Return of Campus Breakout

Following the hiatus over the Christmas period, Campus Breakout is back with a bang this coming Wednesday.

We’re so excited for what the Lord wants to do over the next term, and think our times on Wednesday afternoons are going to be a really important part of that.

Here’s the schedule for this term:

Note well! The two Friday Night Treasure Hunts.
We’re going to be running a training session with the students from Christ Central on these Fridays, before heading out on a Treasure Hunt…it would be great if you could join us for either part!

Student Development Programme (SDP)

…coming very soon!!

Read on for an essential update about SDP.

 

Hopefully you’ve heard about SDP. It’s our student-specific training track designed to get us all on the same page, both in terms of the fundamentals of our faith and of our identity as God’s kids, as well as the how and why of their outworking in our day-to-day lives as students in Manchester. It’s all part of readying ourselves for what God wants to do in the universities of our great city and beyond!

A quick glance over your copy of this term’s diary dates should reveal that tonight is scheduled to be the opening night of SDP. However, this is no longer the case. We’re so excited about SDP, which is the main reason why we actually won’t be starting it right away. The nature of this time of year means that both us and most of you guys are a little rushed off our collective feet with all manner of uni/work/social/church/other engagement. So, in order to make SDP as good as we want it to be, and to make it something that is as accessible to as many people as possible, we’re pushing back the start date til nearer the end of November – November 23rd to be precise. Make sure you put it in your diaries!

Catch-up

Hello again from the Vinelife Student Blog! Sorry it’s been a quiet few weeks on here recently – hopefully you’ve all been enjoying scouring through the backlog of articles and recommendations. If you haven’t, you really should – there’s some great stuff to access.

We’ve had a really exciting start to the term student-wise. Campus Breakouts (every Wednesday, 2pm) have been a lot of fun. Just last week we went out and did “Buckets of Love”, where we simply shared encouraging words from God with people, and the Lord was up to some cool stuff. Even before we went out, a guy approached us in KroBar and we ended up chatting with him for ages; encouraging him in his current struggles, praying for him, and sharing God’s truth about his life with him. It was awesome to see just how much the Holy Spirit was obviously impacting him – and especially awesome considering he found us… it’s a lot easier that way! Then when we out and about, we saw a number of people get healed including one guy whose knee got completely better. Awesome.

We had our Student Alpha Launch last week as well – Week One, “Who is Jesus?” is happening this week at 7.30pm in Happiness Café. It’s not too late to invite your friends, so get on that!

Finally, RSS (Reach Saturday Studies) started back with a bang this past weekend. RSS is our fortnightly time to get together and delve deeper into God’s word. It’s led by Chris Foster, a PhD student from Nazarene Theological College, and is just generally fantastic. Every other Saturday (next one is 30th October), 10am, Manchester Academy. Well worth a couple of hours of your time!

In the mean time, I’m just about to release something very exciting into cyberspace: Staff Intern Jess Felstead’s first post on the Student Blog. Stay tuned, it’ll be here this afternoon!

Welcome Week Update – Part Two

Everybody has to read this.

Yesterday was ‘Buckets of Love’. We didn’t really know what was going to happen, just a case of seeing what God was up to really. So, having spent about an hour in Starbucks writing loads of encouraging words, scriptures and prophecies, we hit the streets if Fallowfield to go give them out. Most people just took them without saying anything, but the ones who did were visibly blessed and encouraged, which is always a good thing. There was one particular guy we got to chat to about forgiveness and faith and stuff. He was well up for us praying for him, and as we did I started shaking – a new experience for me. We totally should have and chatted longer about what was going on with him, a lesson for next time!

On to Treasure Hunting… There’s loads of stories to put up but I’ll just do a few – hopefully we’ll do a bumper edition with extra detail at some point soon. Suffice to say, God did lots of cool stuff!

First off, Vanessa bumped into a guy we met on Monday a couple of nights back who instantly recognised her and got chatting with her about we had been doing and about what it meant to be a child of God. The hunt for treasure never stops!!

Today… Our team had swelled to 14, including a few first-timers, and we had a bit of fun getting filled with the spirit next to this lady on a bench. The most exciting story was from Golibe’s team. I can’t remember the specifics (will update when I get testimonies sent in) but basically they got chatting to this guy on crutches and his friend. The pain was in his hip and he described it as a ’10′ on the pain scale. After praying a couple if times it was completely healed! Golibé & steve shared some words with the guy, one of which was about it being a ‘new day’. Funnily enough he’d woken up that day and said to himself that he wanted a fresh start. Simon and Iona then came over to join them and having no knowledge of what was going on, Iona shared this word with the guy…’fresh start’. Amazing. God’s so funny!!

As you can imagine the guy was blown away and, aside from being unsure of what to do with his now redundant crutch, was well up for coming along to church. Praise God!

Finally, one of my clues was ‘camouflage’ so we stopped to chat to the guys on the paintball stand outside the SU. It turned out that one of the guys suffered from back spasms and well up for me praying for him (I didn’t even notice that ‘back pain’ was one of my clues!). There was no pain at that moment so he couldn’t tell if he’d been healed, but he was dead encouraged and the word I had for him about his friends seemed to really hit home.

Like I said, there were loads of other stories like that from all the teams, but hopefully that’s enough to get a flavour of what God’s been up to! Exciting times!! This is just the tip of the iceberg, we’re hungry for so much more!

Keep praying and join us tomorrow from 10am for 60 Minutes, flyering, and who else knows what God has in store for us!

Welcome Week Update – Part One

And we’re off! We had the first reach of term this past Sunday and our Campus Breakout kicked off with a bang yesterday.

A group of us gathered to pray in the morning, wandering around the campus releasing God’s presence and making declarations against strongholds of the enemy. It was a great time, and you can join us as we do so again on Thursday and Friday of this week (10am, UMSU steps).

We also went out Treasure Hunting in the afternoon and had an absolute blast! What was particularly great was being joined by people from 2 or 3 different churches – so good to stand side-by-side doing God’s work. Anyway, lots of fun stuff happened out on the hunt – we chatted to loads of people, prayed and prophesied over most of them, saw God bring some healing and just generally shared the love and joy of Jesus wherever we went. We prophesied over a man dressed as a cow, chatted with a lepracaun and even asked God to give one guy a free bus pass – fresher’s week is crazy!!

My personal favourite encounter was with one particular guy called Will. He and his mate was dressed in ‘horrow show’ clothes and make-up, so I thought they’d be up for a chat! One of the first things Will said was that he didn’t believe God had a plan for his life, and that sometimes he did believe n God but that the many negative experiences in his life had made him doubt. We chatted a bit more and it turned out he suffered from a number of different pains and conditions – a couple of which were clues on our maps (‘neck’ and ‘shoulder’ pain). He was happy to let us pray for him, and after two or three little prayers he said that his neck/shoulders did feel better. Vanessa then gave him a word of encouragement about how God sees him, prompting the response: “are you a medium?”!! You could totally tell that he’s had some sort of encounter. The great thing was, when we met back up to debreif it turned out that another team had met him as well and he’d shared how he’d be encouraged. I love it! There were lots of other cool stories too, ask me about them! Or better still, come out with us on Thursday!

Before then however, you can get involved with ‘Buckets of Love‘ – tomorrow, 11am, Fallowfield Starbucks. We’re going to fill a load of buckets full of prophetic words, scriptures, generally encouraging words that God wants to say over people and then just hit the streets and share. It’s going to be so much, and I’m sure God will set up lots of cool encounters. Make sure you come along!!

All the details of our Welcome Week plans are on our facebook page.

Excellent. Keep praying and keep sharing Jesus with people whenever you get the chance – it’s gonna change the world!

P.S. – If you were there on Sunday you’d have heard about how we teamed up with CCM:City on Sunday night – you can read a little thank you from Tim right here. Winner.

Welcome Week!

It’s nearly upon us! Freshers start arriving from this very day, so I’m sure you’re all dying to know what our plans are. Basically, we’re hitting it hard – lots of prayer, lots of getting out on the streets and ministering to people. Here’s an overall schedule…

Small details may change here and there, so make sure you RSVP to all the events on facebook and you can be keep abreast of everything. Exciting times!!

Happy Summer from Students at Vinelife!

Exams are all done and the summer now stretches before you. Well done, you made it!! (Unless you’re a midwifery student or an RNCMer; in which case, keep going – you’re amazing!)

Just to let you know, the student blog will be a hive of activity over the summer months so make sure you’re checking back regularly and staying involved.

There will, however, be a slight hiatus before said flurry as I’m going away for a few weeks. (Why not have a scour through the last year’s posts and see what gems you can uncover?) But in the mean time don’t forget that Vinelife continues every Sunday morning throughout the summer, and that we have ‘The Month of Fun‘ coming up in July.

Hasta luego!

“Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts. And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.” – 1 Corinthians 3:16-17

Apologetics in Manchester

Morning all. A good friend of mine, Josh Thorp, is putting on an apologetics event a week on Saturday. It’s going to be on how we view the world, and how this affects the people we want to reach for Christ. I’m sure it’ll be really useful.

Check it out if you’re interested!

Dynamic Dinner!

Friday May 14th. Go ahead and put it in your diary right now – the reach Dynamic Dinner is back.

There will be food.

There will be mystery.

There will be movement.

More details coming your way on Sunday…

Student Blog Does Holy Week

It’s Easter (a.k.a. Holy) week, hurrah! And we have a special treat for you. Every day until Sunday we’re going to be taking you through the story of Jesus’ last week before his crucifixion and resurrection. Joel and I will be looking at some passages involved and sharing some of our thoughts on them. It promises to be amazing.

Day 1 was actually yesterday, the triumphal entry. So we’re starting today with Day 2: Jesus clearing the temple. Come back in a few hours to read it! (We’re just about to head off for lunch you see…) And make sure you check back everyday after that for your fresh slice of Easter goodness. Our hope is that it will help you to spend some time each day focusing on God and getting a fresh perspective on a story that we could potentially have let ourselves become over-familiar with.

Enjoy