What’s your purpose?
By Beth Woods
Instagram campaigns, Hub in the Pub, and deep conversations were the ingredients for a fun filled first term for students at Birmingham City University. Beth Woods, a Student Leader of the Agapé Students movement at BCU shared some of her highlights…
We had a great time at Freshers’ Fair! Meeting new students and chatting to them was awesome. We had a poll at our stand asking people to vote on whether they thought God was real or not. This got lots of interaction and a lot of people enquired about who we were and what we did as an Agapé UK society on campus. We had conversations with lots of different people with a variety of beliefs; people who were Christian and interested in being involved, people who weren’t religious but were interested in our events, and people from other religions such as Jews and Muslims who wanted to discuss God.
Many of our teams connecting with students at universities create opportunities to chat to people to find out what they believe about life, faith and God. Lots of students are so open and enjoy sharing what they believe.
Sparking conversations with Instagram
Beth explains a fun idea they tried out this term, ‘Outside on campus we ran an Instagram campaign. We asked students the question #whatsyourpurposebcu? and took a photo of them holding up their answer on a chalkboard. We had lots of students engaging with us, checking out our Instagram page and this sparked off some really good, meaningful conversations.’ (Find BCU’s Instagram page by searching @agapestudentsbhm).
Hub in the Pub
Our teams also have regular gatherings and Beth describes how their first one of the term went, ‘On Thursday of that week we hosted our first Hub in the Pub. This went really well, we had a number of new students come along and engage, all of which have continued to come along! These new students have even been bringing friends, and subsequently we’ve had to start thinking about additional things we can do to engage with these keen students who aren’t Christian. We’ve also seen a large increase in Christian students who come along and subsequently we are launching a bible study group next week.’
If you are a student who’d like to know more about what is happening at Birmingham City University or you’d like to get involved, please contact us at: students@agape.org.uk. We are also based at universities in Belfast, Cambridge, London and Newcastle upon Tyne so please contact us if you’d like more information.
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