“And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at His doctrine: For He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” – Matt 7:28-29

What struck me the most with this verse, was the contrast drawn between the teaching of the scribes, and the teachings of Jesus – the difference being that Christ has AUTHORITY! The authority of the Kingdom of Heaven drove every word that came from His lips. And His very character, being the model through which these words were taught….what probably drove the scribes was pride, and intellect – head knowledge. But what Jesus specialised in, was getting to the HEART of the matter.
The scribes would be spurting out scriptures left, right and centre – they were up to their ears in scripture, but Jesus would trump it, because they remained on face value! – Jesus would say “No, you say it’s like this, but I’m telling you, it’s like THIS! Yes, do not murder, BUT if you hate your brother without cause, then you are guilty as charged”

Jesus acknowledged that murder itself was wrong, but it’s a hateful heart that drives a murderous one – and Jesus highlights the spiritual implications.

It’s the heart of Christ that we should be seeking in our lives and in our teaching/knowledge of scripture. Not just reciting scripture, not even just living by scripture – the scribes did that to a certain extent – applying everything at face value – but instead we should seek the HEART of scripture, or rather the heart of Christ on scripture. To simply know it, is not enough. Head knowledge will only get you through a pop-quiz. It’s the heart that matters. The heart behind the words and between the lines.

Jon Boustead is a cell leader in G2. More details here. He is studying for a masters at York University.

“Unashamedly messy”. I think that’s how I’d describe our first attempt at a church-wide Student Alpha. Turns out it’s a very different ball-game putting on an Alpha course in the city centre of York, advertised to all our church’s congregations and fed into by our four student cells bursting with Freshers.

We didn’t really have a plan you know. I mean, we had a team, we had a venue, the means to cook, some good speakers lined-up… but we had no idea what this would look like in practice; so we just hit the ground running. Let this immediately encourage you: out of a team of about fifteen, only four of us had ever actually done Student Alpha before. God doesn’t wait until we think we are good enough, experienced enough, planned enough. Sometimes he just says “Go for it and watch me take this further than you can imagine.”

Want to know what “further than you can imagine” looked like? Well, for starters we had a small group (that increasingly became a rather big group) of international students. This is new for G2. We consciously wanted to make ourselves far more accessible to International students when we set out our vision for this year, and God went the extra mile and brought them in, in droves. In a few weeks time we are having a joint baptism service with the local Chinese church, in which seven Chinese students are being baptised and counting.

Turns out, the gospel is still true, Jesus still saves, and God is still strength when we are weak.

Secondly, I can’t fail to mention “Homeless Alpha”. This was a bit of a curve ball to say the least. Basically every week, we ended up having a small group comprised of guys living on the streets. It became pretty standard practice for a student to walk into our venue accompanied by a homeless person they’d just met and invited in. Week by week our friends returned, joining in more and more until they were helping clear up, praying with the team,  reciting their poems to us and even leading a rendition of ‘Amazing Grace’ on our final week. There was nothing in the plan about catering for the homeless. There was nothing in the Leaders Training about welcoming the outcasts, the addicts and the unwashed. But I wouldn’t have wanted G2 Student Alpha any other way. We would have been the poorer without Jason, Adam, Jacko, Paul and Jo. And guests and team alike I believe will never look at a homeless person the same way again.

There are almost too many testimonies to tell you about to be honest; we saw a mouth ulcer healed when praying on the ‘What about suffering and does God heal today?’ week. We have a couple of guests who have come to know Jesus and have asked to be baptised and will be in a few weeks time. We nearly broke a very expensive projector when Luke Smith threw a Bible across the room in an over-enthusiastic giving out of the Word. And we’ve learnt.

Will we run another G2 Student Alpha this time next year? Yes. Have we learnt from our mistakes, our weaknesses and our times of faith and not by sight? Yes. Did God use our big vision and passions to share the gospel as effectively as possible to our generation, even though it seemed messy to those of us attempting to lead? Yes.

This goes bigger than us. Life is messy. Beautifully so. Take a risk. Don’t wait until you are perfect. Go for it, and let our perfect God do immeasurably more than you can imagine.