The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
We share personally, pastorally and professionally about how we can best fulfill Jesus' mission to save the lost and serve the saints.
The discussion is broadcast live on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thepastorsheart">Facebook</a> then on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@ThePastorsHeart">YouTube</a> and on our <u><b><a href="http://www.thepastorsheart.net">thepastorsheart.net</a></u></b> website and via audio podcast.
The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
A new era for Australian evangelical university ministry
As a new year begins, Australian evangelical student ministry is marking a significant leadership transition.
After 23 years of stable and influential leadership, Richard Chin has handed over the leadership of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students to Pete Sorrenson. The handover was symbolically marked at the Big National Conference in Canberra last December, where Richard preached the first half of the conference and Pete the second.
We step back to reflect on what the Chin era has meant for Australian evangelicalism. How has campus ministry shaped churches, training colleges and mission agencies over the past four decades? What has changed on university campuses since the turn of the millennium? And what kind of AFES will be needed for the next generation of students?
Long-standing campus leaders Tim Thorburn and Andrew Sennett, offer perspectives from both metropolitan and regional university contexts.
The discussion moves beyond gratitude and legacy to ask harder, forward-looking questions. If many of the theological and ministry convictions once championed by AFES are now mainstream, what is AFES uniquely for today? Are inherited evangelism models still effective on contemporary campuses? How central should international student ministry be? And does Australia’s increasingly fragmented university landscape require more than one model of campus ministry?
https://www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/a-new-era-for-australian-university-ministry
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It is the Pastors Heart and Dominic Steele, and as the new year starts, there's a changing of the guard moment in evangelical student ministry on campuses across Australia. Pete Sorensen takes over from Richard Chin, who's led the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students for 23 years. There was a big moment as part of the national training event in December last year. At the conference, Richard Chin gave the first half of the conference main talks, then the changeover, and then Pete Sorensen gave the second half of the conference addresses. Richard's season of leadership has been remarkably stable and influential. But what has changed over the 23 years? How has campus ministry shaped Australian evangelicalism? And what kind of AFES will be needed for the coming generations of students? Tim Thorburn and Andrew Sennett have been there the whole time. Tim leading the University Student Ministry in Western Australia. And Andrew Sennett, he leads, well, at the campus at Bathurst, uh in the central west of New South Wales. Andrew, let's start with you and the pastor's heart. What a great moment uh seeing um Richard's tenure come to an end. And um and it has been remarkably stable and remarkably influential.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think that Richard is the longest serving national director we've had, which is remarkable. Um, and it's been most of the time I've been with AFS, so I think one year long. Yeah, yeah. I th I drove Kerry out of AFES. So Kerry employed me in 2002, and I think Richard's quit. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um, Tim, your pastor's heart, Matt.
SPEAKER_00:It's good to be here. Um yeah, I reflect with great gratitude to God on the time we've had with Richard. Um I'd been working for AFS for about uh 11 years, I think, when Richard started. Uh I was I started as the only staff worker in WA. Um and the change and growth in AFS ministry uh and the effect of that, particularly as I look around WA, um, there's many things to be grateful to God for.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, let's growth is the really the big word, isn't it? We've gone from a really a a kitchen operation um to a very complex and significant Christian ministry with hundreds of staff.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I think Andrew Reid built the model in a sense in the 80s, and then Kerry took that over in the 90s and began to build that out and and it began to take shape. And then Richard took that on at probably a fairly key moment. And we've grown to where we are today. I think in the National Staff Conference there were about 35 senior staff, my first year to 40, maybe a couple more than that, but there's a significant number more now, in the hundreds now. I'm not quite sure the exact number. And so Richard's overseen not just that growth, but also the changes in structures we needed to make in order to cope with that growth.
SPEAKER_02:Has AFES succeeded so well at renewing Australian evangelicalism that its original task is largely complete? Tim.
SPEAKER_00:Uh no, just a bit of historical perspective on that, I think. Um when I first started with AFES, uh, there were eight of us um working for AFES across Australia, and two of those left in the first year that I was working, so we're a very small team. And I think we our perception was that if AFES was going to be fruitful for God at all, we needed to employ staff. Um Andrew Reid had brought a different model of staff partnering with students in uh the campus mission. Um uh and of uh uh staff who are theologically trained, um, located on usually one campus, so that they could focus on discipling, training, teaching, and forming a whole new generation of students who became graduates and moved out to serve Jesus outside uh the campus. And so I think for the first um uh 20 years of my involvement with AFES, the main focus was how can we get enough staff uh to lead this ministry uh to have enough impact, to have at least one staff worker per campus and then two or three staff workers as we thought about uh international students. Um and so there was a sort of internal focus to start with. How do we grow the staff team so it can uh effectively partner with students across all the campuses of Australia? The the focus now I think has moved to how do staff and students together evangelize their campuses. We're always doing evangelism, but I think at a as a um organization, our focus had been uh primarily on how do we get the right staff and enough staff uh to help the the ministry flourish and reach students. Uh now we're in a phase where we I think we've got in most places enough staff. Um uh uh the the question is how do we then work, partner with students to reach the thousand, hundreds of thousands of students on our campuses fruitfully and effectively.
SPEAKER_02:Look, when I was asking that question, I was really thinking that um uh if we go back 40 years ago, expository preaching was much less common in Australian churches. Gospel clarity, um evangelicalism wasn't as prominent, mission theology was much rarer. Those things now are not just AFES distinctives, um, they have become the hallmark of the Australian church. I mean, maybe not over where you are, Tim, but certainly over this side of the country.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's possibly true. And I I think that says something about um our movement. Your success. Yeah, we well, we we don't we don't succeed in a sense just by growing or by getting bigger. And you may be right that in terms of the growth of staff numerically, that's starting to taper off. And you now shape pulpits, training colleges, mission agencies around the country. And I I think that's part of our aim. Yeah, uh one of our values is to serve the local church. That's what we're here for. And so if we cease to do that, we really cease to have a reason for existing if we don't serve the the local churches and the church as a whole. Um and I think that's really where the future of the movement's going to go. So I think that's why I I agree with Tim. We haven't actually reached our apogee yet. Of course, there's more non-Christians to be won. That's right. There's more people to be won on the unicampuses, but there's also we want to um produce graduates, disciple graduates, who will be um folks who serve the church in myriads of ways as local lead lay leaders, as pastors in the on the mission field, and that is an ongoing thing. That never ends till Jesus returns. And so in that sense, I don't think our work will ever be done. But yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I would say that 20 years ago, if we were dating it 23 years at the beginning of the Chin era, um, I would say the churches were sleepier, you know? Okay. Um, whereas I'm seeing lots and lots of kind of entrepreneurialism amongst church leaders now. I mean, this is in my patch.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I'd be interested to hear from Tim actually his perspective being over in Perth.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, in in Perth, um we've seen a significant change in the landscape. I guess I I've been here forty something years now. Um and when I came to Perth, uh I was a bit naive. Um, but I think there were probably only about five churches where you could hear the Bible faithfully and engagingly taught. So if if somebody became a Christian somewhere in Perth I wanted to find a church to encourage them to go to, it was pretty hard. Um the the scene is now significantly different. Um there's probably sixty to seventy churches like that in Perth itself, and then another uh forty or so outside Perth. Um and the AFS ministry has contributed to that. There's been other things contributing. Um, but I guess I uh invested in AFS ministry because I wanted to see that change.
SPEAKER_02:And and I would say humanly speaking, probably the biggest factor has been the AFES impact in Perth, but probably also a similar story could be told in the city of Bathurst.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, not just Bathurst. I mean, I I'm in the Central West really, so I I extend a fair way out in terms of deputation and visiting churches, and I see not just my own graduates, but graduates from AFS and all those places, and they're faithfully serving, doing great works. Um, it's fantastic to see.
SPEAKER_02:Running with some of those what we used to call AFES distinctives of biblical theology, expository preaching, and that kind of thing, but now uh the bread and butter of Australian churches. Yeah. So there's there's been a massive change. Yeah. What about evangelism? The model of evangelism. Um, I mean, if we think 20 years, um the churches have changed their evangelistic model spectacularly from well, evangelistic courses today, whereas 20 years ago that wasn't the s the situation at all. How has the model of evangelism changed at university and how does it need to change going forward, Tim?
SPEAKER_00:Uh in some ways, I I feel like our model hasn't changed. Some of the we tinker around the sides of things, but our model on campus uh from the get-go uh of my involvement has been um uh uh public proclamation so that students uh are are converted and gain confidence in the message of Jesus Christ, the power of the gospel, and then uh equipping students to be able to articulate that to people they know or could know. And so um I think the landscape has changed significantly in in the way people respond to Christians sharing the gospel with them. Uh but um I think uh there's something fundamental um about the way we've gone about doing evangelism, which uh has to do with equipping students to be able to do it um in their normal life with in within the relationships that God puts them in, in their classes, their school friends who are at uni with them. Um and we've deliberately done that partly because we want it to be transferable to other contexts. So when they finish uni, they go to work. Uh we want them to be able to confidently share the gospel and live for Christ in their work context. We want them in their churches to be evangelistic in inviting, encouraging, talking. And so at one level, um, I I I haven't changed, maybe other parts of atheist there's been some change, but that um uh emphasis on equipping uh each Christian student to be able to be confident in the gospel uh and the power of God to use it uh and to articulate it um to friends. Uh I think some of the things that have changed is how we help them engage with their friends. Um and a lot of that has to do with the changing culture and and um landscape of where Christianity sits um within uh our culture and our world. But um in many ways we haven't changed that fundamental strategy of evangelism.
SPEAKER_02:What about you and your situation, Andrew? Have you I mean, where do you need to change? Where has it changed?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Well, I think I I'd re-errow what Tim said though, I think one of the key parts of of what we are and what we do is that evangelism isn't some discrete activity. Evangelism is an ordinary part of discipleship. Uh and that's been, I think, key and core to AFES from the very outset. And so we we teach the Bible and proclaim at the on the campus as we disciple students one to one and read the Bible with them, and uh evangelism really unfolds from there and in their growing confidence in the gospel. Uh I think uh probably the the one thing there to pick up what Tim said at the end of his comments is changing the perhaps some of the methodology of of evangelism. What have you changed there? Well, uh I when I first started, when I did uh we met when I was doing stream ministry at Laquarry together when uh Christians in the media got off, yes. Well, we were teaching two ways to live, and I I used two ways to live as the as a training manual. It was a fantastic gospel outline and still is, it's still embedded in my muscle memory, uh, that outline. And we trained students with that, and that was their their um method for sharing the gospel with people. And it it I think it's still a great method. What do you do now? But we do things very differently now. We we teach students to engage much more with uh the gospel itself. So one of the gospels, um uncover, has been the last well, t 10 to 12 years with AFES now. We've gone through various versions of the Uncover Gospels. It's just a it's a gospel that's in some sense interactive. It's reading the text of the gospel, it's encountering Jesus um in person with somebody else. And so often when I talk with people about evangelism and I I talk about methodology, I think two A's Live taught us, in a sense, a a kind of a hierarchical, like you're instructing someone in the gospel, whereas uncover is much more encountering the gospel and encountering Jesus side by side. It's a much more side-by-side activity where you are you don't need to know anything um spectacular or special. You don't need to be able to answer any questions. What you need to be able to do is give a genuine response to Jesus yourself. And so that idea of reading um the gospel and in encountering Jesus there and having a genuine response to what he does, what he says, who he is in the gospel and sharing the gospel in that.
SPEAKER_02:And are you doing that in the the one-to-one? I mean, like you're in a dormitory town, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, it's one-to-one. The first year Uncover came out, we had a girl in our group and she was she was not a great student, right? She was not a very good reader, she was not very biblically literate. And she began, she asked a friend to do uncover with her that year. They were doing the gospel of Luke, and they decided instead of doing the six special studies, they would read it verse by verse through the book. Every week she would come to me on the our Tuesday night meetings and she would have a list of questions. And so her method of doing uncover was they'd read a passage and um her friend would ask questions and she would say, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. And then she would come and ask me um uh all the questions and we'd have a conversation about them. And she'd just plug away every week. At the end of the year, an exam just before exams, they read the last two chapters of Luke in a you know, one go just to get it finished. And she screwed her courage up and asked a friend if she would like to become a Christian, and she did at the end of that year. Now she she knew nothing.
SPEAKER_02:She was a poor reader, she she wasn't great at exegesis, she wasn't great at but why would you structure that as somebody doing it one-to-one rather than doing it in a small group, I mean, over a meal or those kind of things. Oh, much more like introducing God or any of those relational courses. Yeah. I mean, um, particularly in your dormitory, in your where everybody's in close geographic. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, uh honestly, I don't know. Uh the ultimately, I think there's an advantage though in people share and having a conversation one-to-one with a friend. Uh, it lends itself much more to that um, I guess, unique approach. It's not generic. You're not thinking I have to answer a generic style question here. I'm talking to you, Dominic, about about the gospel, about Jesus, and uh where uh we're having a uh that unique kind of conversation about who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_02:It is interesting that almost I would say whether whichever the course is, every church I know is running um structured evangelism engine courses several times a year.
SPEAKER_01:Well we I've done uncover training with several regional churches and they have raved about it and they try and pick up uncover gospels and use them. And I'm doing that with people in our age bracket who are um struggling with evangelism and they can see the advantage of doing this because it's this is a thing that you can do and you can do without any prior training, as long as you can read at a relatively okay level, uh, you can read about Jesus and and interact at this peer-to-peer kind of level.
SPEAKER_02:I'm still thinking, Tim, about um changes over the 20 years, and um I'm I'm I'm thinking perhaps 20 years ago, international student ministry was kind of seen as a side hustle. Um how has that changed? Is it still a side hustle or Tim?
SPEAKER_00:Um AFS saw the uh the possibility of student ministry of sorry, in international student ministry. Um yeah, probably 25 years ago, because we were getting more internationals on our campuses, and they seemed to be more open to the gospel. Uh particularly as they as we got a flood from China um and Southeast Asia. Uh and um Richard uh one of Richard's strengths was that he could recognize people who had gifts and capacities and draw them into working with AFES in strategic ways. And he um employed Matthew Meek, who had been involved at that stage he was working in a church. Uh but Richard saw his language capacities and his heart for internationals. Um and that that was the beginning of a concerted uh prayerful effort to try and grow our ministry with internationals.
SPEAKER_02:Are we putting our best people into international ministry?
SPEAKER_00:Uh are we putting our best people? Um I think in some places we are and some places we're not. Uh it it's varied. And and our um impact with international students varies from campus to campus.
SPEAKER_02:Um That's interesting. Where are we w what's you what's going on there?
SPEAKER_00:Um I think uh um I'm on the other side of the country, so I don't see some of the things that are happening around Sydney and Melbourne where the majority of international students come. Uh uh but um I think what I've seen is that um where significant resources are put into it, then it bears fruit. And the city r resources are primarily staff. So our our focus ministry tends to be highly staff directed and led um because uh not many of the international students, well most of them aren't Christians. So in in our focus groups, our international students' groups. Uh often the the majority are non-Christians, which wouldn't be true of our Aussie um local commuter work, particularly.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:What's your take, Andrew?
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, no, I I I agree. And it's it's an interesting question asking are we putting our best people into it? Because what do we mean by best? Uh I think that you international ministry, international student ministry is a fairly unique game and it's very different to the local work. And so the kinds of the kinds of attributes of of character qualities and skill sets that make a great uh uh Aussie work worker might be a little bit different uh in a focus ministry, in an international ministry, uh, where it's much more relationally heavy, um maybe language skills, um, but I think uh it's just a slightly different beast. Uh I I have uh a small amount of experience here because I arrived at Newcastle to do the campus ministry, and in my first O week, we had international students show up and say, Have you got anything for us? And we went, Well, no. And so we began a work there, and who began it? Well, me. I was the only one there.
SPEAKER_02:And you didn't know what you weren't.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I know that that they were two very, very different jobs. So I did both of those jobs basically in parallel for five years, and they are very, very different kinds of work. Um, certainly with international students, they are just so much more open or have been in the past, so much more open to the gospel.
SPEAKER_02:Now, um I I want to push into uh how university life has changed or is changing really. Um, and uh I mean my sense is there's there's two at least two very different kinds of campuses. We've got the the sandstone campuses and almost compute commuter TAFE kind of campuses, but people are spending less time on campus, all these kind of issues. Where does that leave student ministry going forward? Let's start with you, Tim. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we've seen massive changes uh over probably 30 years on all campuses, including the sandstone campuses, of students um less and less uh thinking of their of university as being their life for a number of years. Um and so most students see university as something that they do uh alongside uh two or three other things. Um there is a difference, uh there's a difference between the Sandstone Unis and uh other universities in how how much it's like that. There's also a difference between those who live uh on campus accommodation and those who live uh who commute uh from the suburbs in for most of our universities. Um but uh most most of our students now don't see university as uh the the main thing they do for the the years their students. Um they they work uh part-time, even full-time. So a number of students um I was working with at UWA, which is Sandstone Uni, had full-time jobs as well as studying full-time.
SPEAKER_02:And so how do they have time to read the Bible with you?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Uh so the the ministry had to become more flexible and nimble in in how we uh provided opportunities for engagement. Um and we had to work much we do have to work much harder at persuading students to get involved uh than we used to. Uh so that that that is a huge change. I think the uh the average student across Australia now works more than 15 hours a week in employment. Um many students no longer are trying to finish their course in the minimum time. Uh they're happy to to drop to uh say three three-quarter load uh and stretch out their university.
SPEAKER_02:And one of the impacts of that is I'm just remembering my daughter, she um uh I mean she done most of a degree, but she did the last few subjects um over the next four years, do you know, working full-time.
SPEAKER_00:And so the the idea that you go through uni with a cohort, you make your lifelong friends uh in your course, and therefore you have the open opportunities uh through those relationships to evangelize the people in your course as you go on. That's less and less than normal experience of our Christian institutions.
SPEAKER_02:How does the model of ministry you're doing differ from what I might think you're doing?
SPEAKER_01:I think there are bigger challenges for the city campuses, both commuter and sandstone, than there are for the regional campuses. And that's part of the dormitory type thing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_01:A lot of the rural campuses used to be the old country CAEs. So we were Mitchell College, uh, classically, and they are very vocationally based. And so it's a I call it a third-tier unit. I'm not sure how the university sector split up, but I'd call the sandstones and the UTSs the the kind of UNSWs, the tier one campuses, and then your Macquaries and your Newcastles and Wollongongs, your tier two campuses, but we're very firmly down in the tier three and the near the bottom of tier three. But our our campuses have students who are much more strugglers in terms of academics, um, but we've also got more time with them. So our our weekly meetings on a Tuesday night, we have dinner together, we have we have a good few hours together, and so I have less issues with access to students than the city campuses do. And so the challenges will be different uh going forward. But let's let's say the majority of our students will be in the cities and at the main campuses, and I think there is a significant issue of access. And I the other thing post-COVID is that universities are scaling down the number of hours students need to spend on campus. So it feels like the era of that large lecture theory, you know, you might have gone to a lecture with five, six hundred students more in it. I think those days are pretty much gone for most universities. Those lectures are now online, and a large number of unis are doing their lectures online, and you go into uni for tutorials, which is why the number of hours on campus is also decreased. So it's not just it is part-time work, but I think part-time work's ramped up as the hours at uni have have come down at the same time. And so that's an issue for a ministry like ours back to the street.
SPEAKER_02:Whereas you're really saying that's not happening now.
SPEAKER_01:Uh well, you'd have to talk to the city people, but it it's happening less and less. We're still getting a good number of students, um, as many as we can get, but access to people's a challenge.
SPEAKER_02:If you were going now to a uni student campus, AFES didn't exist, you were starting a Christian ministry from scratch, you know. What would you do different to whatever's the cock the current model, given the cultural factors that are going on? Yeah, let's start with you, Andrew.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, that's a really, really good question. Uh one thing that probably wouldn't be different, Tim could probably testify to this about how he began, but I think I would definitely go to churches local to the university and begin to meet people there and build relationships. And that would probably be the the germ and the genesis of starting up a ministry on campus. I'm not sure I just lob onto campus no week and uh and expect to meet people. But uh I wonder if if a uh a tactic for the future for campus staff might be to start a degree uh or to start some study and then have a an angle to get in with local cohorts of students. Um but it's a real it's a really good question. I'm not sure what you'd say, Tim. Tim, your thoughts there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it it's a challenge, and it's a challenge that all our campus groups and staff workers are struggling with, um, and really working hard and praying hard uh to try and work out the ways that we go about building and um uh making our our student groups effective. The the biggest issue for us is buy-in, I think. And so um uh uh I think what uh we um we still have opportunities to meet students on campus and for the students who are have already bought in to meet and invite other students. Um many students now uh although university is not their their you know their whole of life while they're students, um, they are they're looking for friendships, they feel disconnected, uh they um uh and at a level of spirituality, uh both Christian and non-Christian students um are more curious and open to what there might be more than they've had already. And that's true, I think, for the Christians as well. And so uh I think if I was going on a campus, I'd be trying to uh find some Christian students and open non-Christians and uh gather them in smaller hubs, groups where they meet each other and where we open the Bible and find Jesus and see the radical nature of his uh offer of life and of what it means to be part of his kingdom and serving him and proclaiming him to others, and trying uh to work hard to get people to buy into uh becoming disciples and making disciples of others, and seeing uni as a place uh uh among others, where there are incredible opportunities so that we build a s a sort of an evangelistic task force that isn't focused on um uh being a youth group um entertaining you uh but um where the that passion to see others come to know Jesus and be saved through him um becomes the thing that draws us together and motivates us to to sort of hang out with each other, um rely on each other and God and give uh uh time and energy to the campus ministry.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's right. I think that evangelism discipleship, when you are when people look back, their story is usually, well, I became a Christian on campus, which is what happened to me. I became a Christian when I was in my first year at uni. Uh, and that second plank, though, is people look back and they go, I was discipled at uni. They they helped me to grow my faith, they trained me uh to share the gospel with my friends, and so I think those things will always be the the kind of pathway in with students, but there's an evangelistic moment thing there. I don't know if you want to pick up on that, but uh I think that's the other thing that's going on in our culture at the moment is that that moment of I don't I call it Jesus Curious. Um I think our culture more broadly, not just in the universities but everywhere, seems to be a lot more open to the things of God than they were. And I don't think I've ever had as a staff member more evangelistic opportunities, more opportunities for evangelistic conversations than I have this year. Um and I've been at much bigger campuses than I'm at at the moment. Um, and my campus has been much bigger than it is at the moment. So that I find very fascinating.
SPEAKER_02:I don't know if you find that or seem to be going on earth, but there's something in the who knows what caused it. Oh, that's exactly right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the boffins the boffins will sit around one day and work out exactly why this cultural moment happened, but I don't know that I just know it seems to me that uh we're here. So we uh we sat around oh maybe eight or nine years ago as a student committee, and I said to the committee when we're planning for the next year, is there anything we do for the campus just to love campus, not because we have some other agenda? And they went, no. And I said, Oh, that's interesting. Well, is there something we could do? And they hit on this idea of cooking pancakes, and I thought that was a dumb idea, but they went, no, let's do this. And it's been one of the best things um we've done. Uh, they basically make up their own pancake mix and cook it every week and and hand them out for free to the students. Every week. Every week. We've done more than 20,000 pancakes.
SPEAKER_02:Um I mean, I was gonna ask you about courageous change to what things would you um change to do differently for the future? Um, and you're saying more pancakes across the phone. I don't know what it is.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know what it will, but for us, for me, uh that that it it it takes a couple of things, right? One is I think it shows that sometimes the best things happen not because of us, but despite us. And that's a question I'm I'm more and more asking people now. Not what glorious achievements have you made for Jesus, but what have you seen God do, not because of you, but in a sense almost around you or despite you. Uh and pancakes is a classic one of those because I thought it was a dumb idea. But it's been for our campus ministry absolutely uh brilliant. It gives the the students are outing themselves because it's the Christian group cooking pancakes every week. They're building relationships with people, they're bringing their friends along, they're having conversations about the gospel, not because we don't make the got the gospel an agenda item at that at all. This is all just to serve community on campus. We want to build community and foster relationships. But inevitably, people want to talk, and that's more and more happening the last year or so. So I've had so many conversations about the gospel this year at pancakes.
SPEAKER_02:Tuesday morning pancakes.
SPEAKER_01:People have come along. We've had a guy become a Christian this year, um, coming along the last year because of that, and he's starting the bridge this year.
SPEAKER_02:Isn't that great? We are out of time. Thanks for coming to talk to us. Tim Thorburn leads the Christian ministry at the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students work in uh Western Australia, and Andrew Sennett uh does the same sort of thing at the Bathurst campus to the west of Sydney. My name is Dominic Steele. You've been with us on the Pastor's Heart, and we will look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
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