Each year, the student committee for each faculty within the EU (together with their staff worker/s) will take time to prayerfully plan for the year ahead. It was a blessing and privilege to spend two days away in the upper Blue Mountains with the Design student faculty leaders to plan for 2024!

We used the time to review the three objects of the EU, and consider how they could be best implemented in our faculty. We reviewed;

Object 1: How the 3000 students studying in the department of Architecture, Design and Planning might come to know Jesus as their personal Lord and Saviour. We prayed and considered how we might particularly encourage Designers to read the gospel of John with their friends. We also talked about ways to show the love of Jesus to stressed out Design students!

Object 2: How we can encourage students in their faith and witness and encourage them to submit every aspect of their lives to the Lordship of Jesus. This included conversations about what it looks like, and some of the challenges associated with submitting an Architecture or Interaction Design degree to Jesus’ Lordship, and a decision to start up prayer triplets in 2024 to promote discipleship and prayer amongst the Design students.

Object 3: Making Design students aware of the nature, needs and challenge of Christian service both at home and abroad. It was helpful to brainstorm barriers, opportunities and questions that Design students hold about the future and ways we can encourage broader thinking about service in God’s kingdom.

We also spent some time praying for the individuals in Design, sharing ideas about particularly opportunities, strengths and weaknesses that exist in the current Design student culture, and prepared both a calendar for the year ahead, and a ‘Good to Go’ document to help us pray and stay accountable for our plans for 2024.

It was a blessing to see God’s glorious creation (at Hargraves Lookout), enjoy meals and time together, and be reminded from God’s word that we are called to love one another deeply, from the heart (1 Peter 1), and that God has showed His love among us by sending His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him (1 John 4).

Please pray that EUDesign might be a community marked by the love of Christ, that we would be welcoming and encouraging to the new first year students that we pray will join our community this year, and that we might grow to become in every respect the mature body of Christ (Eph 4: 15).