> Bill Peirson > Carl Matthei Case #63 - Nurture

Nurturing faith at a secular university

December 17, 2021

Image: Graduating students at the UNSW Campus Bible Study Mid-Year Conference. Photo courtesy Cath Miers.

When it comes to personal formation, the few short years spent at university punch well above their weight. It is crucial at this time that spiritual formation is not neglected.

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Coming to university for the first time is an exhilarating experience. For many students, much of the excitement of the final year of high school is the commencement of the road to independence that begins with university life.

It can be a time of anxiety as well. Those of us who have experienced undergraduate university life may recall being astonished by the required learning rate, which completely outstripped our school experience. We were confronted by the initiative required for us to succeed at our studies. At the same time, we were invigorated by opportunities for personal development and intellectual exploration that we had never imagined existed.

If the young person leaves home to attend university, it may be the first time they step outside the immediate influence of their caring family. For parents left behind, there may be feelings of loss. Families tend to be heavily invested in their nurture: not just their physical nurture but their spiritual development as well.

We who work in university environments should be asking the question, ‘How can spiritual nurture best continue at university?’

University leaders of past centuries would have found this a bizarre question. Questions of faith and questions of intellect walked hand in hand as the original universities, emerging from the monasteries of the Middle Ages, explored the idea of universal learning and education. Indeed, of those universities that lead the international leader boards today, most were originally established as Christian institutions.[1]

The last 300 years have seen such religious considerations within university life pushed to the margins. There have been two notable responses to this shift. First, theological education has become the domain of specialist teaching colleges. Secondly, some Christians have established explicitly Christian universities or have expanded the scope of theological colleges to embrace allied fields.[2]

These partitions create a critical need for faith to be nurtured in modern secular university environments. We all have an imperative for nurturing our faith in any intellectual endeavour, including at university, which comes directly from the greatest commandment (Matthew 22:38; cf. 1 Corinthians 2:6ff). We must love God with all of our mind, and no part of life is exempt. Os Guinness presents a provocative critique of the dangers of partitioning our public lives in the world from our private beliefs, arguing that we must deliberately seek to understand and live out the ‘Christian worldview’ in the context of the modern world. To do this, we must understand the distortions of the modern world in the light of theology.[3] If we do not, faith will be sidelined and ineffectual.

Such issues are front-of-mind in the United States and the United Kingdom, where leaving home to live at university is part of the rite of passage of young people after they leave school.[4] In Australia, where living on campus is less a rite of passage and more about the tyranny of distance, there has been little published about strategies to nurture faith on university campuses. This article looks at the endeavours of some of those responsible

for the nurture of faith at the University of New South Wales over the past few decades. In particular, it focuses on ministry within the Anglican residential colleges, New College and New College Postgraduate Village; and the ministry of the Anglican chaplaincy with its associated structures. We conclude with a summary of what we believe are the challenges of the future.

The New Colleges

In Australia, most students attending university live at home through most of their studies, maintaining social and church connections within their local community. A relatively small proportion of students live on campus. Over the last decade, the number of international students travelling to study in Australia has increased significantly. Some students in each of these categories have come to live at New College and New College Postgraduate Village.

The idea of New College was developed in the early 1960s, when a small group of evangelical Christians (the New University Colleges Council, NUCC) observed the rapid emergence of the post second world war universities. They were keen to see an identifiably Christian contribution to the intellectual life of these universities, and established New College (1969) at UNSW and Robert Menzies College (1974) at Macquarie University. New College Postgraduate Village emerged at UNSW alongside New College in 2009, under the headship of Professor Trevor Cairney.

Vice Chancellor Sir John Baxter welcomed the involvement of community and religious organisations in the formation of residential colleges at UNSW, and agreed to an Anglican affiliated college being established. However, he was keenly aware of the danger of forming closed communities and insisted that the religious colleges never apply a test of belief to students applying to live there.

From this evolved communities that are well understood in Catholic and Anglican traditions: the body responsible for operations and governance is definably Christian, but those living in the communities may be Christian, of other faiths, or of none. Indeed, over the history of New College and the Postgraduate Village, most residents have not been of the Christian faith.

A question that each Head of college has had to confront is how we nurture the faith of those who choose to come to live with us.

In residential colleges, students share the ups and downs of life together. Consequently, the lives of those who profess Christ—be they students or staff—are on show to those we live with through the challenges of exams, power outages or, recently, pandemic restrictions. How do we nurture faith in these unusual communities that are part youth group, part university department, part boarding house? And perhaps, more importantly, why do we do these things?

1. College Services

Anglican colleges have traditionally included chapels within their facilities, though the founders of New College intentionally did not. But regular formal Christian meetings of similar form to the Anglican church service are held in the main common room of the college. This provides opportunities for corporate prayer; corporate singing; public Bible reading and preaching; and for anyone in the college to attend and hear the Bible message.

College Service creates a public meeting point within the communities, as the apostle Paul exhorts Timothy (1 Timothy 4:13ff, esp. v. 16). As a more formal meeting, it is an opportunity for people from other Christian traditions, and indeed those of other faiths and none, to engage with a practice of spiritual formation within college life

2. Student Christian fellowships

Almost since its establishment, New College has had a student Christian Fellowship (NCCF). The structure of this group has changed little with the passage of 50 years.[5] Annual student elections appoint a President, Secretary, Treasurer and Media Officer. New College Postgraduate Village has had various similar, but less structured, groups.

Fellowships leverage the energy and aspirations of the student residents themselves. Conversations between students have an authenticity that is difficult to match in any other context. The conversations are frank and to the point. In each college year there are dialogue meetings and testimony nights as well as many opportunities to just ‘chill and chat’. More formally, collegians organise weekends away out of college for a more dedicated time of reflection on faith.

A real challenge within a diverse college community is the temptation for these fellowships to become religious cliques. The course of time has demonstrated that it is critical that, in each academic year, they prioritise acts of service that are of benefit to the entire college community. This conscious recognition of the whole community combats the tendency towards insularity.

College Christian Fellowships are an opportunity for people within the community to experiment and develop their own community engagement strategies and leadership skills. At a time of declining biblical literacy in the general population, it has been gratifying to see collegians take the initiative of offering to meet with their friends in college, to read through one of the gospel accounts of Jesus’s life and answer any questions they might have about Christianity. Such activities are very helpful for the ongoing development of contemporary Christian witness.

3. Bible studies

Small group Bible studies emerged as a feature of Australian Protestant church culture in the 1970s. They reflected a recognition, that had developed through the 1960s and 1970s, that all Christians were spiritually gifted and could teach and encourage each other through studying God’s word together. They have cemented themselves in contemporary Protestant church practice as crucial in assisting people to better engage with the message of the Bible, and they have an important place in the university residential college.

Sitting between college services and student fellowships, small group Bible studies run weekly across the New College communities, and provide a strong point of collaboration with the Anglican Chaplaincy (Campus Bible Study), as chaplaincy ministry staff work alongside more senior students in the college communities to lead the studies. These small group meetings provide the opportunity for people within the college communities to reflect on what the Bible says in a reasonably relaxed setting, and to train mature Christian students in ministry skills.

4. Academic activities

Academic aspiration continues to be a strong hallmark of the New College communities. Over 30 years ago, the college initiated both a lecture series and a publication, aiming to consider issues of critical contemporary importance from a Christian perspective.

The Institute for Values Research was transformed into the Centre for Christian Apologetics, Scholarship and Education (CASE) which publishes a quarterly journal, attracting contributions from leading local and international Christian thinkers. The New College Lectures are now in their 35th year and are one of a few longstanding lecture series nationally.

These activities constitute a point of meeting between church and academy as they grapple with the most significant issues in contemporary society. Based in New College, they give residents—as well as other university students and staff—the opportunity to engage with challenging ideas, and leading Christian thinkers on contemporary matters of faith and morality, encouraging them to integrate their academic/professional and Christian lives.

5. Framing of community

The last decade has seen the emergence of deep community concerns about personal identity, sex and gender, vulnerable people, sexual misconduct, mental health and climate change. All of these topics have significant implications for residential communities.

These issues have provided a welcome opportunity for the New College communities to carefully consider the Christian message and its implications for these difficult issues. A particular challenge for the College leadership has been to explain and demonstrate Christian love and goodness in practice.[6]

One of the great beauties of university residential life is the opportunity for many different people with many different viewpoints to respectfully debate how people should live, cooperate, and even thrive together.

In addition to these elements, the activities of the UNSW Anglican Chaplaincy, especially Campus Bible Study, have been of enormous benefit to the spiritual nurture of New Collegians for decades. As previously mentioned, however, in Australia the majority of students do not live on campus. For many of these, Campus Bible Study is the focal point of spiritual nurture while at university.

Campus Bible Study

Campus Bible Study (CBS) was established in 1975 at the University of New South Wales by the Anglican chaplain, Rev. Phillip Jensen. Phillip arrived at UNSW from the Diocese’s Department of Evangelism and immediately saw opportunities for a very different kind of ministry than was conventionally practised by university chaplaincies. Shortly after his appointment, Phillip was also appointed Rector of St Matthias, Centennial Park, which created the opportunity for a ministry spanning on-campus evangelism and broader aspects of church life.

Conventional chaplaincy was a ministry of prayer and support for university students. Evangelism and outreach were seen as the domain of the university students themselves, or student campus movements. Unifying these into a single campus activity created a model for a different type of university ministry that has since been replicated across the world.[7]

In the CBS model, traditional aspects of chaplaincy were retained: all university ministry depends upon God working in students’ lives and recognises this dependence by being committed to prayer. If any Christian growth is going to happen, it will be because God makes it happen (1 Corinthians 3).

University is, ideally, a transition from school to productive, mature adult life. CBS adopted a similar goal for its model of campus ministry. In-depth Bible teaching programs—rigorous, intellectually-challenging and robust—were designed to give students as much input as possible during their time at UNSW. Dedicated training programs were developed to equip students with practical skills for a lifetime of Christian service: sharing the good news of Jesus with others; helping others explore and grow in their knowledge of God; leading Bible Studies. Emphasis continues to be placed on putting these skills into practise: inviting friends to join them in exploring Christianity; approaching students they have never met before to respectfully challenge them to consider Jesus; and meeting with new or younger Christians to work through core Bible truths and see them firmly established in the faith.

After a time of such intense engagement while at university, a sad part of the ministry is saying goodbye to students as they pass out of university to their lives beyond. But this is the fulfilment of the CBS ministry: sending out well-taught, well-trained and well-equipped men and women to serve Christ and continue his mission wherever God takes them. Some catch the vision for full time vocational ministry, and a remarkable number of people who have passed through CBS ministry come back as staff workers on campus, as a stepping stone in the decision about what form their life of Christian ministry will take.

Signature activities

The signature activities of CBS emerged early in this ministry. Their purpose and benefits were already well known in the late 1970s and were attracting school leavers to come and be trained within this new model of university chaplaincy.

1. Weekly Bible Talks

Since commencement, one hour weekly Bible talks have been a central activity of CBS. Initially held with small groups of students in the wooden huts on campus and at New College, this ministry grew to fill UNSW lecture theatres several times over each week. These weekly Bible talks continue to have three defining characteristics.

The first is to be rigorous, grasping the opportunity to pitch the lectures at the demanding level required of undergraduate education. Within a liberal arts university like UNSW, students are able to embrace the Bible as a literary document and appreciate the significance of literary genre as a route to understanding the Bible better. They learn how to read any section of the Bible in context, and can be further expected to comprehend and accommodate the socio-political context of the Bible documents. A consequence of this is that students have the opportunity to develop a thorough and in-depth knowledge of the Bible and Christian theology alongside their degree studies while at university.

The second is to be relevant. One of the challenges of CBS is to advance childhood understandings of the Bible to adulthood. It is one of the delights of campus ministry to see students awaken to the realisation that the Bible speaks into modern life far more thoroughly than they might have anticipated.

The third is to be easily accessible. University life involves a complex, ever-changing timetable of lectures, seminars, tutorials, and social activities spread across the campus and corresponding with different networks of relationships. With weekly Bible talks scheduled at lunch during term time, it is very easy for students to simply drop in and listen to what is said.

2. Mid-Year Conference

The yearly CBS Mid-Year Conference (MYC) is an opportunity for students to go away together for a five-day camp where they receive the equivalent of a whole term of Christian input, reflection, and relationship- building in one week. Big-picture topics can be explored from multiple angles. Critical shortcomings of beliefs students may have lazily accepted can be exposed. Deconstruction turns to reconstruction as students engage in ‘manuscript discovery’ in small groups, engaging directly and in detail with the biblical text. Each evening rigorous Bible talks in large lecture format tackle, from social and biblical perspectives, the theme chosen for the week.

3. Training in Christian Ministry

This is a weekly term-time activity that recognises that time at university is brief and calls for a deeper understanding of the Christian faith. The objective is to equip future Christian leaders with practical skills that will serve them (and enable them to serve others) for the rest of their lives: how to share the core Christian message (Share your Faith); how to nurture Christians who are young in their faith (Just for Starters); how to read the Bible well for yourself; how to read the Bible one-to-one with another person; how to lead a Bible Study group; how to think ethically.

4. LIFT Conference

Looking Into Full Time Ministry (LIFT) Conference consolidates the vision of the entire CBS ministry. Churches around the world need good, well-equipped and committed leaders. University is a place where many of these leaders can be inspired, nurtured and developed. LIFT facilitates students’ thinking about whether they should commit their lives to serving Jesus as their full-time job.

When nurture apparently fails

The opportunities provided for Christian nurture on campus apparently fail for some young people. Whether because the challenges or temptations of life on campus are too great, or for other reasons, the potential of some students for spiritual growth is not realised at this point. Some walk away altogether.

Yet the Bible urges patience, gentleness and persistence with those who wander (James 5:19f). Faith grows at the prompting of God, and in his timing (I Corinthians 3:5).

This issue weighs heavily on both our hearts.

Jesus mourned the lack of response to God’s nurture by the people of Jerusalem before proceeding to his crucifixion of rescue for those who opposed him (Matthew 23:37f). Paul mourns the unbelief of his own people in chapters 9-11 of Romans, turning to prayer (10:1), gentle gospel outreach (10:17) and humility as he reflects on the graciousness, wisdom and sovereign power of God (11:33ff).

We seek to be like Paul, as we ponder God’s purposes in the lives of those for whom we care.

The future

This article is being written at a turbulent time in university Christian ministry. The COVID-19 pandemic has shut down the UNSW campus and there are questions about how campus life will revive in its wake. On another front, a religious discrimination bill is before the Australian Federal Parliament which has prompted questions about Christian witness across society more broadly.

As noted earlier, there has been a long-term trend away from thinking that encourages or even allows the interaction of theological thought and academic endeavour within secular universities. Excitingly, general predictions are that tertiary education in Australia will continue to expand for many years to come. Consequently, there is also an increasing imperative for vigorous Christian witness on secular campuses.

This article has highlighted some of the key opportunities for spiritual nurture in Christian residential colleges, and on the university campus, and the synergies between them. College life provides unique opportunities for the discipleship of young people in both word and action. Campus ministry provides a much broader witness to all students on campus and takes the role of a ‘voice from the outside’ for the Christian college community. The Christian college, in turn, provides a stable academic witness within the University administration, and a critical foundational resource for the campus ministry.

Our observation is that this is an unusual but abundantly fruitful collaboration that has stood the test of time, and we encourage other colleges and campus ministries internationally to consider the potential for collaboration. As the university sector in Australia continues to expand, careful consideration should be given to how new campus ministries might develop fruitfully and effectively.

Adj. Prof. Bill Peirson is CASE Director and Master of the New College Communities.

Rev. Carl Matthei is the Anglican Chaplain at the University of New South Wales.

ENDNOTES

[1] For a fuller summary see N. Paterson, ‘Do we need a Christian university?’ Cambridge Papers, Jubilee Centre, 2008 https:// www.jubilee-centre.org/cambridge-papers/do-we-need-a- christian-university-by-nigel-paterson-2

[2] Ibid. See also R. Benne, Quality with Soul: How six premier colleges and universities keep faith with their religious traditions (Eerdmans, 2001).

[3] O. Guinness, The Gravedigger File (Hodder and Stoughton, 1983).

[4] See, for example, S. Garber, The Fabric of Faithfulness. Weaving together belief and behavior (IVP, 2007), and D. Opitz & D. Mellenby, Learning for the love of God. A student’s guide to academic faithfulness (Brazos, 2014).

[5] A. Davis, Something Borrowed, Something Blue: 50 Years of New College, UNSW 1969-2019 (New College, 2019), pp82ff & 149ff.

[6] See for example, W. L. Peirson, ‘Wellbeing in Communities Run by Christian Organisations’. Case Quarterly 54, 2019, pp9- 13; and S. Bazzana, ‘When Study Moves You’. Case Quarterly 59, 2020, pp28f.

[7] Some diverse aspects are summarised in P. G. Bolt (ed.), Let the word do the work. Essays in honour of Phillip D. Jensen (Australian Church Record, 2015).