It was a privilege to speak at four packed Carols Services on Sunday 11th Dec at Highfield Church. As 550 people filed out of the first service through one door, another 550 entered through a different door for the second! It was moving to see about 40 people standing at the back of the 8.00pm. CU President Tom Heasman interrupted the service to ask people to “budge up” to create space for these folks to get seats. By the time I started the talk, we also had people sitting on the floor. So it would seem that Christianity is alive and well in the UK!

I think there are a number of factors that have made this event such a success. Firstly the CU have a great working relationship with Highfield Church, whose Vicar, Graham Archer, said that when they replaced their pews with comfy seats recently, they deliberately chose seats which would be easy to ‘budge up’ on for the student carols! So that really is a local church partnering with a CU for the sake of helping as many people as possible hear the gospel!

Also it’s a great example of students putting on a high quality event, with a superb choir, orchestra and band. The whole thing was brilliantly well organised by Craig Hancock and Emma Harper, who did an amazing job.

The percentage of people who went next door into the church hall for mince pies and mulled wine was amazing. Also please note the mince pies were home made by the CU! To make enough mince pies for 2,500 students is a huge task! Craig told me that they had given out 7,000 flyers for the event, which has now run for 13 years at Highfield Church, so it was a delight to be invited into such a credible event, which so many people had worked so hard to create. By having services at 4.30pm, 6.00pm, 8.00pm and 9.30pm they provided options, and of course hundreds of people heard the gospel.

So a massive well done to Tom Heasman, Tom Stansfield and the very strong CU exec who are a joy to work with. I’ll be heading back in February for their “This is Love” events week.

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