I attended training for IFES staff and students. I was impressed and inspired by the teaching of the Bible about spiritual leadership. A few images did draw my attention especially. The image of a shepherd, servant, and patient helped me most during this training.
At Studentlife we thought that a series on leadership would help us. So we decided to use a variety of materials for these training sessions.
We will have a closer look at the image of a shepherd as a leadership model. This comes from Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. The main passages come from Psalm 23; John 10; Ezekiel 34; Acts 20; John 21.
Some of the lessons are the following:
We will discuss a few case studies that will help us make it practical and concrete. We hope the training will better prepare us to coach and mentor our students and student leaders.
Passionweeks is a movement in The Netherlands that allows students to hear a message from a Christian point of view. I participated in one of the training days in October. Benno van den Toren gave a workshop on how to prepare a talk in a university setting. Here are some highlights of this workshop.
It was a good and helpful workshop for people who give talks in the university setting.
StudentLife, the organization I am working with, believes that students can be positive influencers on their campuses. They can make a difference and impact others with the good news. What follows is some points related to the importance of student leaders for campus work and why students should consider becoming one.
You may have heard that Christians should go and make disciples of all nations, Mark 16:15 comes to mind. A student leader can partly help students give hands and feet to this commission.
Christians sometimes know what they are supposed to do but don’t know exactly how to do it. Someone who came to StudentLife in Delft a few weeks ago said exactly this, “I know I have to share the good news with others but I don’t know how to do this.”
Student leaders facilitate the moments to go and have conversations. They also arrange training on how to lead conversations and have follow-up meetings.
There are different reasons why someone would not become a student leader: limited time, fear of the unknown (“what am I getting into now?”) failures, weaknesses, feelings of inadequacy (“I am not good enough, or not ready”) some doubts about faith, lack of courage, and the list can go on. What would you add to this list? Here some thoughts about the above reasons.
Time is always a challenge. But how much time does it take to be a student leader? In StudentLife not more than 2 hours per week! Yes, you have to learn about time management and also stick with these two hours. We always can do more. But we have to learn to set limits and boundaries in our lives.
It also has to do with priorities and values. What are the things that you are doing at the moment that you could either postpone or avoid doing for the next three months, or stop doing because they don’t help you become a better person?
Furthermore, we all can feel a sense of inadequacy: we’re not ready, we’re not good enough, or we’re not able enough. The apostle Paul felt like this many times, such as in 2 Corinthians 3:5-6. Read and reflect on these verses. And Paul was not the only one to feel like this! Jeremiah as a young man felt overwhelmed with the idea of becoming a prophet for God, read and reflect on Jeremiah 1:4-10. Write your thoughts down and pray about your feelings of inadequacy.
God is asking us to share the good news. He also expects us to be good leaders in our lives and our service for Him. But He also gives us the strength, wisdom, love, mercy, and power to do it.
To join a StudentLife team and go for conversations with the purpose to help others think about the big questions of life is pleasing to God. To go a step further and become a student leader and lead a movement in your campus is also pleasing to God, good for others, and good for you. You will learn what it means to press on and not give up easily because God will sustain you. He will teach you the value of prayer in your life. A student leader once said, “Going for conversations is a training school/ground to share the good news and make disciples.” A training ground! And you can facilitate, you can make it happen with God’s enablement.
Would you prayerfully consider becoming a student leader? Feel free to contact me or one of my Studentlife colleagues.
Since 2016 every fall semester I am teaching the Christian Apologeitcs course to M.Div students (master of divinity) at Tyndale. It is an international setting, students come from all continetns and from different church backgrounds. This makes the course even more interesting than studying it only in a western country setting. It is an enriching experience.
I personally have studied at Tyndale in 2000-2003. It was a good preparation for both my current student/campus ministry, but also for further accademic studies. There is a practical emphasis in this course. We try to find ways to apply what we learn during the course but also for our future ministries.
This class is for the Master of Divinity program, but it could be an elective for the Master of Evangelical Theology program. The Christian world view will be related to competing world views, e.g. postmodernism, deism, atheism, naturalism, materialism, pantheism. Also covered are the nature of the relationship of faith and reason and other apologetic issues, such as the problem of evil, the possibility of incarnation, the case for the resurrection.
Here you can find more information about the different programs of the school.