Some people may have seen that I have had an article published in Evangelicals Now magazine this month (May edition) which has caused some controversy. In case you haven't seen it the article is reproduced in full below, along with Fusion's response to it and a further comment of my own.
"What does it mean to love our universities?"
This was the question asked by Rich Wilson, National Team Leader for Fusion, at a recent conference[1]. Fusion's answer to that question has become the Love your Uni campaign, which is "Dreaming about a whole generation of students who can love beyond themselves."[2] That sounds great. But digging beneath the surface reveals a more disturbing story…
Fusion's aim for the Love your Uni campaign in 2008 is to see 1,000 new cell groups planted on campuses across the UK. In his vision setting talk Rich Wilson is quite explicit that the driver for recruiting people to do this will be the Hope 08 events planned throughout the year in which large numbers of churches are participating.
Launched with great fanfare in 1997, and with a council of reference including a many well-known names, Fusion presented itself as the future of student ministry in the UK. There was a clear implication, and sometimes explicit statements, that Christian Unions were outdated, conservative and unable to connect with student culture.
Since then Fusion has become the brand name used by a number of churches in university towns, from both established and new denominations, for their cells and other student work. Although some universities have Fusion societies there are relatively few places where Fusion has a significant presence on campus. Love your Uni appears to be an attempt to re-launch Fusion work on campus with a different brand name on the back of Hope 08.
All of which might sound like an abstruse problem of (para)church politics best ignored by everyone. But I think that all of us, and especially church leaders, ought to be concerned about Love your Uni for two main reasons…
1 Division under the guise of unity
Here in Liverpool one of the questions I am regularly asked by students and church leaders from churches with fusion cells, is why the CU and Fusion groups can't just merge and create a united witness on campus? My reply to this is that they used to have a united witness; it was called the Christian Union. It represented students from both charismatic and conservative churches and, with no more hiccoughs than you might expect for a student society, it was effective in drawing together all sorts of evangelical Christians and reaching all sorts of non-Christians with the good news about Jesus. Then some churches decided the Christian Union didn't adequately reflect their priorities and took their ball away to start a new game. I'm perfectly happy to accept their right to do that, though I think it's a shame. But once you've created a division you can't really bleat about a lack of unity as if it is someone else's responsibility!
Love your Uni is being presented in some places as an "activist group" around involvement in a particular aspect of university life, much like Friends International (FI) or Christians in Sport (CIS). Unwary churches may be led into thinking that here is something that can unite CU and Fusion groups. They may also feel that anybody from UCCF who is not enthusiastic for Love your Uni groups is simply being territorial about campus ministry.
The reality, however, is that Love your Uni is not an activist group that can run in parallel with the CU in the way that the excellent ministries of FI, CIS and others do. It is an initiative of Fusion whose primary vision is to establish campus cell groups linked to Fusion affiliated churches in competition with the existing work of Christian Unions.
From my own observations over the last decade it is difficult to think of a single situation where the emergence of Fusion has not divided a pre-existing witness on campus. The practice of new Fusion groups has usually been to target existing CU members and ask them to start a new work that is sometimes explicitly critical of the evangelism done by the CU.
The emergence of Fusion in Sheffield University for example resulted in an effective CU of 250 members dwindling to a core of 30. The ‘takeover’ eventually ran out of steam and the CU has recovered strength and effectiveness. But the divided witness and loss of momentum in evangelism lasted for many years.
2 Opposition to proclamation of the gospel
At one university in England the CU recently asked to borrow some tea and coffee making equipment from a local church which is involved with Love your Uni as part of a time of contact evangelism. A day before the event they got a phone call asking what exactly they were going to be doing. The CU explained they were going to give out some tracts and gospels. They were told that handing out gospels didn't fit with the Love your Uni concept and that Love your Uni didn’t want an association with that kind of event.
Such a negative attitude to giving people the words of life fits with official position of Love your Uni. Rich Wilson in his vision setting talk quoted with approval a theologian who said that ""Christianity is not a message that has to be believed.”
From the outset the Fusion view has been that proclamation evangelism is irrelevant and ineffective as a means of commending Christ in our culture. Now it seems that at least some people involved in Love your Uni are actively opposing the proclamation of the gospel as being unloving.
The issue here is not whether it is right that Christians should be active in the places where God has put them doing temporal good. It is whether it is actually wrong to proclaim the message of the person and work of Jesus as well as doing good to all people.
So what does it mean to love our universities?
The kind of initiatives that Love your Uni commends include giving out bottles of water to students out clubbing. But although many who have embraced the Fusion/Love your Uni model say that the kind of evangelism being done by CU's is "outdated" the reality is that Christian Union groups have been doing precisely that for years – as well as lunchbars, balls, missions, carol services and the regular evangelism of personal friendship.
Rich Wilson has also said that there is no reason why Christian groups can't get on well with university authorities and student unions. It appears that he has not visited either Exeter or Edinburgh Universities recently where perfectly reasonable activities by CU groups have incurred the wrath of, respectively, the student union and the university. If your starting position is that there is no reason not to get on with everybody it is sadly inevitable that before too long you will evacuate your gospel of any potentially offensive content.
Of course we must love our neighbours. For the increasing numbers of Christians who are at or near a university that means we must love university students and staff. How can we do that best? The New Testament answer is that we do it the same way we love everybody else best. That is by being those whose lives are transformed by the gospel of Christ and who bring that message, with all its implications for personal transformation and the reformation of society, to bear on the lives of everyone we can.
Here in Liverpool that sort of love is being demonstrated by the CU working to put on English classes for international student friends and also inviting them to hear the good news about Jesus in their recent mission week.
A decade after its launch, Fusion, despite undeniable energy and vitality has not been a helpful influence on university campuses. Other evangelical campus based groups such as UCCF, Christians In Sport, Friends International, Agape, Navigators and Christian Medical Fellowship work effectively together by being committed to seeing Christian Unions as “shop windows” of united witness.
Christian Unions have been faithful partners with evangelical churches in this work for the last 80 years. My plea is that if we really want to love our universities we should do our best to support our Christian Unions as a campus mission team.
My prayer is that the legacy of Hope 08 will be to enhance the effectiveness of existing ministries, rather than to launch a novel, competitive ministry whose idea of evangelism seems to be drifting rapidly from the New Testament’s.
[1] Fusion Networker Day, 7th March 2007. http://www.fusion.uk.com/Publisher/Article.aspx?id=73132
[2] Rich Wilson, ibid
10 comments:
Hmmm... some of the things you say about Fusion are concerning if true, but I'm not sure we're getting the whole picture. If what you say is representative of the bigger picture and Fusion does oppose proclamation evangelism, I agree that's a serious problem.
For example, I googled "Christianity is not a message that has to be believed" and found that the full quote goes on to say "but an experience of faith that becomes a message". Did Rich Wilson give the full quote? If so, that casts a rather different light on matters. What context did he quote that phrase?
The full quote is emphasising the experiential nature of the Christian message, denying that it is firstly a set of intellectual propositions, but rather an experience of God first and an intellectual message second. That's very different from denying the value of proclamation evangelism.
I'd also like to hear fuller details about "Love your uni" apparently stopping Gospels from being handed out. Who made the phonecall - was it someone from "Love your uni" or from the church involved, for example? What's their side of the story?
If the accusations you make can be found to have a reasonable explanation in context, and Fusion is simply seeking a more fully rounded evangelistic approach that includes both proclamation and "loving people", then that's great. We should both live and speak the Gospel, and it's a mistake to set them in opposition.
But I don't feel I've the full story here to make an informed judgement.
Thanks Caleb - a very helpful response.
Rich Wilson did quote more extensively that I included - I was struggling for space! - but I don't actually think that the full quote changes the meaning. I note that in order to defend it you have to add the word "intellectual" to the word "message" - which, of course is not in the original.
On stopping gospels being given out it is precisely because of the way that Fusion understands itself as a church network that it is very difficult to draw any distinction between what "Love your Uni" does and what the churches who are signed up to it do.
That particular church may, or may not, be reflective of, say, Rich Wilson's views, but if it isn't there is nothing in their response to suggest that is the case.
Wilson quoted from Edward Schillebeeckx, a liberal Roman Catholic theologian. The full quotation, that Caleb notes, is decidedly liberal in tone.
Now, I may not be the most well-thought out person on the 'politics' of Christian witness in Universities (or anywhere) but I find this whole situation quite sad.
If you randomly decided to want to plant a church, in say, Leytonstone, London - surely you look at the existing ministries (if any) that believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ and work with them however you can.
If you can't work together - it has become an issue of disunity, no?
So to turn up on campuses and claim that UCCF's CUs aren't doing what they're supposed to is:
a/ A blanket statement. I can't defend all CUs as being one's that are continually proclaiming the gospel - as much as I cannot defend ALL churches - but certainly I know some CUs that are doing well at 'running the race' as a team.
b/ Ridiculous as a more 'solid' alternative cannot be offered. Do Fusion expect to keep a tight rein over their groups to ensure that all they teach/train/do is gospel led?
I would've thought that instead of creating rivalries and disunity Fusion could've offered to front some cash to UCCF to provide more workers to get alongside the students in their evangelism, training and proclamation of the gospel.
How utterly sad.
On a side note.. don't even get me started on the business of 'there is no reason why Christian groups can't get on well with university authorities and student unions' - sounds a little like 'don't expect any opposition' to me.
Why don't we just water down the gospel so that everyone can get along?
How ridiculous.
See Galatians 1:6-9.
Thanks for that David...
As someone who has myself been involved in a church plant and is currently involved in another I've been accused myself of setting up "competitor ministries". Obviously one wouldn't want to be in a position where you simply can't start anything new... But obviously we do have to have some criteria more than simply "I want to" to help Christians when to start a new work..
It seems to me that there are several reasons why one might want to set up a new ministry, even if it appears to be in competition with someone else...
You might think that the other ministries (be they local churches or parachurch organisations) have stopped believing or teaching the biblical gospel and feel a gospel imperative to do something else. In our postmodern society that means acknowledging that not everything that calls itself "bible believing" or "evangelical" necessarily actually is.
You might feel that there are ministries that are doctrinally faithful but culturally failing to reach people - in which case you'd have to talk to that group (who, by definition, share your key values) and only go ahead if it becomes apparent there is no way they will change or work cooperatively with you.
You might feel that, in a local church context, there is a need for another gospel, culturally relevant church which has different emphases - so, for example, I think that all towns with good, Bible teaching, evangelical Anglican churches should also have good, Bible teaching, evangelical independent churches - because it's best if people can go to a church that reflects their view on, for eg, baptism and church governance.
Or, finally, you might feel that the "who" of the people you are trying to reach is so radically different from what existing works are doing that there is an overlap only of geography not really of anything else.
I'm sure there are more - but those are the ones that spring to mind.
My personal view is that the Fusion movement in universities doesn't really fit any of those categories. You could argue for the third one (benefit of ministries with a range of distinctives) - and this is precisely what Fusion do. But I think that the wonderful thing about CUs is that they encourage people to be involved in a local church - where you can learn about the necessary but not absolutely central doctrines of the church (I'd defend this on the basis of 1 Cor 15:1ff) such as baptism, church governance etc. But they also set aside their difference on those issues to come together for campus witness.
So sad that you choose to select small parts of fusion to give a distorted picture of what it's really like.
"At one university in England the CU recently asked to borrow some tea and coffee making equipment from a local church which is involved with Love your Uni..."
I am utterly utterly shockced that you've posted this story as part of your 'evidence' against loveyouruni.
As someone who attends the university spoken about, and knows exactly what happened, I can say categorically that you have in no way represented the truth of the situation.
I'm sure you're not doing it intentionally, it's probably what you heard. But passing on rumours in a public forum - especially one when you have a dig about unity!! - is not the way I would expect a member of either UCCF or Fusion to behave.
"Paul and Tom": I'm interested by your assumption that, because you were there, you know "categorically" what happened and that what I am doing is "passing on rumours" while what you are doing is stating fact. It seems to me this is slightly arrogant assumption on your part. The person I talked to, in detail, was there too. Which means one of you must be wrong. I completely understand your assumption that it can't be you and must be the other person but you will, I hope, forgive me if that's an assumption I am not able to share. As we all know, it's possible for people who have witnessed the same events to give widely varying accounts.
In any case the point of using this as an example was simply to illustrate that what the people concerned were doing was exactly consistent with what Rich Wilson had said in his talk (since this is widely available on the web I will take it that is not in dispute).
If what you are telling me is that the people concerned at that particular church were not in any way opposed to proclamation evangelism then I would want to ask why they are involved with an organization set up by somebody who clearly is opposed to it.
Just Paul..
And I was commenting only on the useage of that example, not on the issue as a whole so I shan't respond to your second question. I'm not making a comment on what method of evangelism one person/church prefers, simply questioning the useage of that example.
The big difference in this situation is that I was there, and you have a friend who was there. First hand and second hand.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I think you have entirely misrepresented that situation and should not use it as any sort of evidence against Fusion.
PS - I don't think it is any way arrogant to claim to know what happened when I was there.
After all, I was there.
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