Miriam Swaffield, Fusion’s new Student Mission Developer, is 22 and has just graduated from the University of York after studying Writing, Directing and Performance. We wanted to take this opportunity to let Miriam share her heart for students and vision for loveyouruni...
Student Mission
I guess I don’t want to put a label on specific stuff I’ve done at Uni as ‘student mission’, because I don’t reckon we should separate any part of our lives from being part of our mission to represent Jesus and share Him. My experience of being a student is my experience of student mission.
Living with my housemates for three years; being on the football team; performing in plays with my course mates = mission.
Organising gig nights and socials for students at my church to bring their mates to; getting friends together to decorate the house of a family in need; feeding freshers in my college after a night out = mission.
Highlights Of Student Life
Trying to pick highlights from my time as a student is like trying to pick your favourite film... too many to chose from. The day one of my housemates got baptised and all our friends turned up to witness it was incredible. Not a dry eye in the house and that day sparked off us doing Student Alpha together as a group of friends. Then there was the time we managed to steal my friend’s bed and hide it in the shower...golden moments.
Discovering Loveyouruni
At the start of my second year, I visited the evening celebration loveyouruni event in Leeds and got to hear about how students are sharing Jesus in their city. I prayed for the student workers and church leaders of Leeds and it was at that moment, back in November 2009, that I caught the vision for changing our nation by loving our universities.
The loveyouruni project covers so much that students do to share their faith. I’ve seen people heading into the grime of halls of residence and doing the washing up for complete strangers. I’ve seen football cages up on campus with lads sharing their passion for the beautiful game and their reason for existence. There have been students hitting the streets to pray for people, and students bringing their mates who don’t yet know Jesus along to loveyouruni events: brilliantly diverse and creative stuff.
There are no rules really, no walls around what the loveyouruni project covers, no limits to what God will inspire. It has to go bigger than a weekend, because life and students living for Jesus is 24/7, 365 days a year. Yes, a day or an evening of everyone getting together from all the nearby churches to seek God and pray for the universities and students of your area is so encouraging and powerful. It can be a catalyst for students being more proactive about sharing their faith with their mates and praying for our generation. But it can’t be a one hit wonder, or an annual buzz that you try and live off for the rest of the year. I reckon local churches are catching the vision for the excitement and ongoing adventure of student life and all the opportunities to share Jesus that it brings.
Vision For The Future
The more the churches of our nation catch the vision for what God is doing with students, the more important loveyouruni is for sharing mission resources, ideas and testimonies so that every church can be fuelled for student mission throughout the year. I’d love to help create a constantly dynamic and up- to- date central base where people can access all the mission inspirations and stories that are happening across the country. That way students and churches will never be short of encouragement and as much help as they want in making mission happen. Equally, I pray that the loveyouruni project becomes a culture; a total lifestyle shift for everyone who is a follower Jesus; an attitude, a focus and a commitment to sharing the gift that is our faith. If we were to instil that attitude in every Christian, in every university town, loveyouruni wouldn’t just grow, it would explode into a life-giving movement that I believe will be unmissable to those yet to know Jesus.
I genuinely can’t wait to see what God is going to do with my generation of students... keep connected, there are going to be some seriously exciting stories of lives being transformed by our God, and of course, I fully expect you will be part of those testimonies too!
