What is CICCU all about?

CICCU is just a bunch of Christian students who have come together for a mission – to get the good news of Jesus Christ out to Cambridge University.  This might sound scary, but actually we simply want to be good friends to those we know in colleges, departments or in clubs and societies and then when opportunities come up we long to share the gospel with them.  As a CU, we passionately believe that the gospel message is powerful and that only by hearing the good news about Jesus can students around us come to know God and find eternal life.  So we are committed to going about mission by telling our friends the gospel message.

We want our friends (and in fact, everyone at Cambridge) to hear the gospel in a way that they can understand.  So what kind of things do we do?  We run Christianity Explored discussion groups in colleges, weekly Friday Lunchtime Talks answering some of the common questions our friends ask about the gospel, a big Carol Service, International Cafes, a week of talks called the Main Event every February, and then there are Garden Parties, Ceilidh evenings, Football Tournaments and much more.  And of course there are loads of events going on in colleges such as dinner parties, grill-a-Christian evenings, Frisbee tournaments, chocolate fondue nights…All these events give different ways in which we can bring friends to hear the gospel.

We know that sharing the gospel with fellow students is not the only way we can serve Jesus at university, but it is the primary task we have set ourselves because:

• we think we are uniquely placed, as students at Cambridge University, to do it. This is because being a student group allows us to operate within the colleges and faculties of Cambridge University, using the university’s resources - for example by using university rooms for events.
• we believe that being students gives us unique opportunities to share the gospel with friends. The scope for evangelism at university is phenomenal: those around us in college, in the faculty, in our sports teams, in bizarre Cambridge societies and on our staircases and corridors – most of them without true life, because they are without Jesus.

For these reasons, we’ve adopted a focus statement – a short tagline that sums up what we as a society are all about:

“CICCU exists to make Jesus Christ known to students in Cambridge.”

We are Christians from a wide range of churches and countries, who unite together around the gospel, for the purpose of sharing the gospel with fellow-students.  We believe unity has to be unity in the gospel because it was through the gospel that we became Christians in the first place.  So we have three core convictions about who we are as a team...

We are gospel-driven
The gospel (summarised by our doctrinal basis) shapes both our team life and mission.  The gospel is not only the basis of our unity, but also the foundation of our ministry, the content of our message and the fuel for our evangelism.

We are student-led
As with all other CUs across the country, CICCU is committed to student leadership as a principle.  As students we believe we really are best placed to reach other students for Christ. Also, being a student-only group is one reason why we do not aim to be a church, but rather we encourage each other to belong to a local church in Cambridge. For CICCU, this principle of student leadership means having an executive committee (“the exec”) who run CICCU day-to-day, and college representatives (“reps”) who run the college groups.

We are non-denominational
We are made up of Christians from diverse church backgrounds, both charismatic and conservative, committed to working together in gospel unity. We do not belong to one particular church or denomination; rather, we aim to bring together all gospel-hearted students who want to be part of our mission team. Unity in the gospel is a wonderful blessing, but it also means when differences do arise we have to remember to love one another and make sure that we are keeping the gospel as the most important thing.

Any mission team needs time to prepare, train, encourage and pray together and so that’s why in each college we meet on Wednesday evenings as a college group and why all the college groups meet together at CICCU Central on Saturday evenings.  At the heart of these team meetings is the Bible, because we want to refocus on God, to grow in our understanding of the gospel and to apply the Bible to being a Christian student at Cambridge. Further than that, we believe that team times are vital for us to be an effective mission team in the following ways:

Planning events
Because we are so passionate about sharing the gospel with our friends, we want to be really creative and imaginative about the events we put on – events where people can hear the gospel and ask their questions about it.  We spend lots of time in our team meetings talking about these events – from sharing ideas about them to sharing out the responsibilities of organising them.

Praying for friends
We know that we cannot win our friends for Jesus by our own efforts, but we need God’s Spirit to work in the lives of our friends as they hear God’s Word explained to them.  So in our team meetings we encourage each other to pray for our friends and for events we’re putting on.

Helping each other to live and speak for Jesus
We know that the gospel transforms lives and as our friends see the difference in the way we live we pray that they will be drawn to hear the gospel. But it’s really difficult to live these transformed lives by ourselves – having brothers and sisters helping us, looking out for us and encouraging us to keep going is vital.

Loving each other
The gospel transforms the way we relate to each other. Therefore, as a CU we aim to be a witnessing community.  We want our friends to see the power of the gospel as it transforms the way we love and serve one another. Hopefully, that will invite our friends to ask questions, giving us opportunities to talk about the thing that has brought us together from such differing backgrounds – the good news about Jesus Christ.

There are lots of ways to get involved in CICCU. The best way is simply to get on with the work of reaching your friends with the good news about Jesus Christ! We hope that CICCU provides plenty of resources to help you do this. Please explore this website to find out about some of those – in particular, check out the term diary, the events section and the college groups section. Here are a few other suggestions about ways you can get involved:

• Go along to your college group on a Wednesday night.
• Go along to CICCU Central on a Saturday night.
• Pray towards the work of CICCU (crucial!)
• Serve in one of the many necessary roles – drop one of the exec committee a line to find out how you can best do this.
• Give financially towards the work of CICCU – speak to Craig Summers, the treasurer, for more info.
• Pass on the vision of CICCU to others!

You may have more questions about what CU is and how it operates. Please do have a look at the “FAQs” section of this site, or, better still, drop one of the exec committee a line.