CU IS NOT A CHURCH….more’s the pity
Week in, week out, I remember plugging from the front the fact that CU was not a church. Oh we had all sorts of reasons why not, most pretty weak, but I was positive that it was not, nor should it be. My opinion hasn’t changed.
You see while I was at university my mission field was the university. I spoke with passion at large CU meetings about how we were a missionary group, that even though we weren’t in China or Montinegro (the vogue places to go do mission in Warwick) we were still missionaries, ’sent’ from our home churches to impact on the campus. It was brilliant, I had CU for witnessing to students and my University church for doing church things.
The greatest thing about CU was its focus on the gospel. By its very nature (multi-denominational) we were obsessed with focusing on Christ, the cross and His ressurection. Possibly our motive was to avoid any disagreement amongst us rather than a St.Paul realisation that that was all that mattered, but still, that was our obsession and is the obsession of CU’s all over Britain. Focusing on the cross made us extremely missionally minded. We used the tag line, “Mission and Maturity” but with our focus on evangelisinig the lost and getting them into local churches (as CU was most definitely not a church) we were actually more realisticly about, “Mission & maturity”.
So, why the title? Well as I’ve returned ‘from the mission field’ to the day by day slog of the local church, one thing has struck me more than anything. That is the need for people to realise that they are missionaries, that they’re place of work, friends, family, these are their mission fields and if they are truely maturing, then they would be witnessing all the more. Unfortunately we have this idea that doing ‘maturity’ is seperate from doing mission. How wrong could we be! The greatest source of maturing is sharing the gospel and anyone who is truely being matured will be driven more to mission and sharing Jesus. That’s a fact. Our churches are far to inward looking, thinking that if we ’send’ some students out, ’send’ some people abroad, then we fill our missional quota and the rest of us can get on with worshiping God and getting to know Jesus better.
If our Churches could steal just a small amount of that passion from our CU’s, well the kingdom of God would be in much better shape here in Wales. A church that is more interested in the style of songs we play, or why there isn’t an evening service any more, or why Mrs. Smith has started coming to our Bible study when we were quite happy as we were, a church that is more interested in this, I’m not sure is a church any more. At the very heart of a church must be the urgency to let people know about Jesus. If that is lost (if it is not over emphasised to the extreme) then we are nothing more than a social club and a very odd one at that.
Hats off to CU’s across the nation, they are more of a church than most of the churches that we’ll ever visit.
Buddy, I agree, and disagree with you.
You’re right that we as people need to be more missional. Of course we do, making disciples was the only commission that Jesus gave us, and to ignore that command is to risk more than just the size of a congregation. In this respect, like you said, CU’s do mission well. When a CU does evangelism seriously, it can - and should - put us to shame. They have the resources and time to make the most of a ’short window of opportunity’ - especially with internationals. When you know you’re only going to be part of somebody’s life for 3years, the burden to live and share the gospel will be clear. It’s intense, right?
But wouldn’t you say that that intensity of time/opportunity is what makes a CU look so effective? Just a thought.
But I can’t agree with the footer. In spite of how frustrating we can be as a Church - not just missionally, but in the way we never learn/and always find something to moan about - the Church, and not a CU, is what Jesus hung on the cross to redeem and claim as his Bride. It is the Church that displays God’s multicoloured, multifacited, multiracial, manifold wisdom in unifying people that have nothing in comman except one thing. Yes, most churches should be missional, but they will always be far more staggeringly beautiful to God than a CU.
So let’s pray for a missional outlook for our churches. If God is willing to bless by his grace through CU’s, how much more of a blessing will there be through God’s own self devised method of declaring his Gospel to the nations?
Indeed Roderick, indeed. My emphasis was on the penultimate paragraph rather than the footer. However I stand by my footer. I’m not saying they are churches, but when I read about what a church is, I quickly think that many of the groups/buildings which call themselves Churches are nothing of the sort. This is what I meant to convey rather than CU’s being a church. Thank you for your critique.
Sam, thanks for your encouraging and challenging blog. I completely agree that we need to be more ‘missional’ as a church, and passionate with it. I guess many of us who have left university remember (it wasn’t so long ago!) what it was like to be passionate and committed to taking every opportunity for sharing the truth about Jesus and unashamedly living in a counter cultural way. Yet how easy it has been to get into the ‘day by day slog of church’ and leave so much of that commitment behind. The ironic thing is now we should be more confident in our faith, more sure of our salvation and more dedicated to live it. We have less of the arrogance of youth and we should have more wisdom to benefit the gospel, but somehow so many of us get pulled into living like everyone else, sucked into decorating our houses and climbing the career ladder… not looking very ‘missional’ at all! Thanks for the reminder that we should be unsatisfied with the mediocre and look to mature by becoming more like Jesus, and he was the most ‘missional’ man in world history!
Whereas your sentiments are wonderful, I stumble somewhat at your closing paragraph. Having pastored in S Wales for 6 years and knowing some of the folk who minister there, I would be more than happy to privately furnish you with a broader list of churches across Wales and further afield with which you could familiarise yourself :).
At the same time, I love the work of God that is evident in some of the CU’s in our land. However, I wonder whether there is not just a smidgeon of wishful thinking in what your assessment. As an occasional preacher for various CU events and a friend of many others who do the same, I am slightly more cautious. There is much to commend them, although I am glad they are not our sole missional front line.
Keep up the good work!
I’d just like to comment on the idea that “If God is willing to bless by his grace through CU’s, how much more of a blessing will there be through God’s own self devised method of declaring his Gospel to the nations?”
I think this sets a false distinction between CUs and the Church. As I understand it, the Church is the redeemed people of God, however we choose to meet together. The Bible does give some instructions and guidelines on the way in which we should meet together, of course, and that’s what the local church should be about. But I don’t think the local church is an exhaustive prescription of how Christians should operate - we can also organise ourselves in supplementary ways that need not be specifically mandated in scripture as long as they are in accordance with Biblical principles.
So the difference between local church and CU is not that one is the Church and one isn’t; the difference is that local churches are how the Church is required to meet together, and Christian Unions are a supplementary way in which some of the Church may meet together if it will advance the Gospel.
I think CUs are strongest when they have a strong sense of their own purpose as not being church, but being specifically geared for the challenge of reaching the university. My experience of CU is that it can sometimes be more church-like than I think it should be, such as by giving talks that while good are general Bible teaching of the sort that should be provided by the local church, rather than specifically geared for equipping students for living and speaking for Jesus in a university situation.
I also think that there’s something of a weakness in that the CU’s mission is generally seen just in terms of students’ social lives, with a lack of equipping to think Christianly and to seek to equip students to extend the kingdom of God into their area of study. At the moment, the university and academia are not just secular, but secularising, and are an important battleground in the fight for the minds of our culture. CUs need to be as concerned with Christian students’ academic lives and battles as much as their social and personal lives.