Tim Suffield.com

Gareth has started blogging in reply! He has a well written post on who exactly students are going to be witnessing too. What is the student mission field?

Broadly speaking, I don’t disagree. At least, I don’t with what he’s saying. Obviously he’s espousing a view of the Christian Union and its role different to the one I would hold. If you’ve been following that’s not going to come as a great surprise to you.

I hope to write a little bit more about this. Mainly because I can think of a snappy title for the post. To respond as briefly as possible when I’m trying to write an essay: Yes, students mainly spend time with students.  Therefore, yes, the majority of a students missional living is going to impact students. The idea that students are best placed to be missional within the student culture is true, the assertion that only they should be doing it is false. The idea that students should only evangelise to students is obviously false, and Gareth isn’t saying that since he isn’t an idiot. The idea that most of a students effort for the kingdom should be put into students is not established from the previous statements and the assertion that therefore that means these students should be putting there efforts into the Christian Union I would fundamentally deny.

I can see why Gareth thinks it. It makes sense and I’m not trying to dispute that. However, I don’t think it’s right since I, as you’ll have gotten by now, think such an insistance that students = Christian Union deingrates the Church, the church and something else that would make this sentence end in a more theologically pleasing fashion.

I realise I’m making unsubstantiated claims myself. I apologise, but due to time constraints: it comes down to different views of the church. In my opinion, if you’re giving of yourself to your church first, this does not necessarily mean that you’re giving of yourself to the Christian Union. Nor do I think the Christian Union is as close to the churches as it needs to be. We’ll get there. God willing.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 18th, 2006 at 4:17 pm and is filed under The CU Question. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.