Britain’s second largest city is home to 65,000 students and seven universities. Caroline Harmon caught up with some church leaders in the city to find out what God is doing there.
Jeff Stamps, Assistant Pastor at Birmingham Vineyard
It feels like Birmingham is on God’s map at the moment. I came to Birmingham because I love big cities. I think God loves them too because they’re full of people and God loves people! As a city we have the second largest number of students in the UK. Students are often open to thinking about faith; our university days really shape the rest of our lives, so living in a student city gives me so many opportunities for the Kingdom.
At Birmingham Vineyard we have a site on the edge of Sellyoak which is a student area. We have about 80 students in a church with 400 adults overall. We ran an Alpha course this year and we’ve seen a number of students go from being quite nominal Christians to coming freshly alive in their faith. We also saw two students come to faith for the first time.
The challenge we face is that Christian students can easily create community amongst themselves, but how do you get them to mobilise for mission and involve others in that community? It is happening but we need to tell those stories to build momentum. We’re trying to use Instagram more to do this.
Tim Muller, Student Pastor at St Luke’s Gas Street
We’re just over one year old as a church and have lots of students in our church community. Our building used to be a site where gas was manufactured and then used to light street lamps in the city. It’s a nice metaphor for our students being sent out into the campuses and neighbourhoods.
On Good Friday we hold a public event with music, art, the spoken word and performing arts. Last year, one girl came in and God really spoke to her through what we were doing and she’s now a Christian. She’s been with us for just over a year and she recently got baptised. She brings her friends to church all the time. Another of our students was on a night out and he was talking with a drunk guy about faith. They exchanged phone numbers. The guy called the next day with more questions and he gave his life to Jesus the same day.
My big dream is that everywhere our students go they believe they can be light to the city. We want them to love the city and to stick around after they graduate to keep loving it, rather than seeing uni as a transitional period.
We’ve a very diverse city spiritually and I’ve got some good Muslim mates. It’s good to share our different perspective on faith; I think having dialogue with people of other faiths is especially important given world events at the moment.
George Kawalek, Student Worker at Birmingham City Church
Many of our students are at Aston University, which means we have a lot of international students. Many of them have been brought up to go to church because ‘that’s what you do’. It’s merely a label rather than a faith. I’ve seen a lot of fruit from going back to the basics of faith in our student bible study groups and helping people to see that Christianity is a relationship not a label. Once they get that our students become missional and bring friends to church on a Sunday.
It’s all about relationship. We have an international student whose parents were missionaries but his own faith was just a label. I met with him at least once a week for a whole academic year; my only intention was to be there for him, I didn’t have a big missional strategy. Now he’s finished his Masters and gone on to take some theology modules because he’s realised this is what it’s all about.
Four years ago we had no student work, now I’m no longer building it. It’s starting to sustain itself with students leading things themselves. My dream is to take a step back and let them do it. Once you get ownership people buy in and you get better student work. They have far more capacity than me and there are more of them than me!
