1st Year Languages Student, Georgia Brady, shares her exciting journey navigating being a Christian Fresher:

Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-13 (NLT)

I was the epitome of a sunday christian

Before I moved to Leicester last September, I was the epitome of a Sunday Christian. I went with the flow, followed everyone else and thought that made me a ‘cool Christian’. I thought it was weird that people stayed sober and waited until marriage because of Jesus.

This seriously hurt my relationship with my Father, and was also very disempowering. My identity wasn’t rooted in me being a cherished daughter of the Lord. I didn’t realise that the way I lived my life was important because God wanted to work through me. I thought that only Super Christians™ had that privilege.

This all changed when I came to uni. In my first term, I started to help my best friend and my boyfriend in their journeys to faith. It was amazing! For the first time, I really surrendered myself to God working through me. This snowballed in second term to me surrendering, for the first time, all of my sin to Jesus. He died to save me from everything, not just the bits that I chose. The realisation of this was immensely powerful. I had never been so in love with Jesus or so joyful that he had saved me. This all happened through Holy Trinity Church and because of the power God has placed in church-based student mission.

Now, I am a completely different person to the girl who arrived in Leicester last year. I am infinitely closer to my Father. Stories like mine have been repeated thousands of times over in the past few months. With continued work and faith, thousands more will come to know Jesus in the next academic year.

It is so important that Fusion and student workers around the world maintain their passion and vision for students in church. Church is where students grow, find a different kind of community and realise their God-given potential. Church is where students find the courage to be culture changers and to seek far more from their student experience than any prospectus offers. There is no substitute for it.