Togetherness

This month we want to focus a bit on the groups that we are involved with at Wollongong Uni. Ministry is all about people, so we wanted to show you some of them.

Science/Health

Our science/health science group meets together Thursday lunchtimes on the McKinnon lawn. The science/health science faculties are pretty broad so people in our group are studying  all sorts of thing from nutrition to nanotechnology (although we have noticed that almost all the guys are studying Chemistry).

This year we have been trying to think about what it looks like to be a Christian in the science world. We’ve done this by looking at beginning of Genesis as a foundation to how we understand the world as created by God. Shannon, one of  our 3rd years has been leading us through these studies. We’ve also thought about the Science and Chrisitian worldviews and spent a couple of weeks looking at a Christian ethical framework and applying it to issues such as abortion.

It’s been great this year to see this group grow in its commitment to coming along and in number as 1st years have joined. Steph is still enjoying asking (apparently) ridiculous questions revealing that any understanding of science she had was left behind in HSC Physics. And most of all it has been great seeing everyone thinking about how to interact with their courses as Christians.

Engineering/Informatics

This session there have been two separate Eng/Inf groups meeting on Monday and Thursday. In both we have been working through the book of Romans. The Monday group is predominantly lead by older students and Matt leads the Thursday group. It has been thoroughly challenging as each week our the rebellion of our hearts has been laid bare and the hopelessness of our slavery to sin has been hammered home. Thank God for Jesus who is the righteousness of God, in whom we “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” (Rom 3:24-25, ESV)

It has been interesting for Matt, being an ex-Arts student, getting into the rigid mind of the Engineer, but it has been a lot of fun and very encouraging. The key difference between an Engineering group and an Arts group is that in Engineering you work hard to get people talking – in Arts you need to work hard to get them to stop.

Weerona College

A week or so before uni started this year we became involved in the bible study that happens at Weerona College. Weerona is one of the residential colleges of Wollongong Uni and is in Gwyneville (about 5 min drive away from campus). Every Monday night we have been meeting together and Matt has been leading us through 1 John. This group has been a great joy so far this year. It has been fantastic to see how quickly the group has gelled.

In the group there are a couple of older students who previously lived in college who come along. They are able to share wisdom on living in college (Plus we eat at their house each week beforehand. We’re sure pretty they enjoy the weeks when Steph cooks – some much needed fresh vegetables). It has been interesting for us, who never lived in college, to get an insight into what it’s like and the challenges and opportunities that are there for the Christian.

2 Ways to Live

In the past few weeks, there has been a student-lead initiative to start a couple of 2 Ways to Live training groups, one of which Matt been running. 2 Ways to Live is a sort of concise, pictorial gospel summary and together we have been learning it with a view to sharing the whole gospel, particularly as training for walk-up evangelism. The group has only been going for 2 weeks and started small-ish, but exploded for the second meeting, which is heaps exciting. May God continue to put  the need to take the gospel out on the hearts of the students. Matt is beginning to think they need to find a better place to meet than next to a busy coffee shop outside Subway at lunchtime…

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