173 people who told us they are not part of any church nor part of the Christian Union prayed the salvation response prayer when I spoke at the Liverpool Cathedral Students Carol Service tonight. And an additional 39 who also told us they are not part of church or CU didn’t pray the prayer but did say that they wanted to discover more. So it was a hugely encouraging night for Christians at Liverpool University, John Moores University, and Hope University, who had come together to put on the event. As I left the venue they were dividing up the 173 + 39 responses into three piles depending upon which university those responding had said they were from. Now the vast job of following up the initial response begins. And we will probably find a range from those who have been truly converted to those who are making only an initial response, and have yet to really count the cost of repentance. But all 173 gave the most positive response they could at this early stage, so in the words of Sir Winston Churchill, “we will allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing.” I would guess we had about 1000 people there. They had out about 900 chairs at the start and put about 100 down the front immediately in front of the excellent Liverpool University choir. I sat next to The Dean, The Very Reverend Dr Pete Wilcox, who said that a Cathedral of this size (the fifth largest in the world) could only have been built during the period after Queen Victoria’s death, but before the First World War. Those years when optimism reigned supreme. But it is certainly the most evangelical and evangelistic Cathedral I’ve been involved with in my short career of Cathedral Carol Service preaching. In this photo, I’m in the high pulpit in the distance – honest! Thank you to all of you who prayed for the event and to everyone who texted me before the service will all manner of encouragements.