Joining the Public Meetings (PMs) team this year has been a great test of faith. Faith in students, other staff members, the university and beyond! It is no small task to ensure that the public Bible teaching of God’s word is conducted on campus. Laura (senior staff worker in the EU) and I were placed on the team at the end of last year. Fresh-faced to the PM world and armed with a keenness to revitalise PMs, we started by recruiting 5 subteam leaders who will lead the various PM subteams – People, Publishing, Presence, Platform and Promotion. It takes a small army of willing, faithful students to make PMs run the way they do!

A great encouragement for myself has been the way these appointed subteam leaders have taken up the mantle for their own areas. Some are new to the whole concept of being on a PM team, where others have been members of their team in previous years – it makes Laura and I look like the new kids on the block! Over time, we saw the initiative in these leaders asking the right questions, seeking to answer them themselves, and problem-solving. We began to see the servant-heartedness they have, as I too soon realised that despite its name, the team operates completely behind-the-scenes. No public acknowledgement, just faithful organising and meticulous planning to ensure that everything in the front goes smoothly. 

Besides that, you may have seen some of Laura’s posts asking for prayer for a location for PMs. Thank you for your prayers and your partnering alongside us in that unknown time! Personally, as an alumnus of Sydney Uni and the EU, knowing that we could reach out to you for prayer and to know that you were upholding us in your prayers was deeply encouraging. Despite the uncertainty at the time, I had a quiet confidence that God would answer our prayers in an unexpected way – and He sure did.

Our prayers were answered by the generosity of the neighbouring Christian residential college, St. Paul’s College. We reached out to them to see if there was a space that might be available for our use. I distinctly remember the thumbs up Laura gave me as we walked past each other the week before PMs, just after Laura’s meeting at St. Paul’s. What a sigh of relief that was for us all! How gracious that our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ on campus were willing to have us in their space.

That is how PMs ended up being held in the state-of-the-art Waddy Performance Centre in Weeks 1 and 2. Attending PMs felt like attending a play at the Opera House! It was “very cool” – I heard a student say. Though we knew that this would not be a long-term solution, as St Paul’s is a bit out of the way compared to our usual PM spots. Eventually, the uni’s booking system opened up, and we were able to make regular bookings for lecture theatres for the rest of the semester. 

As of today, most PM locations for the semester are locked in. I am incredibly grateful for the longstanding partnership between the uni and the EU, which allows us to book locations every semester.

If you were to ask me at the end of last year how I felt about being on the PMs team, I would have answered “nervous!” with no hesitation. Having officially been on the team for a few months now, I can say that my confidence is slowly growing, knowing there are so many others who are shouldering the burden of PMs alongside me, with God as our firm foundation. How wonderful to have such a robust partnership between students, Howies, senior staff, the university and other Christian institutions!

Above all, if this apprenticeship is teaching me anything at all, it is the privilege that God has given me to serve Him in His unfolding plans at Sydney Uni through the EU. This has been a wonderful faith-building experience, and I am happy to report that the preaching of His word through PMs is continuing indefinitely.