Craig is Curate at St Mary Bredin church in Canterbury, where he oversees the student work. He graduated from St John’s College, Durham, too long ago now, is married to Becky and has recently become a dad to little Noah. He is passionate about seeing people journey to faith and taking hold of their faith to live it out.

I went off to university like hundreds of thousands of students every year expecting to live a stereotypical student lifestyle having grown up with a basic C of E primary school introduction to Christianity. What I did not expect when I turned up to university was to make friends with a group of people who didn’t get drunk, didn’t have sex and read their Bible – not to mention sitting round drinking tea. I made the fateful mistake of asking them why they lived like this – didn’t they want to live a little?

They took this opportunity to explain to me about the love that Jesus has for each of us and invited me along to church. There were ups and downs in the conversation and they gave me Lee Strobel’s ‘The Case for Christ’ to read, in which he becomes a Christian having set out to disprove Christianity. This book made reference to the Bible and so I borrowed a friends Bible and read some of it; I attended one week of Christianity Explored (I was the only non-Christian); but it was really that invite along to church, where there seemed to be this life, excitement and passion – people moved, sang loudly and put their hands in the air – that played a key part in leading me to faith.

11 years ago this December I gave my life to Jesus, and it’s been the best 11 years of discovery, joys and challenges, that I could ever have had. How did my life change? Because some fellow fresher’s lived out their lives in response to Jesus – their lifestyle provoked me to give them an opportunity to explain the good news of Jesus Christ. University is a unique opportunity to speak good news into your friend’s lives, can I encourage you to live in a way that shows who you love?