Every student should have an opportunity to find hope in Jesus and home in the local church. Sadly this is far from the current reality.

The average percentage of undergraduate students in a university town/city is 1.08%. In some university towns and cities, it is a long way off. As Fusion, we work with local churches in every university location to reach the students in that place and we gather statistics on student attendance in church. These are a combination of empirical and anecdotal stats, but we are confident that they are accurate within a reasonable margin of error. 

In High Wycombe, only 0.13% of students are part of a local church. Wrexham is only 0.2%.  In Middlesbrough, there are only 51 students in a church as far as we know and an enormous 18,554 students are not part of a church there. But all students are created by God and he would love them to be part of his family. 

I know many of the church leaders in lots of these locations and they are wonderful people who are doing a great job. But the task is huge. It can feel like an insurmountable challenge to reach a campus when there are so many other priorities and needs. 

There are many factors that contribute to this current picture. Firstly, only a few of the 20 most unreached locations are in the south of England. Secondly, the institutions involved are primarily new universities (ex-poly) and tend to be more vocational courses. Thirdly, there are simply less Christian freshers each year looking to find a local church. No matter which way we read it, we need to work together to reach more students with the gospel of Jesus. We need to focus on student mission. 

Here are the 20 most unreached university locations, according to our statistics. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are a few ways that you could respond to this information. 

1. Pray for the churches in these locations that students would be drawn to the person of Jesus Christ and want to find a home in the local church. 

2. If you are from one of these locations and don't work with students yet, maybe you could start. Connect with Fusion

3. Maybe you could plant a church into one of these towns/cities in order to reach students with the gospel. I'm sure the churches in these places would be glad of the help. 

 

 

Photo by Dries Augustyns on Unsplash