As prospective students begin looking towards university, smaller church pastors are beginning to get emails from churches in student areas asking them to send their students to them. Obviously, we don’t get loads of these emails because most of these student centres assume, in a backwater like Oldham, we might not have schools. Oldhammers obviously only want to work at mills, butcher’s or dog tracks.
But – and I don’t mean to shock you – people from Oldham do go to university and even end up in historic professions and everything. We’re not all waiting to get out of school so we can go and clean chimneys. Not that there is anything wrong with doing so, it is just to say quite a few do other things. If you are planning on making an email pitch to us – aside from recognising our people might actually be heading to your local university and not down a mine that doesn’t exist anymore – let me highlight some things it would be helpful for you to know, and perhaps acknowledge, if and when they come.
We don’t control our people
If those moving to university end up at your church, that is wonderful. But it bears saying, if they end up at your church, that will be their choice. It is not the job – or even remotely reasonable – for local church pastors to insist that students go to the one church they have determined must be the best. It is up to those who, probably for the first time, are being given license to choose a church without being forced into the one their parents decided they would attend. It is the student’s choice, not their pastor’s.
We have given them options
It is likely we do have some knowledge of what is in your area. We may even have lived in your area or been students there ourselves. We will probably have some – albeit not infallible or the most up to date – knowledge of the church scene. It is usual for us, whenever somebody moves on for whatever reason, to give people a list of possible churches they might want to try. We may, if we feel it is appropriate, go as far as saying ‘this is probably the one I would go to if I were choosing myself’. But we usually wouldn’t. More likely, we’ll say: ‘here are the various churches that believe the gospel, will teach you the bible and love you. I’ve highlighted which are closest in style/approach to our church and which are stylistic further away – try them out and see what fits you best. All of them are places I would be happy to send you.’
Recognise you are receiving taught/trained people
Very often, these emails come with a condescending tone concerning what the students we send will be taught. Indeed, that they will be taught. Of course, we don’t want to send them anywhere they won’t be taught. But there seems to be little recognition – and, indeed, some less than welcome inferences – that they have not really been taught much as yet. Far from receiving someone in dire need of teaching, student churches need to recognise they are likely to be receiving someone who has already been taught and trained quite well. Indeed, you may well be receiving someone, from a very different context, who has quite a lot they might be able to teach you!
There is only one thing we need you to emphasise
I know what you’re thinking and it’s not that. I don’t mean the gospel because a) we are only countenancing your church because it preaches the gospel and b) we are sending them as people who have been steeped in good gospel teaching and know it pretty well already. This is a pretty baseline criteria for even looking at your church, not the thing we need you to teach them. Ditto theology, doctrine, etc etc.
We need you to emphasise one thing. Or, rather, three things that all relate to this one thing: (1) there is great gospel need in this country; (2) your church is not the norm; (3) the need lies elsewhere, potentially in the places they have come from.
If you want me to countenance encouraging students from our church to yours, assure me that you will teach them that Christians abound in university towns, that the great gospel need of our country tends to be in poor and deprived areas and so you will not keep them on some intern training scheme in which you multiply workers to yourself, but you will encourage them to seek work, build a family and serve the cause of the gospel in the areas of greatest need, particularly if they are from one already. Better yet, teach them this need and that you will help them fund an internship, only NOT in your church but in a place of social and gospel deprivation. Any hint that you will simply take them, keep them, knock the urgency of the gospel, feed a sense that the large church experience is either normal or preferable, and there is little chance we will be encouraging them in your direction.