What does it mean to serve the university as the university? We must do more than create church outposts on campus — but how? As the conversation continues, here are two important resources.

The first video features Vinoth Ramachandra visualising the need on a whiteboard. He touches on evangelism; the interface between church and campus; the place of staff workers; and the call for full-time participants in the academic community.

The second video is the talk Terence Halliday has been presenting at regional IFES conferences (Ghana, on this occasion). He outlines four dimensions of university ministry — pietistic, evangelistic, apologetic, dialogic — and calls for more attention to dialogic ministry. The examples he provides come from places including India, Guatemala and Singapore, and this gives a sense of how student fellowships can become more integrated with and focused on the university without detracting from the important activities that already exist. He also stresses the need to give young leaders ‘oxygen to breathe the energy of a movement’ (Daniel Bourdanné).

If your internet connection is limited, like ours, try saving a smaller copy of the video instead of streaming it: open it in Vimeo, then click ‘download’ and choose your preferred size.

Categories: University ministry Written by Arthur

Tagged as: Engaging the university IFES Terence Halliday video Vinoth Ramachandra

Arthur Davis

Arthur Davis is an Aussie living in Tanzania, writing at meetjesusatuni.com.