Latest / Vox ministries Podcast / Gen. Z students are becoming Christians in the UK

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Gen. Z students are becoming Christians in the UK · Vox ministries Podcast

0:01
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well welcome to this episode of Vox Ministries Podcast.
0:05
SPEAKER_01: It's great that you can join us today, wherever you're listening.
0:08
SPEAKER_01: If you're listening on Spotify,
0:10
SPEAKER_01: that means you won't see our lovely faces or not so lovely faces.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: If you're watching on YouTube, you get the full 3D colour effects, kind of, as you look today.
0:21
SPEAKER_01: But it's great today to welcome Matt from UCCF.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: Matt is the CEO of UCCF.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: That sounds very grandeur, doesn't it, Matt?
0:29
SPEAKER_01: Welcome.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: Thanks Clive, it's good to be here.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: So Matt, where are you in the country?
0:36
SPEAKER_01: We're both in the UK, but where are you?
0:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I live in Cambridge, I'm at home in Cambridge at the moment.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: UCCF's offices are in Oxford,
0:44
SPEAKER_00: so I like to think as far as those ancient English universities are concerned,
0:48
SPEAKER_00: we have both bases covered between the office and the home.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm in Cambridge at the moment.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're doing properly classically old school, covering two bases there, aren't you?
0:58
SPEAKER_01: That's right, yeah.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: So Matt, can you just tell us a bit about yourself?
1:04
SPEAKER_01: You obviously haven't worked with UCCF forever, you haven't worked with students forever.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: Can you just tell us a bit about yourself, if you've got family or work?
1:13
SPEAKER_01: Favourite food, favourite drink?
1:15
SPEAKER_01: What can you tell us?
1:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I have been working for UCCF for just two years
1:24
SPEAKER_00: in the role that I'm in now.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: But if you...
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Wind the clock back.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in East Kent, which is where I met a young lady called Anika.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: I was 15 and she was 16.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: We were at school together.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: I'd just become a Christian and she was a Christian in school.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: We got to know one another well.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: And a few years later,
1:45
SPEAKER_00: to cut the story short, I chased her up to university in the northeast of England.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: We both went to medical school and then we got married halfway through being
1:53
SPEAKER_00: at medical school in Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: So 2001-ish, yeah, 2001 to 2006, I studied medicine.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: I worked as a doctor for the next seven or eight years, mainly around the northeast of England.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: I spent a bit of time during that time Around about 2009, 10, 11, 12,
2:15
SPEAKER_00: working with an organisation called the Christian Medical Fellowship,
2:19
SPEAKER_00: CMF, which is a very close organisation with UCCF.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: In fact, they were founded in very similar ways and one grew out of the other.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: I worked as a student staff worker,
2:30
SPEAKER_00: working with medical students,
2:33
SPEAKER_00: mainly in the northeast of England,
2:35
SPEAKER_00: but then around and about the place in various places too.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: We worked parallel with UCCF and I ended up being part of some of the UCCF regional
2:43
SPEAKER_00: So I've been close with UCCF then as well as my time at university as a student.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: I've been a great beneficiary of UCCF's ministry then too.
3:07
SPEAKER_00: And then in 2013,
3:09
SPEAKER_00: having spent a bit of time as a medical registrar in hospitals,
3:14
SPEAKER_00: my wife and our kids or some of our kids at that point headed down to Bible College
3:19
SPEAKER_00: in North London.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: Where we spent the next four years.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: And by the end of that time,
3:25
SPEAKER_00: we arrived with four children, aged four, three, two and zero for a few months.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm sure you're not a missionary.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: And we left Oak Hill with another two children.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: So we have six children who today are aged 17, 16, 15, 13, 12 and 11.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: Three boys and three girls.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: So our house is full.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of life in our house.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: Occasionally it feels like there's too much life in our house,
3:53
SPEAKER_00: but most of the time it's just a lot of fun,
3:55
SPEAKER_00: a lot of life, a lot of laughter and very loud.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: Do you have a minibus or something?
4:01
SPEAKER_01: We do.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: We have a big van.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: It's got We've got nine seats in it so we can fit the family in plus a seat
4:07
SPEAKER_00: for granny or something or a friend that gets us around.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and we've been in Cambridge since 2017.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: For the last nine years I was a local church pastor for the first seven of those and
4:20
SPEAKER_00: then two years ago joined UCCF.
4:23
SPEAKER_01: Wow, packed a lot in there.
4:25
SPEAKER_01: That is a lot of life and a lot of family.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: And what's your go-to kind of bit of food?
4:31
SPEAKER_01: Or you just take what you can with a big family?
4:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, with a big family, we eat fast.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: Everybody who comes to our house notices that our family eats.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: I think that's probably because if you don't, you might not eat at all.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: You have to get in there.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: My wife is half Indian.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: Her father's Indian.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: Her mother's Northern Irish.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: So I guess potato curry is probably the answer there.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, we're great fans of Indian food in our house.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: Wow, that sounds like a combo.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: Sounds like some good food going on in that house.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, it's good stuff.
5:04
SPEAKER_01: So Matt, we've been thinking on this podcast, which is kind of pretty...
5:09
SPEAKER_01: Young really,
5:09
SPEAKER_01: we've only been going a few months,
5:10
SPEAKER_01: but we've been thinking a bit about leadership at times.
5:13
SPEAKER_01: We're thinking a bit about apologetics, a bit about the interface of those things and culture.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: And one of the questions I like to ask people is that if you were,
5:22
SPEAKER_01: you've already explained you've had quite a full life already,
5:25
SPEAKER_01: but if you were to go back in time,
5:27
SPEAKER_01: kind of back to the future vibe,
5:29
SPEAKER_01: if you were to go to speak to your 25 year old self,
5:34
SPEAKER_01: knowing what you know now, what would you say to yourself?
5:40
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I think I'm winding the clock back nearly 20 years for me.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: And I think probably the first thing I'd want to say is it's all right to take things slowly.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: I think aged 25,
5:56
SPEAKER_00: I was working as a junior doctor,
5:59
SPEAKER_00: resident doctor is what they'd be called today,
6:01
SPEAKER_00: but we were still called junior doctors then.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: And I think sort of trying to think carefully about a lot about...
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Where the Lord was leading me,
6:10
SPEAKER_00: the ideas about future,
6:12
SPEAKER_00: I call it ministry outside of medicine,
6:14
SPEAKER_00: because I think medicine is a ministry from the Lord,
6:17
SPEAKER_00: but what I meant by that was what people call full-time Christian ministry,
6:21
SPEAKER_00: was on my radar.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about it.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: I was praying about it.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: And I think I probably felt quite a degree of frustration and impatience wanting
6:32
SPEAKER_00: to sort of fast forward my life to the point where I was doing those things
6:38
SPEAKER_00: that I was wondering about or had arrived in some of the leadership positions
6:43
SPEAKER_00: that I aspired to,
6:44
SPEAKER_00: whether that was in church or at that time in medicine or anything else like that.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: I think I look back and I realise I was quite an impatient young man wanting to sort
6:54
SPEAKER_00: of press fast forward on my life to get to some future destination
6:58
SPEAKER_00: that I imagined would,
6:59
SPEAKER_00: you know, everything would be lined up in the right kind of way.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: And it's a cliche to say, you know.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: You never arrive at the future destination that you think you're heading to.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: But it's true.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: And I think realising that
7:16
SPEAKER_00: slowness and taking your time I
7:23
SPEAKER_00: read a book
7:26
SPEAKER_00: a few years ago called The Three Mile An Hour God,
7:29
SPEAKER_00: which was just commenting on the fact that Jesus walked everywhere.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: And as the book puts it, loved him.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: Travels at three miles an hour.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: Now, I think the title is probably the best thing about that book,
7:39
SPEAKER_00: if I'm honest, but it's an evocative title.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: And I think the idea that I think I thought everything important,
7:49
SPEAKER_00: everything to do with the Lord was important.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: More like 100 miles an hour or 150 miles an hour.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: And I think despite the fact that my life is filled with children
7:59
SPEAKER_00: and student ministry is a fast place world to be in because there's
8:02
SPEAKER_00: so much change happening all the time and all of that sort of thing.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: I think I've appreciated the fact that actually the best
8:09
SPEAKER_00: and most important things happen slowly.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: I think that probably be the first and maybe the one thing I'd want to say
8:15
SPEAKER_00: to my 25 year old self.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: So you sort of say slow down a bit.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: Slow down and let God do his work in his timing.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: I think don't try and short circuit your own growth.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: You need to experience the time.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: It's an interesting one, isn't it?
8:33
SPEAKER_01: Because we can get hold of the fact that we're saved by grace,
8:37
SPEAKER_01: what we're saved from, but then often struggle to know what we're saved to.
8:42
SPEAKER_01: And I think sometimes in that regard...
8:45
SPEAKER_01: We might believe in grace,
8:47
SPEAKER_01: we're saved by grace,
8:48
SPEAKER_01: but then not be able to operate in the rhythm of that grace because we're sort of,
8:53
SPEAKER_01: of course,
8:54
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians 2 says, you know, to prepare good works in advance for us to do.
8:58
SPEAKER_01: Right, well, give me them now, Lord.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: We don't quite see the kind of the waiting on the Lord for that or being spirit led,
9:06
SPEAKER_01: keeping in step with the spirit at times.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: We can be impatient, can't we?
9:10
SPEAKER_00: I think there's another dynamic as well,
9:11
SPEAKER_00: which is it's often the case that,
9:15
SPEAKER_00: and I see it today in the student world with students that I work with,
9:19
SPEAKER_00: that at that sort of age,
9:21
SPEAKER_00: you can easily imagine that what real crystallization What Christian life,
9:25
SPEAKER_00: real living with the Lord means is what I like to call the sort of equivalent
9:30
SPEAKER_00: of spiritual extreme sports.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: It's all of the mountaintop experiences.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: It's the moments when God breaks through and does something miraculous.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: It's the moments when you're very tangibly aware of his presence or you have
9:40
SPEAKER_00: the conversation with someone and it doesn't just peter out,
9:43
SPEAKER_00: but they actually do respond and maybe even they give their lives to the Lord.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: And you think that's the real stuff of the Christian life.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: And then all the other stuff,
9:51
SPEAKER_00: which is more like in the valleys and it's slow and it's normal,
9:54
SPEAKER_00: is the stuff that you think, well, that's, it's somehow not a spiritual.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: And you have this sort of dichotomy between the radical and the ordinary way of thinking.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: You think the radical is where it's at, the ordinary, something a little bit dirty about it.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: I've actually come to realise this, not quite the other way around.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: All of it is life with the Lord, but the ordinary is where life in the Lord is really lived.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: And Ephesians, you're right, where does Ephesians go next?
10:18
SPEAKER_00: Paul begins to unfold what life looks like,
10:21
SPEAKER_00: what it looks like to live a life worthy of your calling from chapter four.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: And it involves living under politicians and it involves living in a family
10:30
SPEAKER_00: and it involves being in a workplace and it involves having kids.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: It involves having houses.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: It's normal everyday life,
10:38
SPEAKER_00: but it's life with the Lord that makes that ordinary radical in itself rather
10:43
SPEAKER_00: than having to look for these fast-paced experiences.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and these things that can slow us down,
10:52
SPEAKER_01: like having to do the school run Or whatever it is that slows us down can show us
10:59
SPEAKER_01: that we're not needing to rush ahead because we can't.
11:03
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we're just limited, aren't we, by these things?
11:06
SPEAKER_01: And there's a reason for those limitations.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: So as we're here,
11:10
SPEAKER_01: we're going to get back in the car and go back from 25 years ago to now,
11:14
SPEAKER_01: or 20 years in your case, to 2026, we see a difference.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: In the spiritual landscape with Gen Z or Gen Z as we might call it,
11:27
SPEAKER_01: there's an openness to spirituality and Christianity that certainly wasn't there
11:33
SPEAKER_01: when I worked in UCCF for nearly 10 years, 20 odd years ago.
11:38
SPEAKER_01: It was much more about new atheism, God is a delusion.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: There was no opening, no question.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: There was a kind of quick...
11:47
SPEAKER_01: Mockery and cancelling of you if you were to talk about Christianity.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: But there is a different landscape now and there seems to be an openness
11:54
SPEAKER_01: to spirituality, an openness to Christianity in particular.
11:58
SPEAKER_01: I suppose my question connected to that, Matt,
12:02
SPEAKER_01: because you're kind of closer to it than I am,
12:04
SPEAKER_01: is is this just a sort of vibe shift or do you think there is the change
12:11
SPEAKER_01: of something deeper, something longer lasting going on?
12:17
SPEAKER_00: I think that's almost the question for us at the moment.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: What is happening is the question that I think we've been wrestling with for a while.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, when reports come out,
12:29
SPEAKER_00: whether it's the Quiet Revival report earlier in the year and all the conversations
12:32
SPEAKER_00: that have happened around that since it came out last year about its viability
12:37
SPEAKER_00: or otherwise and its veracity or otherwise.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: And then a whole load of other reports that have come through from bodies like
12:43
SPEAKER_00: the Evangelical Alliance and Plenty of other people who've been doing studies
12:47
SPEAKER_00: into whatever is happening.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: The students themselves,
12:51
SPEAKER_00: the Gen Z themselves would want to talk about the vibes,
12:55
SPEAKER_00: but they wouldn't mean just something superficial.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: They'd be talking about something kind of at depth of the way things feel and
13:02
SPEAKER_00: the way things are.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: I want to say,
13:07
SPEAKER_00: the cop-out answer is it's too early to say,
13:10
SPEAKER_00: and to some degree it is,
13:14
SPEAKER_00: but I think things have gone beyond that to say
13:17
SPEAKER_00: that there is something substantially shifting in the way that particularly...
13:23
SPEAKER_00: That generation,
13:25
SPEAKER_00: Gen Z and then Gen Alpha coming up behind them,
13:28
SPEAKER_00: who are probably the oldest of whom are around about 13 years old at the moment.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: The way that they're seeing the world and the way in
13:35
SPEAKER_00: which they are interpreting their experiences.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: The experience of it is bringing a whole load of different questions that are being asked.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: So rather than 10,
13:45
SPEAKER_00: 15 years ago,
13:47
SPEAKER_00: back when I was a student,
13:49
SPEAKER_00: when Dawkins was writing The God Delusion,
13:52
SPEAKER_00: the anniversary of it was just 20 years ago last month.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: The question then really was, how can this possibly be true?
14:00
SPEAKER_00: The questions that we now see students asking are far more, you'd call them existential.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: They're questions about what does it look like to be a human in the world?
14:11
SPEAKER_00: What is a human?
14:12
SPEAKER_00: How do we flourish?
14:13
SPEAKER_00: How do we find purpose and meaning and belonging?
14:17
SPEAKER_00: All of these longings that build up in our heart.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: And I think the reason for that is that all of the answers that were proposed by
14:27
SPEAKER_00: a much more secularist,
14:29
SPEAKER_00: much more naturalist way of looking at things,
14:31
SPEAKER_00: a secularism that promised a utopia, a naturalism that promised...
14:35
SPEAKER_00: To bring meaning and purpose within this frame of just the things we can touch
14:40
SPEAKER_00: and see and feel, they've been found wanting.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: They haven't delivered their promises.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: And as a result,
14:47
SPEAKER_00: this is a generation,
14:49
SPEAKER_00: I like to call them the open generation,
14:52
SPEAKER_00: Open because I think they're caught in the middle of a whole swathe of crises
14:58
SPEAKER_00: which come out of the fact that those promises have not been kept or they feel
15:04
SPEAKER_00: that they've not been delivered upon.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: So they have the massive relationship.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: The emotional crisis, they're the most anxious, the most lonely generation on record.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: The emotional crisis, they're the most anxious generation on record.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: There's the political crisis with the increasing polarization,
15:19
SPEAKER_00: particularly along gender lines between male and female,
15:21
SPEAKER_00: but in lots of different ways.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: Lots of different ways and ideologies.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: For students,
15:26
SPEAKER_00: those that I work with,
15:27
SPEAKER_00: which is about 50% of Gen Z in the UK will be a student at university at some stage.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: Then they're in the middle of an institutional crisis
15:36
SPEAKER_00: where universities themselves don't really know what they're for anymore.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: They're struggling to understand that.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: They're struggling financially.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: There's all sorts of problems.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: So they're caught in the middle of that as well.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: And then there's a deep existential crisis.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: They're just exhausted.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: And I think they're exhausted because they're constantly seeing these wars
15:55
SPEAKER_00: of competing ideologies.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: And they just,
15:57
SPEAKER_00: there's this desperation to know what's the answer that brings,
16:01
SPEAKER_00: well, rest, that brings a degree away from that exhaustion.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: Of course,
16:05
SPEAKER_00: underneath all of that is the spiritual crisis of needing to be reconciled to
16:09
SPEAKER_00: the God who made us.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: And so we have Jesus saying, come to me all who are weary and I will give you rest.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: And it couldn't be more relevant.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: So I like to say that it feels to me as though we're in a, I call it a Proverbs 9 moment.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 9,
16:26
SPEAKER_00: when the two ladies are crying out in the street,
16:29
SPEAKER_00: you get Lady Wisdom crying out, all who are simple come in here.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Although the word simple really means open.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: All who are open come in here.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: Then you get Lady Folly sending out her servants to say exactly the same thing.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: All who are open come in here.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: And the question for Gen Z and for those of us ministering directly with Gen Z
16:47
SPEAKER_00: and Gen Alpha following them is how can we help them discern between the voice
16:52
SPEAKER_00: of wisdom who is Christ and the many,
16:55
SPEAKER_00: many voices of folly that can sound identical that they are exploring in all sorts
17:00
SPEAKER_00: of different spiritualities and expressions of spiritual things.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: No, that's really helpful because I think,
17:08
SPEAKER_01: as you were saying that,
17:09
SPEAKER_01: it kind of gives me sort of a picture of,
17:12
SPEAKER_01: if you think of it as sort of land,
17:14
SPEAKER_01: as soil, that,
17:17
SPEAKER_01: you know,
17:17
SPEAKER_01: 20 odd years ago,
17:18
SPEAKER_01: the land was almost like hard and frozen and very hard to sow seeds into.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: Whereas the picture that you're describing is a bit more like, well,
17:30
SPEAKER_01: the land has been ploughed up through different circumstances,
17:33
SPEAKER_01: whether it's political or The internet or sociological and it's ready for the seeds
17:41
SPEAKER_01: to be planted and the seeds are being planted but there is that possibility with
17:47
SPEAKER_01: that fertility of the land to also get toxicity into it as well because it's so open
17:53
SPEAKER_01: to other things isn't it?
17:54
SPEAKER_01: So whether it's open to other spiritualities,
17:59
SPEAKER_01: People are more open,
18:00
SPEAKER_01: but I think maybe the openness has come through that ploughing,
18:04
SPEAKER_01: whether it's the lockdowns, COVID,
18:06
SPEAKER_01: whether it's uncertainty about the future in a way that That maybe
18:11
SPEAKER_01: in my generation we were encouraged to sort of have a sense of self-sufficiency.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: If you can materially be okay,
18:18
SPEAKER_01: if you can have a house,
18:19
SPEAKER_01: if you can have a career path and a status, then you're doing okay.
18:22
SPEAKER_01: But then that led to a kind of hardness.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: Does that sort of make sense?
18:26
SPEAKER_00: I think it does.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: And of course we should bear in mind that all of the stats
18:30
SPEAKER_00: that have been coming out have sort of showed this U-shape where
18:34
SPEAKER_00: the openness is there at the younger end with Gen Z.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: And then there seems to be a growing openness among people Older people in our country as well.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: And then you and I sit in the middle of the you where the hardness still exists
18:48
SPEAKER_00: that we've sort of been brought up in.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: So the other thing about Gen Z is,
18:51
SPEAKER_00: of course,
18:52
SPEAKER_00: that they are the children of a generation who actively rejected the idea
18:56
SPEAKER_00: of Christianity and remain hard to it.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: So their rebellion is getting trusted in Christianity.
19:06
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's interesting.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: So it kind of leads me on to another sort of question,
19:11
SPEAKER_01: which is, I suppose it's really in the area of influence.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: So if we've seen a change happening, historically, you're in Cambridge and you travel to Oxford.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: Historically,
19:22
SPEAKER_01: there was a kind of drip down effect with universities whereby in the Enlightenment
19:27
SPEAKER_01: through people like Kant and Hume and Voltaire, these ideas came in.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: This is, you know, now we're enlightened.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: Christianity is a load of rubbish.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: We're enlightened people, what have you.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: So therefore, you need to get on board.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: If you really want to be somebody that seems to be credible,
19:44
SPEAKER_01: you need to get on board with these kind of philosophical ideas.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: And historically,
19:49
SPEAKER_01: we can look at church history and we can see that actually philosophy
19:52
SPEAKER_01: and theology go hand in hand,
19:53
SPEAKER_01: that often the church and theology is influenced by philosophy.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: But in the age that we live in, I mean,
20:01
SPEAKER_01: I know this might vary with different universities,
20:04
SPEAKER_01: but are people more influenced by Voltaire or by TikTok and Instagram?
20:11
SPEAKER_01: Or their friends.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: Where is the levels of influence coming from?
20:15
SPEAKER_00: It's such a fascinating question to try and tease out, isn't it?
20:19
SPEAKER_00: I sort of want to ask,
20:21
SPEAKER_00: you know,
20:21
SPEAKER_00: what are the methods by which the philosophies of
20:27
SPEAKER_00: the intellectual elite actually do influence what we would now call popular culture?
20:34
SPEAKER_00: How does that happen?
20:38
SPEAKER_00: If you look back across the span,
20:40
SPEAKER_00: there was that direct influence you've described of people looking up to luminaries
20:44
SPEAKER_00: and thinkers and reading them and being directly influenced by them.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: But of course,
20:48
SPEAKER_00: there was always the indirect influence,
20:50
SPEAKER_00: which was far stronger, which was via the...
20:54
SPEAKER_00: Whatever the equivalent of the sort of popular culture was in the poetry of
20:58
SPEAKER_00: the romantic poets was probably went a long way to embedding the self at centre and
21:07
SPEAKER_00: the expressive individual self in the popular mind.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: So subconsciously probably went a lot further than the
21:15
SPEAKER_00: the Enlightenment thinkers actually,
21:16
SPEAKER_00: you know,
21:18
SPEAKER_00: So in some ways,
21:19
SPEAKER_00: I sort of want to say that, well,
21:21
SPEAKER_00: the philosophy of the day is going to filter through and be reflected by
21:26
SPEAKER_00: the philosophy of the day.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: Popular ways in which people interact with one another and particularly
21:38
SPEAKER_00: when anybody interacts with a large audience.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: And we now,
21:42
SPEAKER_00: of course,
21:42
SPEAKER_00: you've just referred to it,
21:43
SPEAKER_00: have sort of democratised large audience interaction with social media.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: So we've sort of turbocharged that phenomenon.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: And so I think all of the subconscious philosophy which has developed this idea of
22:03
SPEAKER_00: the sovereign individual as the one who is determinant of identity,
22:09
SPEAKER_00: the one who expresses truth and is almost the arbiter of what is true for
22:14
SPEAKER_00: that individual.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: That has led us to a point now where that is being enacted.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: It's almost like the philosophy is embodied in the very medium of social media.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: And then those people on social media are without...
22:31
SPEAKER_00: Without realising it,
22:32
SPEAKER_00: they are taking,
22:33
SPEAKER_00: they are kind of adding rocket fuel to that sort of idea
22:37
SPEAKER_00: of expressive individualistic philosophy, I think.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: So in some ways, I'm sort of arguing kind of both, but not really directly.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: It's a sort of subconscious popularisation
22:52
SPEAKER_00: this sort of Western ideal that
22:55
SPEAKER_00: the individual is the sovereign seat of truth.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:00
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think when you were speaking there,
23:02
SPEAKER_01: that was interesting because I was thinking that I suppose if you,
23:06
SPEAKER_01: let's say you went back 50 years and somebody was saying,
23:09
SPEAKER_01: you know, well,
23:11
SPEAKER_01: I'm influenced by,
23:12
SPEAKER_01: you know, the romanticism of poetry and Wordsworth and what have you.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: And then someone else is like, oh, I've read a lot of Kant or Hume.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: But, Either way,
23:22
SPEAKER_01: whether it's that or TikTok now,
23:25
SPEAKER_01: I guess what happens is in both extremes,
23:29
SPEAKER_01: so classical or TikTok or Instagram, there's an assimilation, isn't there?
23:35
SPEAKER_01: So you could be a student at Oxford or a student at Durham or a student in
23:40
SPEAKER_01: a university in London and assimilate with what the current sort of zeitgeist of
23:46
SPEAKER_01: the day is, what the current trend is.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: But it's whether you're standing back and being critical of that, I guess.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: Whether it's I'm being influenced by the Manosphere on Instagram or TikTok or
23:58
SPEAKER_01: whether I'm being influenced by Canada.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: I suppose the challenge for all of us is how do we think critically about these things?
24:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think that's absolutely right, Clive.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: I think the how do we think critically is really key.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: And so often the danger is that we perhaps don't...
24:18
SPEAKER_00: We don't think critically when it comes to certain messages in certain mediums
24:22
SPEAKER_00: because we don't think we need to.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: So it depends on our disposition.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: We might have our filters up really high around certain mediums
24:30
SPEAKER_00: and certain platforms or even certain authors and certain ideation.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: And then our filters are completely down at other points because we don't think
24:39
SPEAKER_00: that it's the same thing.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: Whereas actually all of it is carrying a message that answers questions of what is a human?
24:46
SPEAKER_00: What does human flourishing mean?
24:47
SPEAKER_00: What has gone wrong with the world and what can be done to put it right
24:50
SPEAKER_00: or what has been done to put it right?
24:51
SPEAKER_00: All of these salvation stories are out there all the time.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: And so I think the ongoing thing is,
25:01
SPEAKER_01: from what you're saying there,
25:02
SPEAKER_01: is that,
25:02
SPEAKER_01: and this is partly why we're doing this podcast and other people are doing things
25:06
SPEAKER_01: to try and help us think critically,
25:08
SPEAKER_01: is just,
25:09
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:09
SPEAKER_01: let's have a conversation about what is there and how do we actually engage with it.
25:13
SPEAKER_01: And I think you either sort of run for the hills and hide in a cave as a Christian,
25:18
SPEAKER_01: or you just assimilate and absorb the latest trends.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: So it's always that sort of challenge, isn't it, is to Can we read?
25:26
SPEAKER_01: Can we think?
25:27
SPEAKER_01: Can we ask questions?
25:28
SPEAKER_01: Can we discuss?
25:29
SPEAKER_01: Can we debate?
25:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe that's a dirty one.
25:33
SPEAKER_01: Debate.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: We don't want to be cancelled.
25:35
SPEAKER_01: So it's just about your perspective and my perspective.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: But what we're seeking after is the truth, isn't it?
25:41
SPEAKER_01: And it's the truth that sets us free.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: Matt, you lead UCCF,
25:47
SPEAKER_01: you help lead UCCF,
25:48
SPEAKER_01: and you're trying to reach this generation of students
25:51
SPEAKER_01: And students get alongside other students.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: So they're on campus and they're being equipped to share the gospel with other students.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: So as we've been talking about this sort of shift,
26:05
SPEAKER_01: certainly a shift from 20 years ago, if not 10 years ago.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: What are you seeing on the ground?
26:12
SPEAKER_01: Are there a couple of stories that you can share with us that kind of speak
26:16
SPEAKER_01: of this change happening?
26:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's, I mean,
26:21
SPEAKER_00: we have the great privilege of supporting Christian unions in over 150 locations,
26:27
SPEAKER_00: university locations in Britain.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: And so there are My head is almost too full of stories,
26:33
SPEAKER_00: but in the immediate history,
26:38
SPEAKER_00: just in these last few weeks, of course, all universities have started going back.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: They've had welcome weeks, new students have been arriving.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: And so two stories that I've heard that have stuck in my head over
26:48
SPEAKER_00: the last few weeks would be an example of a student in Portsmouth who arrived
26:55
SPEAKER_00: at university from a...
26:57
SPEAKER_00: A Christian home, but knowing that she wasn't sure where she stood.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: And I think she represents quite a number of thousands of students
27:05
SPEAKER_00: who are probably going to university from having been brought up in church
27:08
SPEAKER_00: and perhaps represents the prayers of many, many grandparents and parents.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: And she she encountered the Christian Union in her first week.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: They were around in the welcome week, the freshers week.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: Seek at giving up a week, an extra week of their holiday in order to welcome new students.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: And she knew the one thing she knew was there will be community here.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: I talked earlier on about that loneliness phenomenon and that longing to belong.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: She knew I will find good community there.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: And so she's been going along to the Christian Union,
27:44
SPEAKER_00: has been very honest, not sure where she stands.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: But I think it.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: She has begun building relationships and friendships with the Christian Union and
27:52
SPEAKER_00: with Christian students around her,
27:53
SPEAKER_00: with the UCCF staff worker who's working alongside the CU,
27:57
SPEAKER_00: has started reading a gospel with a student.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: I think it exemplifies what is at the core of the way that I think UCCF seeks
28:08
SPEAKER_00: to approach mission and help students approach mission,
28:11
SPEAKER_00: but actually I think is really important at this moment,
28:15
SPEAKER_00: given all that we've talked about,
28:16
SPEAKER_00: which is the highly Relational nature of an individual coming alongside
28:21
SPEAKER_00: an individual and being able to share something of themselves,
28:24
SPEAKER_00: share their life with each other and being able to interact in a way
28:30
SPEAKER_00: which is not mediated.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: By which I mean not online chat forums and things like that,
28:36
SPEAKER_00: but actually just person to person.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: That's really, really key.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: And is represented in the other story,
28:42
SPEAKER_00: which is a wonderful one up in Scotland,
28:44
SPEAKER_00: not far from you, Clive, in Stirling, where...
28:48
SPEAKER_00: At the welcome fair,
28:51
SPEAKER_00: at the Freshers' Fair,
28:52
SPEAKER_00: a CU member got chatting to a member of another society
28:56
SPEAKER_00: who I think was getting people interested in chess,
29:00
SPEAKER_00: invited them along and this lad came,
29:02
SPEAKER_00: ended up going to And on the second time round brought along three friends to come
29:06
SPEAKER_00: and hear a bit more.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: And that's the sort of thing that we love.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: It's both the bread and butter of UCCF and it's also the stuff that provides
29:25
SPEAKER_00: the fuel for what we do.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: We love to hear that way that students can get alongside other students.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: They have a unique opportunity.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: There's a huge opportunity in universities surrounded by thousands and thousands
29:38
SPEAKER_00: of students to be able to just share Jesus with the next person.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: And the task is enormous.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: There's about 10,000 students involved in Christian unions in Britain
29:50
SPEAKER_00: and there are two to two and a half million students at universities in Britain.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: So it's an enormous harvest field with huge opportunities for that mission.
30:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, that's really good.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: Because I actually, when you were talking, I was struck by the simplicity of that.
30:08
SPEAKER_01: You know,
30:08
SPEAKER_01: one scenario where a girl going off to university,
30:14
SPEAKER_01: as often is the case, can go either way sometimes.
30:17
SPEAKER_01: They can come into that situation in a university.
30:19
SPEAKER_01: There's so many temptations.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: It's like John Bunyan's Vanity Fair.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: It's sort of all these things that could come your way and lead you astray.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: But actually somebody getting alongside somebody...
30:32
SPEAKER_01: Investing in them is not just kind of saying, well,
30:35
SPEAKER_01: let's have a bit of pizza,
30:36
SPEAKER_01: as it were, but actually just really sharing the gospel and living that out.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: And then that other story makes me realise,
30:44
SPEAKER_01: back to that picture I've had of the fertile land,
30:47
SPEAKER_01: you know, there they are, open and ready to receive the seeds being sown.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: And it needs people...
30:56
SPEAKER_01: Like other students simply saying, do you want to read the Bible?
30:59
SPEAKER_01: And I think,
31:00
SPEAKER_01: you know,
31:00
SPEAKER_01: that is not a kind of,
31:03
SPEAKER_01: it's not like booking Wembley Stadium and putting on an event for 50,000 people
31:09
SPEAKER_01: or 7,000 people.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: It's just, you know, getting alongside people, isn't it?
31:13
SPEAKER_01: And being there in the flat and having the boldness to say that, but just to do it.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: And I've heard that, your story there, I've heard that time and time again.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: I was speaking at, um, An events week in Harry Watt University in Edinburgh last year.
31:29
SPEAKER_01: What struck me, Matt,
31:30
SPEAKER_01: was the difference in that sort of events week to 10 years ago would be that
31:37
SPEAKER_01: Before I even gave the talk,
31:39
SPEAKER_01: there were a number of students who were sitting at my table asking me questions.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: So that indicates to me there's a hunger to want to find out.
31:51
SPEAKER_01: And I think the pattern I'm seeing is that people are going on.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: They're finding out about Christianity.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: Some people I've heard that said I've become a Christian online,
32:01
SPEAKER_01: but then they don't know how to connect with Christians or they don't know how
32:04
SPEAKER_01: to put that into practice.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: So it just kind of shows you that so many people are open and open to hear the gospel.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: And I think that one of the things that we're constantly told that Gen Z prize is authenticity.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: And that's what I've just sought to try and describe in those stories, really.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: The authenticity of being a friend and then sharing something of yourself.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: And that's the opportunity that students have.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: It's not new, but it feels like the context is shifting and making it even more significant.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think it's not new,
32:44
SPEAKER_01: but it's probably like years ago people had to start much further back,
32:48
SPEAKER_01: rightly or wrongly, how effective that was.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: Come along, we want to give you a donut.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: But then there's never a kind of a conversation about Jesus or there's never a time
32:58
SPEAKER_01: to study what Luke's gospel says.
33:01
SPEAKER_01: But I think it was partly the age that we were in so far back.
33:05
SPEAKER_01: But actually just being able to say, do you want to study the Bible?
33:09
SPEAKER_01: And people being receptive to that is a different era.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: That is definitely one in which I suppose people should take every opportunity.
33:19
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean to say that,
33:21
SPEAKER_01: as you will probably agree,
33:22
SPEAKER_01: that every student just goes around with a Bible all the time
33:25
SPEAKER_01: and doesn't get involved in football or sports.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: How are they going
33:28
SPEAKER_00: to, A,
33:29
SPEAKER_00: flourish as a human by building relationships with others around them,
33:33
SPEAKER_00: but also then where are those opportunities to have those relationships out of
33:36
SPEAKER_00: which they can then share what is most precious to them?
33:41
SPEAKER_00: Those are the opportunities.
33:43
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
33:46
SPEAKER_01: So as you look ahead with this generation and maybe the next one to come, did you say?
33:53
SPEAKER_01: Gen Alpha.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's the label they've been given.
33:55
SPEAKER_01: Gen Alpha.
33:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: So as you look at Gen Z,
33:58
SPEAKER_01: Z, Z or Gen Alpha and you see people becoming Christians, which is great.
34:07
SPEAKER_01: What do you think is going to happen in terms of,
34:10
SPEAKER_01: or what is happening in terms of some of the challenges regarding them
34:15
SPEAKER_01: and discipleship?
34:16
SPEAKER_01: Because we're not about just making converts, we're about making disciples, aren't we?
34:20
SPEAKER_00: I think, I'm going to say probably, I think there are three big challenges.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: I think every challenge is an opportunity, is a flip side, doesn't it?
34:28
SPEAKER_00: But I think there are challenges.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: One is that we're talking about a generation who are faithful,
34:35
SPEAKER_00: Further away from the embedded cultural imagination
34:40
SPEAKER_00: that biblical Christianity has had in our culture than ever then for a very,
34:46
SPEAKER_00: very long time or maybe even ever before, certainly in Britain.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: And I think therefore,
34:53
SPEAKER_00: they're coming,
34:54
SPEAKER_00: those who are coming to faith in that generation,
34:56
SPEAKER_00: particularly if they're not coming from a Christian home,
34:58
SPEAKER_00: are coming from far further back in terms of their understanding of just
35:03
SPEAKER_00: the Bible story,
35:04
SPEAKER_00: but then also their understanding of how that Bible story and how
35:08
SPEAKER_00: the biblical world shapes their world,
35:12
SPEAKER_00: their world of imagination, their world of ethics, everything else.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: The opportunity is that's far closer to the world of the New Testament
35:20
SPEAKER_00: than we've been for centuries.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: And so in some senses,
35:23
SPEAKER_00: I think the New Testament discipleship instructions almost become easier to apply
35:29
SPEAKER_00: for us because we're seeking we need.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: To seek to take our lead from what it looks like to be sharing Christ in that sort
35:37
SPEAKER_00: of a culture.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: That'd be the first thing that much further back.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: I think there's also,
35:41
SPEAKER_00: I mentioned earlier this sense of the sovereign self,
35:45
SPEAKER_00: the kind of the self-enthroned as the arbiter of truth.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: And I think there is a big challenge for us there because for a very long time now,
35:56
SPEAKER_00: Anything that comes under the label religion,
36:00
SPEAKER_00: Christianity certainly included,
36:01
SPEAKER_00: has become seen by a world and a culture that wants to view itself as secular
36:07
SPEAKER_00: or secularised as an optional extra.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: So I recently read someone saying that Christianity and religion is
36:15
SPEAKER_00: a little bit more like the categories of sports or,
36:19
SPEAKER_00: as he puts it,
36:19
SPEAKER_00: even recreational drug taking,
36:21
SPEAKER_00: something you can choose to do or not,
36:23
SPEAKER_00: rather than the categories of work and politics, which are inherent to human life.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: And as a result,
36:28
SPEAKER_00: when we're proclaiming Jesus,
36:31
SPEAKER_00: there is a very real risk,
36:33
SPEAKER_00: I think,
36:34
SPEAKER_00: that we can be heard to be proclaiming an optional extra
36:38
SPEAKER_00: who might make your life better rather than the Lord of the universe.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: And so the age old call,
36:48
SPEAKER_00: Jesus's own call of repent and believe for the kingdom of heaven is near,
36:54
SPEAKER_00: has become all the more important.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: We are not simply calling them to exercise their sovereign choice and choose Jesus.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: We're calling them to surrender their sovereign choice because Jesus is choosing them.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: That's a big, big difference.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: And I think that we have got a challenge there in that.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: So that would be the second one that I think of.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: And the third one, because I said three, is related, I think.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: And the third one, I think.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: Three-point sermon.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: Three-point sermon.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: Because we have that underlying sort of kind of cultural trends and the milieu
37:32
SPEAKER_00: of how we think and the way in which we've been trained to,
37:35
SPEAKER_00: I think the risk is that we have people who are coming from further back
37:39
SPEAKER_00: in their own.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: They're understanding of the Christian world and what the Christian imagination,
37:44
SPEAKER_00: how it shapes their lives.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: And they're coming from this sort of default setting of their sovereign self.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: What we,
37:52
SPEAKER_00: I think,
37:52
SPEAKER_00: risk doing in discipleship is,
37:54
SPEAKER_00: I like to suggest we're trying to install a Christian app onto
37:58
SPEAKER_00: a non-Christian operating system without really going deep and talking about
38:01
SPEAKER_00: the operating system itself.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: And a really big example of this might be one of the big trends we're seeing
38:08
SPEAKER_00: in Gen Z is this openness to spirituality in general and this rise
38:12
SPEAKER_00: of capital P pagan practices,
38:15
SPEAKER_00: kind of occultic practices, tarot,
38:18
SPEAKER_00: witch talk is continuing to grow year on year,
38:20
SPEAKER_00: month by month, spirituality and witchcraft on TikTok.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: And I've talked to a couple of students lately who've come from that kind of
38:27
SPEAKER_00: a background,
38:28
SPEAKER_00: explored that in depth,
38:30
SPEAKER_00: have turned away from it and come to faith and find
38:34
SPEAKER_00: that unwittingly well-meaning Christians and even pastors in their churches,
38:40
SPEAKER_00: in the way that they describe the Christian life,
38:43
SPEAKER_00: are reactivating their old habits of thinking that are shaped and steeped in
38:48
SPEAKER_00: the occult and almost then making them think about God in a slightly occultic way.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: It's not intentional.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: But because our old practice of discipleship are assuming a whole load
38:59
SPEAKER_00: of cultural background which is shaped by Christianity,
39:02
SPEAKER_00: we fail to notice that some of the practices which are second nature to
39:06
SPEAKER_00: a Christian who's been a Christian for 20 years or a Christian who's just become
39:09
SPEAKER_00: a Christian but from a very highly Christianised background,
39:13
SPEAKER_00: those practices could actually be actively unhelpful if framed wrongly
39:17
SPEAKER_00: to somebody who's got a whole load of different habits of thinking about the divine.
39:22
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a big, big discipleship question for us to be facing.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: I think will be possibly the big discipleship question over the next 10, 15 years.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: How do we disciple those whose habits are not shaped by Christian values?
39:35
SPEAKER_00: That would be a big thing.
39:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
39:38
SPEAKER_01: that's really challenging because I think we tend to think about that in a sort
39:42
SPEAKER_01: of missiological way.
39:43
SPEAKER_01: I often say it's a bit like,
39:46
SPEAKER_01: We have to think about,
39:47
SPEAKER_01: you know,
39:48
SPEAKER_01: if you were to get a plane and land in another country, you don't know the culture.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: You need to get to know the culture.
39:54
SPEAKER_01: You need to know the context.
39:55
SPEAKER_01: You need to understand what the culture is.
39:58
SPEAKER_01: And in many ways,
39:59
SPEAKER_01: I think for years we've been talking about that in terms of apologetics
40:03
SPEAKER_01: and cultural engagement,
40:05
SPEAKER_01: that the culture that is there is not the culture that we were brought up in.
40:10
SPEAKER_01: But I haven't thought about that as much as you've really helpfully described there.
40:16
SPEAKER_01: So there almost needs to be a contextualisation for discipleship.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: So what has the culture been that this person has come from?
40:23
SPEAKER_01: Because our own understanding of discipleship is going to be different to theirs.
40:26
SPEAKER_01: That's what you're saying.
40:27
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a challenge.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: And again,
40:29
SPEAKER_00: the New Testament helps us because that's exactly what Paul is doing
40:33
SPEAKER_00: with Gentile believers who are coming into something which has Absolutely, yeah.
41:02
SPEAKER_01: So just a final question and following on from that, Matt,
41:06
SPEAKER_01: is that as we see a different generation that has come from sometimes a background
41:13
SPEAKER_01: that is not ABC of Christianity,
41:16
SPEAKER_01: of kind of being the moralism that goes along with that,
41:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm not suggesting legalism,
41:22
SPEAKER_01: but there is a kind of morality that comes out of kind of Judeo-Christian thinking.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: As we look at ministry and we look at The future of that,
41:32
SPEAKER_01: a lot of people are a bit concerned about,
41:34
SPEAKER_01: well, where is the next generation of pastors?
41:37
SPEAKER_01: Where's the next generation of leaders, ministry leaders?
41:41
SPEAKER_01: What's your thinking on that as you sort of look ahead?
41:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, how UCCF has had a kind of history, sometimes I think a bit through...
41:51
SPEAKER_01: Maybe not always as intentionally.
41:53
SPEAKER_01: I'm one of them who've gone on to become a pastor or a church leader or whatever.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: But I do think there's a good kind of training ground in,
42:03
SPEAKER_01: for instance, being a staff worker in UCCF.
42:05
SPEAKER_01: You need to be able to read the culture,
42:07
SPEAKER_01: engage with people, disciple people, engage in evangelism, organize.
42:11
SPEAKER_01: But we're surely not producing sort of cookie-cut versions of that
42:17
SPEAKER_01: in every person that's coming out of UCCF.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: But you face a new challenge now,
42:21
SPEAKER_01: don't you, in terms of people entering into a world that's slightly more uncertain.
42:26
SPEAKER_01: What is that going to look like?
42:27
SPEAKER_00: I think there's so much I could say here,
42:29
SPEAKER_00: and there's almost an entire podcast episode in that question, Clive.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: We'll come back and do another one.
42:36
SPEAKER_00: The first thing to say is that the reality of Christian ministry as
42:41
SPEAKER_00: a challenging call is one that we cannot let go of and we need to continue
42:48
SPEAKER_00: to remind people of.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: The New Testament doesn't lie when it says that.
42:53
SPEAKER_00: That it's going to be a hard thing to be in full-time church leadership ministry.
42:59
SPEAKER_00: And that there is, in one sense, expect a hard call.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: But then the Christian life, Jesus does say, take up your cross and carry it and follow me.
43:10
SPEAKER_01: His call is high.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: I think there are those in the rising generation to whom that is actually an appealing thing.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: There is a bit of this increase.
43:20
SPEAKER_00: You mentioned the manosphere earlier,
43:21
SPEAKER_00: and that's where it can become a bit of an ugly caricature of itself.
43:25
SPEAKER_00: But the idea that life shouldn't be frictionless and that there are some things that
43:31
SPEAKER_00: the good things are worth having to work hard towards is an attractive call to many.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: And I think we shouldn't shy away from that and we shouldn't.
43:40
SPEAKER_00: I think that we need to sort of reduce the friction down to nothing,
43:43
SPEAKER_00: which is what so much of our world seems to be trying to do in so many ways,
43:46
SPEAKER_00: the AI revolution and so on.
43:48
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing I want to say is we need to still be honest about what
43:52
SPEAKER_00: the call is, where we're talking about the Christianity.
43:55
SPEAKER_00: I think I'd take us full circle.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: When I talked about what I would say to my 25-year-old self and said, slow down, trust God's
44:10
SPEAKER_00: I think I'd say that in a world where I'm bumping up against universities
44:19
SPEAKER_00: and student ministry every day,
44:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm seeing a world where the university itself has forgotten what it's for.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: It's become something which is highly transactional.
44:31
SPEAKER_00: It's about pumping out economic units who are going to be employable and are going
44:35
SPEAKER_00: to make an economic impact.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: Employability has become the one measure that prospective students are being advised
44:43
SPEAKER_00: to look for in degrees.
44:45
SPEAKER_00: And we have forgotten that the university itself originally was for formation.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: It was for the forming of...
44:54
SPEAKER_00: Individual characters who would form a society.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: And so I think we can reclaim that in the sense of Christian ministry and thinking
45:04
SPEAKER_00: about the ways in which we form those who are coming after us.
45:09
SPEAKER_00: I've lost count of the number of times Paul in the New Testament says words to
45:13
SPEAKER_00: the effect of imitate me as I imitate Christ.
45:16
SPEAKER_00: He says it explicitly a number of times and then again and again
45:18
SPEAKER_00: and again he holds himself out as an example.
45:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm following Jesus.
45:23
SPEAKER_00: Copy me in as much as I'm transparent and you can see Jesus through me.
45:28
SPEAKER_00: And I think for those in our generation, Clive,
45:31
SPEAKER_00: and for those in the generation above us who are coming towards retirement,
45:34
SPEAKER_00: those in between us and students and the student workers,
45:40
SPEAKER_00: one of the most important things we can do is...
45:43
SPEAKER_00: Stick close to Jesus ourselves.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: Try and show Jesus because as we imitate Christ,
45:51
SPEAKER_00: so I pray and I expect some behind us will look at us and say,
45:55
SPEAKER_00: hey, I want to be a bit like them because they're a bit like Jesus.
45:59
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that is the philosophy that I hope and pray we're injecting into UCCF.
46:05
SPEAKER_00: Deep, deep formation of our staff that they might be like Jesus,
46:10
SPEAKER_00: that the students who they're working with might look at them and say,
46:13
SPEAKER_00: I want to be a bit like them because they're a bit like Jesus.
46:16
SPEAKER_00: And then therefore they're rooted in...
46:19
SPEAKER_00: The truth of the gospel and are doing the hard yards of walking slowly with Christ
46:27
SPEAKER_00: through their lives that they might then step into those harder yards to come
46:32
SPEAKER_00: of future ministry.
46:35
SPEAKER_00: As I say, there's so much more I'd love to say.
46:38
SPEAKER_01: There's so much more.
46:39
SPEAKER_01: Well, we can come back another time and maybe look at some of these different angles.
46:44
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, we're going to sort of wrap it up there.
46:47
SPEAKER_01: It's been great to spend this time with you.
46:48
SPEAKER_01: There's so many really good moments, just little nuggets in there that we were able to explore.
46:54
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes,
46:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
46:55
SPEAKER_01: you can't explore everything in depth,
46:58
SPEAKER_01: but it might make people want to come back and check some more things out.
47:01
SPEAKER_01: We'll put a link.
47:03
SPEAKER_01: To UCCF on the podcast notes, people can check out what you guys are about.
47:10
SPEAKER_01: Just to say that if you haven't subscribed to this podcast on YouTube or Spotify
47:16
SPEAKER_01: and you can click.
47:17
SPEAKER_01: Thank you guys, it's been great to spend some time.
47:20
SPEAKER_01: Great, okay thanks, bye.