Engaging with International Students

Part II | Why and how do we engage?

Imagine living in a foreign country thousands of miles away from everything you have ever known. You find yourself not just out of the zip code or State of your comfort zone but existing in an entirely different world where comforts are hard to come by. Perhaps you've traded mild seasonal weather for something of the cold rainy multi-variable sort. Everything, whether small or large, feels strange. Even making new genuine friendships is quite a tricky endeavor in a cross-cultural setting, and it's easy to feel the fog of isolation on a literal island.

Nevertheless, you've cast aside the familiar and familial for the aberrant and alien. Surely you've come to pre-orient yourself to this new setting and briefly explored the area once or twice before packing your things, traveling all this way, and taking up residence. Yet you have no accurate gauge for what it's truly like until you're fully immersed. 

Your life thus far has been defined by your home country's culture, your ethnic identity, your family heritage, your academic performance, and your significant other (or lack thereof). Over the years, you've grown a worldview that has never been questioned or challenged in any meaningful or critical way. You've only known to pursue things that have a shelf-life or are ill-affected by obsolescence. Everything in this world loses its luster, and the novelty wears thin, ultimately causing a hollowing disillusionment. Hence you unwittingly carry, project, or burden yourself and others with the crushing (God-intended) weight of your deepest hopes, significance, and purpose. 

You study abroad at a prestigious university because it holds so much promise—such a time is an investment into your future, so you work harder than you've ever worked. Your impression of the world has begun to expand beyond the culdesac of your childhood home, exceeding your native tongue's capacity to articulate your newly found and formed perspective. You begin to confront the notion that you have, up to this point in your life, grounded your identity on things that always overpromise and under-deliver. Although you've gotten wise to it, you still seem to keep falling for it at every turn, no matter how much conventional wisdom you compile.

Many international students arrive and acculturate into life in the UK, having such thoughts and experiences. 

Why should we engage in International Student Ministry in the UK?

First and foremost, ISM is an opportunity to engage in Jesus' Commission. According to the Barna Group, only 17% of US churchgoers know what the Great Commission is and where to find the reference in the Bible. If the UK is anything like the US in this respect, there's a great deal of time in prayer and a great deal of work to do to create awareness in this particular segment of ministry. It's also a way for us to embody and share the transformative work of the Gospel—to live out our active faith in practice alongside local UK churches.

To understand Jesus' Commission (and the urgency involved), we need to fully engage with and be completely honest about the fundamental truth of our default condition. Picking up from my last article, "sin" has been something true of humanity ever since the dawn of time, not to mention during the advent of the Church, as it found itself a distinct worldview in an equally pluralistic society as we have today.

Now, if God exists and Jesus is God incarnate, why did the Author of life write Himself into human history? 

• Was it to personally pat us on the back and be one of many "truths" and paths to salvation? No.

• Was it to be a sort of omnipresent genie or cosmic custodian that's there to grant wishes, clean up our mess, and always, without question, stamp approval on anything and everything we think, feel, say, or do? No.

• Was it to be subservient to our subjective truth and happiness so that all that's left of Christ is so far removed that it's a childish doodle or satirical caricature that we ignorantly conflate on a plate of other diluted and contradictory worldviews (Jesus + karma + ______)? No.

Jesus was and is on a rescue mission! 

Something needs to be done about our sin—the fundamental thing that severs ties and separates us from a transcendent, abundantly loving, and perfectly just God. We're all drowning in a deep deluge of a tenebrous sea darkened by a sky cluttered with clouds in varying shades of denial. 

We pride ourselves on being strong, self-sufficient swimmers and nautical nonpartisans, but we can only tread the murky waters for so long until the radiance of realization dawns on us. We've been struggling to keep our heads above water all along—our strength is waning, and we're in desperate need of rescue.

If our fundamental posture/default condition is bad news, then the prophesied birth, earthly ministry, revolutionary teachings, death on a Roman cross, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Christ is Good News! 

Jesus is our Rescuer. In order to change our condition, we need deep surgical heart transformation and constant renewal of the mind. Notice I didn't initially say outward performance, charitable acts, and neither is it about a conscience-governed morality or following one's heart. If we think that Christianity is about rule-keeping for the sake of meriting favor or blessing—twisting the arm of God to do our will in our timing, according to our standards and purposes, then we don't know Jesus at all. 

ISM in the UK is unique because the mission field where we typically send out missionaries has come to us—the world is at our doorstep. Each of these respective countries I mentioned (and many more) in Part I have sent their best and brightest individuals to the UK. Those who will go on to be future world leaders, heads of governments, pioneers in various industries, etc. Many of these countries have little to no Christian presence, so in many instances, the Gospel is heard and inquired about for the first time! 

International students who attend university are more open and responsive to hearing the Gospel and setting aside emotional or volitional reasons to honestly investigate Christianity without the trappings and restrictions of social pressures from family, friends, etc. In many cases, these students will be thousands of miles away from home, leaving them lonely and homesick. Friends International seeks to build rapport and community with international students as one of the four biblical mandates that inform all aspects of the ministry. 

How should we engage in International Student Ministry in the UK?

Friends International (FI) leaders, staff, and volunteers must model the biblical mandates to:

1 - Practice Christian hospitality

2 - Provide help and services

3 - Love the stranger and defend the cause of the foreigner

4 - Build friendships and community

International Student Ministry consists of…

Local Church Links 

• Developing solid links with evangelical churches across the city/town.

• Encouraging and equipping churches to reach out to international students.

• Involving other churches that are not yet part of the work.

University 

• Maintaining links with the university.

• Meeting and supporting Christian students in all churches that have contact with international students. 

• Serving, helping, and supporting churches in international student ministry on campus.  

Café Outreach

• Drawing volunteers from several local churches to serve at the International Fridays (FI's Café outreach)

• Working closely with the Christian Unions and their Globe Café. 

• Encouraging and working with those interested in starting new café ministries, including recruiting and training new volunteers.

Individual Students

• Seeking opportunities to share faith with individual students.

• Building relationships: making friends, loving and caring for them. 

• Modeling friendship in a cross-cultural setting to other volunteers.

Bible Studies

• Supporting current bible studies.

• Developing and coordinating new bible study groups and equipping volunteers to lead and facilitate (this may include evangelistic studies for students enquiring into the Christian faith).

• Leading discipleship studies for Christian international (and indigenous) students. 

Outings/Special Events

• Liaising with local volunteers.

• Helping organize events and activities throughout the year. 

Administration

• Ensuring good communication with local supporters, volunteers, and churches—information is provided to students at the appropriate times. 

• Developing supporter-facing social media and an ongoing hosting scheme.

Communication with International Students

• Investigating and pioneering ways of maintaining communication with interested international students. 

• Creating awareness of what is going on for international students through social media, a local website, and email.

Students Returning Home

• Helping volunteers consider the issues for students as they return home. 

• Preparing students for their return home by running courses at the end of the summer term and helping them find suitable Christian fellowship in their home country.

Another aspect of FI’s ministry that is currently developing is staff workers, who will be primarily focused on the side of Resource and Mobilization. This entails the steady building and fostering of strategic ministry partnerships across the 40 university cities and towns with a wide variety of local churches, networks, and denominations in the UK and across the pond. There's an opportunity to highlight the need further, create a greater scope of awareness about ISM, and get more churches and charities involved. FI's prayer is for more workers to engage in ISM because the harvest is plentiful, and the workers are few (Luke 10:2).