Supporter Updates

What it’s like to speak at Public Meetings

by EU GradsFund

What would you want to say if you had the opportunity to address 300 university students at a public, Christian meeting this week?

Perhaps you’d like to address the increasingly prevalent anxiety of today’s young people, take the opportunity to cast a vision for participating in the kingdom of God, or simply show them the goodness of the gospel and exhort them to trust and follow Jesus.

Over three weeks, I presented three chapters of the Gospel of Luke at our Public Meetings. I felt the weight of the task on multiple fronts. For better or worse, I had chosen to preach on a whole chapter at a time. This approach would be unusual in a church setting where one chapter of Luke’s Gospel typically provides material for four different sermons!

We want our talks at EU Public Meetings to be substantial but accessible. We aim for 30 to 35-minute engaging talks that push students to go deep in their exegetical and theological understanding of biblical texts and apply biblical truths to their lives. At the same time, being public to outsiders and friends brought by EUers, these talks must be written with an eye to the newcomer and be accessible to non-Christians and international students. (We do have a contextualised ministry, Come Home Dinner, for international students, but some of our international students like to join our Public Meetings as well).

Turning up and giving the talks takes up a surprising number of hours. The EU currently holds four Public Meetings per week: one each on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 12 pm to 1 pm at the Camperdown/Darlington campus, and one on Thursday from 2 pm to 3 pm at the Conservatorium of Sydney. Turning up to preach usually means coming early to a meeting and staying for at least part of the lunch time after. On Thursdays, it also means travelling to the Conservatorium campus and maybe back again.

So, taking on the privilege of preparing and delivering talks at Public Meetings over multiple weeks has a cost for a staff worker with other responsibilities. Taking on this privilege carries an opportunity cost for other tasks. In my case, it meant not having some of the one-to-one meetings I would ideally like earlier in the semester, falling behind somewhat on personal admin such as emails (and supporter newsletters), and some longer work hours than usual. Now that I have finished this short series of talks, I am glad to have a little space to catch up on other things.

Nevertheless, bringing the word of God to bear on students’ lives remains a huge privilege. The clearest points of feedback for the preacher are the moments of laughter when students encounter a surprising framing of a point in Gen Z slang, a meme, or a funny personal story. But the most profound moments are often unseen and unnoticed. They are the silent moments of personal conviction, of understanding a biblical implication in a new light, or catching a vision for kingdom living that happens within the hearts and minds of the hearers when there isn’t necessarily an obvious response that can be observed. Yet by sitting under the word, students are spiritually maturing by the grace of God.

As for the chapters of Luke that I taught, I had the opportunity to speak to a number of key issues of particular relevance for today’s students. From Luke 6, we considered how Jesus’s view of status turned the world’s view upside down, humbling those who are successful in the world’s eyes (riches, comfort, pleasure, reputation) while giving dignity to those who have no success in worldly terms. From Luke 7, we saw how Jesus was bringing about the new creation prophesied by Isaiah, giving us a vision for a compassionate, hope-filled outlook toward the world that was willing to cross cultural and national boundaries to reach the lost. And from Luke 8, we considered ways in which we all might display spiritual resistance to Jesus through our anxieties and fears, but were reminded that with Jesus we can trust that all things are in his hands.

The message of Jesus is unchanging, and yet it is applicable to every generation, because it is God’s powerful word. Pray for all those who speak at Public Meetings, and pray that many more students would come each week under God’s word and be inwardly transformed by it.

– Brian Leung, EU Senior Staff

Watch or listen to EU Public Meetings on the sydneyunieu YouTube channel or podcast!

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