When I first heard about CousMin in the EU, I was curious to see what it would look like for Christian university students to engage with people of different faiths on campus.
I remember back to my time at uni and thought about the huge internal pull I felt to spend more time with like-minded Christians, rather than be uncomfortable engaging across cultural and religious barriers. So it was this curiosity that drove me to join the CousMin team this year.
Moussa has been running CousMin, largely on his own, for over 9 years now. He has done a wonderful job! Maybe you’ve even been impacted by his ministry? He has such a heart for evangelism, to see lost people introduced to the truth and beauty of Jesus’ glorious gospel. However, a part of the job that maybe you’re less familiar with, is the fact that as EU Senior Staff, we don’t have much ability to engage in campus evangelism. This is for several reasons, but is primarily because we’re not students – obvious, right? But the impact of this is that it’s harder to engage with non-Christians on campus, because we’re less likely to be in situations where we can befriend them.
What this means for people like Moussa (and the EU Staff Team in general), is that we have to shift our focus from personal evangelism, to inspiring and envisioning EU students to become cross-cultural evangelists themselves.

For CousMin, this has been revolutionary! It means that there aren’t just 1 or 2 full-time cross-cultural evangelists, but there are dozens! We’ve seen this recently in the largest-ever cohort of EU students taking part in our Engaging with Muslims (EWM) training course this semester. Over 40 students have joined these weekly classes to dip their toes into the world of Islam, learn more about what our cousins believe and consider how they might personally share with them the glorious news of Jesus. Some students already had Muslim friends from school, in their countries of origin or their classrooms, whereas others just wanted to be better prepared for potential future conversations. Praise God for their desire to grow and take more seriously Jesus’ command to “Go to all the nations,” even while here at uni.

Over these few weeks, we have seen dozens of students prompted to begin passionately engaging with cousins on campus. One student shared in our chat saying, “I was just walking to the station and saw a girl in a hijab. I thought that if she turned onto the boardwalk then I’d try and think of a question to ask her, and then she did! So I asked her some questions that we raised in EWM today, and we ended up exchanging contact details.”
Another student shared that he had a friend who cuts trees part-time, so he used it as a way to talk to him about creation. Another wanted to begin talking to a long-term friend about faith, and so asked her “What does your religion mean to you?” Another took a while to muster up the courage to visit the Islamic Stall on campus, but once she did, she got into a lovely conversation with a student who also happened to be in the same degree as her.

Despite not being able to engage in this evangelism as often, I have been convicted of the fact that God calls us to be faithful in the big and the small. We might have desires to be full-time gospel workers, ministers and missionaries, and feel hindered at the fact that we’re “still” in Sydney, “still” studying or “still” unsure of our next step. But just because we’re not where we want to be, it doesn’t mean we can’t be gospel workers, ministers and missionaries right here, right now, in the day-to-day humdrum of life. These students have been faithful with what God has given them, what would it look like for us to do the same?
Let’s be driven by the joy of serving our Master in what He has given us to do, longing for those sweet words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” (Matt 25:21)
– Angelica, EU Senior Staff
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