“I went into June Project a bit apprehensive about what I was getting myself into, I didn't know the rest of my team on the first day and there seemed to be a lot of chatter about the dreaded first contact! But you know what, God was incredible to me that week, blessing me with a team who loved me and made me feel welcome.”
Each summer, we at King’s Church Durham organise a week of teaching, training, outreach, community projects, evangelism and events in Durham, bringing together many aspects of the life and mission of the church. We put fresh energy into our existing activities, get lots more people involved and pioneer new ways of engaging with our community. To see what we got up to last year, check out this video.
I’m aware that our students have a huge range of gifts in how they communicate the gospel; some in words, some in deeds, some prophetically; therefore each year we're involved in garden projects, creative street evangelism, street performance, prayer teams, fun days and youth and kids work. This year we are planning a range of large scale evening events such as an arts and crafts evening and an open air gig in the city centre. We have teams focussing in the city centre and also in the surrounding estates in Durham. This enables us to bless the local residents as well as students. We are always overwhelmed with the positive response from people in the city who love what we do during the week. Through the work and service we do we get fantastic opportunities to talk to people about the God who saves.
James’ testimony continues, “God also spoke and moved in amazing ways during the project, as I mentioned before, I was very nervous about first contact and so my team prayed for me beforehand, I ended up being the last one standing when it was time to finish first contact one afternoon! Perhaps the most personal impact for me though was during one of the teaching sessions and we were watching a video when the person said "God can soften even the hardest of hearts". Immediately one of my mates, who is very much anti-God, sprang to mind and I felt that God was saying he can soften even this guy's heart. This has just encouraged in my evangelism that God can soften any heart and even though I haven't seen much progress with my mate, I know that God is going to change his life at some point!”
Yes Lord!
We’d love to welcome delegates from churches around the country to join the team and gain experience of local mission with students to an entire city and then take this to your own cities. The dates this year are June 1 – June 7. Please sign up here by Sunday 17 May, and on your form indicate if you need accommodation. Contact me via info@kcd.org.uk for more info.
Blog by Chris Morgan, Kings Church Durham Student Worker and general student mission hero.
