CHRISTIAN STUDENT INITIATIVE

It is an extremely challenging, demanding and rewarding task to train students worldwide to bear witness to Christ and His cause. There is a global community of student movements, exclusively to engage the universities with the gospel of Christ, making a profound impact upon the world. Students are creatively trained and equipped to engage the university with a unique strategy to inspire student initiative - teaching students the life-transforming gospel of Jesus Christ, enabling them to become committed disciples of Christ, as they serve the Church with zeal, spreading the gospel far and wide.

For students to release their creative energy into fruitful channels of service to influence their communities for Christ, the clear-sighted vision of growth and significant assessment of the estimated depth of impact focuses on specific strategic points to determine the priorities and progress of student initiative. We must communicate the gospel of Christ effectively to students worldwide, cutting across community lines, bypassing the boundaries and borders of cultures and climes. Student leaders are trained with truth, honesty and integrity to make a real, lasting impact upon the university, society, and the world at large. Graduate fellowships become stronger as they nurture the student ministry to become effective witnesses for Christ by offering them unstinted support through generosity and hospitality.

Students, as an integral part of the global body of Christ, must respond boldly to current affairs and contemporary issues from within a Christian context, framework and perspective, as they engage the university constructively, with an enlightened, emboldened vision and an elevated worldview, to demonstrate the active blending of biblical faith with academic virtues and disciplines. Supported and nurtured by graduate fellowships, student ministries will demonstrate the wisdom of Christian governance, with an inspiring growth and development in organizational skills, well-structured and girded with a firm, wisely-built foundation, enabling students to achieve well-charted goals and strategic partnerships, cutting across communities and cross-cultural lines, to make an impact upon the world.

To achieve our Christ-inspired mission and divinely-oriented vision, our lives must be strongly supported and firmly strengthened by three important factors. We must search the Scriptures daily to grow and mature in our relationship with God through personal Bible study and deep reflection, applying the precious biblical truths to our own lives. As a global community of born-again Christians, we will grow with other believers in mutual fellowship to achieve our vision. We prayerfully depend on God's help to direct our plans. Let us seek the Will of God for our lives. We are called to sound the clarion call clearly to spread the gospel creatively to students worldwide, in thoughts, words, and actions, in and through our relationships, within and across cross-cultural communities.

We render no greater service to ourselves and to the whole world than to engage the universities for Christ, for in the heart of the universities reside the intelligentsia of the future. This is the important strategic nature of Christian ministry among students. Student ministry gives us an opportunity to spread the gospel among thoughtful young people at a profound time of character development, attitude formation and decision-making in their lives. Students are very enthusiastic, idealistic and open to new ideas.

All discussions must be Christ-centered as we engage with students to come to terms with their faith. It provides a God-given opportunity for believers to become disciples of Christ, consciously putting down deep roots as Christians for a lifetime of service. We must encourage students to develop a personal walk with the Lord and get involved in Bible study to see how Scripture applies to every area of life. This helps them to develop a strong sense of values to govern the decisions they make.

Student ministry is viewed in many ways - as a bridge between the church and the university, which is a part of the world; a partnership between students and the church to engage the university with the gospel of Jesus Christ; and as an extension of the ministry of the church into the university. A good majority of cross-cultural workers in various countries have graduated from student ministries. There is a healthy, growing interest among students to take the gospel to the whole world. Committed Christian graduates put down deep roots in Christ to form a strong Christian mindset while they were still undergraduates. The best way to assess the student ministry is to look at what the alumni or graduates are doing many years later. The Church needs believers to act as salt and light and spread the gospel by all possible means in every sphere of service in society.

There are many kinds of student ministries. Evangelical focuses on the truth of God's word, and its significant relevance to the world. Evangelistic takes the gospel of Christ – evangel - to the university, and to the world's stage. Interdenominational is exactly what its name says. Student ministries focus on student initiative to help students to connect with their friends, become good leaders, and learn from their successes and failures so that they have more to offer Christ. Student ministries exist by the shared vision and united faith of the graduate-student movements worldwide.  A global network of supportive fellowship enhances the various movements whose major vision is to create autonomous, evangelistic student ministries in all the countries of the world where none previously existed.

In student ministries, the responsibility for witness lies with the students themselves. Spirit-inspired students are most suitable and best equipped to reach students, being aware of the issues and challenges they face. Students are best committed to encourage student responsibility and initiative in fellow students, to pass on the baton to others. It is a spiritual partnership that moves beyond culture and clime to unite together as the Body of Christ. It is a growing movement and the work is not done yet. There is still more to come, so much more, that the whole world will not be able to contain it.

Firmly committed to missions, equipping students to be effective witnesses for Jesus Christ, student ministries are: Gospel-centered with the life, death, resurrection and second coming of Christ right at the heart of it; Inter-denominational, having Christians from various denominations and creeds, with different perspectives, united around the core doctrines of the Gospel; Evangelism is at the heart of the work, including discipleship and world mission. The task is complex but the commission is crystal-clear. Go and make disciples for Christ.

© Miriam Jacob