Christians at Uni
Interesting article in SMH:Radar about stereotypes at uni. Especially note the comments on the article, in particular the ones relating to Christian groups at uni.
The article writes this stereotype about Christians:
Jesus loves you and he’s stationed these pamphlet-bearing folk outside the library to prove it. But to achieve His aims, the campus Christian often resorts to serpent-like guile - inviting you to “free barbecues” or “movie nights” which quickly turn into happy-clappy, Bible-bashing sessions where everyone babbles in tongues. Profess purity but are secretly sex-mad - that’s why they’re all married by 21.
Judging by the massive amount of comments, it would seem that:
- Christians have no sense of humoour and are easily offended
- Lots of people are put off by the ‘tactics’ used by Christian groups like ‘free BBQs’
- There were lots of comments about the pushiness of CBS
- Some Christians say pretty nasty stuff and do very in-your-face things when evangelising
- Anti-Christian sentiment bred at uni stays with people
- In-your-faceness turns lots of people off
- EU is an evil empire
- Posters are effective ways to get the message across
It was good to read a post by James of EU:
As a member of the EU at Sydney Uni, I can tell you for sure that if people at uni really aren’t interested in finding out about Christianity we will leave them alone. The stereotype given here of Christians is quite funny because it’s just so wrong and misunderstood. I doubt any of the people bashing Christian groups in the talkback have ever been to one of the Christian groups’ meetings before - their only experience has been perhaps that they are asked if they want to join a group at O-Week, they have seen a poster on campus advertising a Christian group event, and perhaps they have been asked by a friend if they wanted to come along. Cornering and manipulating? insidious? psychos? I don’t think so.
The fact is that there are people on campus interested in Christianity, and we don’t know who they are, so we have to ask people, just like any other club. If you say no, we don’t go after you, we leave you alone. But we think it’s important that people be allowed to hear what Jesus says, so that’s why we advertise…
Good on you, James.
These comments, however, possibly point to a need for Christians to re-evaluate the ‘tactics’ we use for evangelism. With O-week coming up for USYD (and already happening for UNSW), the criticality of such re-evaluation is high. However, there can only be so much change - fundamentally, as James rightly puts it, Christian groups at uni still need to seek out (no, not like a homing missile) other students on campus who might be interested in the message they have to tell. It’s like knowing a good chinese restaurant and wanting to tell people about it. Plus, in my first year at O-week, I was actually missed by all the white shirt EUers and had to go find the stall - so yes, all those people walking around campus during O-week ’stalking’ first years are needed.
I’m personally not a huge fan of in-your-face evangelism - I think this isn’t a particularly helpful way to do it. But then, the danger is to veer towards the other extreme and be a lax evangelist - and that’s a no-no as well. Striking the right balance is difficult, but it obviously is a good thing to reach, since so many are put off by scary tactics and so many fall through the cracks with no tactics.