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By Steve Weatherbe
IT WAS a warm evening at Victoria’s Gyro Park,
the gentle end of one of the first truly spring-like days the provincial
capital has enjoyed. The beach was thronged with strolling families,
smooching couples and teenagers hanging out.
Warm, yes – but not quite warm enough for
total immersion in the still icy waters of Cadboro Bay.
Not unless you were one of five hardy young people from
the University of Victoria’s Sunago community, and its Campus Alpha
class – or Sunago’s even hardier young leader, David Funk.
Funk, after all, had to stay waist-deep in the ocean
while the five waded out to him one-by-one for their baptism –
as a hundred happy Sunago members and relatives cheered from dry land.
Among those baptized was Harrison Kwok of Whitehorse,
who later toldBC Christian News: “At first I didn’t want to tell my friends.
This was a big step for me. Even by the end of the Campus Alpha course, I
was pretty confused – and didn’t know what to believe. That was
when I started to pray – and slowly found I have faith in Jesus, and
believed in what he did.”
The baptism-cum-barbeque served as a fitting graduation
for Sunago’s first Campus Alpha class. Alpha is the wildly successful
short course in Christian doctrine started by English clergyman Charles
Marnham, and popularized by Nicky Gumbel, his successor at Holy Trinity
Church in London.
In 2008, more than 33,000 Alpha courses were presented
interdenominationally – always using tapes of Gumbel explaining the
basic truths of Christianity, always ending in discussion groups and always
beginning with a free meal.
The meal is crucial, chuckles Funk. “We
experimented with different promotions – but it is free food that
works with university students.”
But food is much more than the draw. “If you look
at what sharing a meal means scripturally, it’s pretty
significant.” It certainly makes students receptive to the video and
to the discussions.
Funk was plowing fertile ground here. The Campus Alpha
dinners were held at Emmanuel Baptist Church, which sits across the street
from the UVic campus – and which has for several years offered a
weekly free meal to several hundred students.
Funk notes with approval that Alpha does not end with
Gumbel’s video lessons, but uses them to spark discussion in small
groups. “It’s not up to group leaders to teach; their job is to
give everyone a chance to share their opinion,” an approach that
works especially well with university students.
“Most church models of instruction rely on a
talking head,” says Funk. “We saw more salvation in eight weeks
than in a year of campus ministry.”
One of those whom felt the impact of Campus Alpha was
Harrison Kwok. He went to the dinners, as he had earlier to Sunago, out of
curiosity. “My best friend from Whitehorse invited me. He had become
a Christian at university, was always happy and exuberant now, but had
given up partying and drinking – and I wanted to understand why. I
went to Campus Alpha as an atheist spy.”
Kwok found reasonable answers to many of his challenges
to Christianity, and he pursued his investigation with other Christians he
knew – by studying the Bible and by reading the works of writers such
as C.S. Lewis.
“In the end, I ran out of questions.”
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About 60 students attended the first Campus Alpha,
which was supported financially by Emmanuel Baptist, the Canadian Baptists
of Western Canada and Arbutus Christian Fellowship. On campus, Sunago
collaborated with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and the Navigators to
organize and recruit for the dinners.
The idea for Sunago was Funk’s. The son of the
pastor of Colwood Pentecostal Church, Al Funk, he had intended originally
to attend UVic for an arts degree – but found himself pulled to
Summit Pacific College in Abbotsford after a few semesters. Then, after two
and a half years at Summit, he found himself pulled back. But there was no
loss of faith, or even direction.
“I just wanted to get out of the Bible school
bubble. There wasn’t a lot of diversity. Nearly everyone there wants
to be in ministry. You feel separated from the entire world.”
Needing some courses which were available at UVic to
complete his degree, he returned to Victoria and asked the Pentecostal
chaplain, Caron Somers, how he could help.
Instead, says Funk, “she challenged me to seek
what God wanted me to do.”
When he looked into his heart, he realized that God had
indeed been speaking to him.
The result was that, in June 2005, and after completing
his final year at Summit, Funk and about 20 supporters from Colwood
Pentecostal ‘planted’ Sunago. “It was a soft
launch,” Funk admits. “There’s not a lot of students on
campus during the summer.”
With financial support and oversight from University
Christian Ministries, the group arranged for the weekly use of a shuttered
campus nightclub, Vertigo.
“We were very inclusive and interdenominational
from the first,” says Funk. “Students aren’t into
labels.”
But they are into independence. “They’re
away from their parents for the first time, and left the only church
they’ve ever known. Now they have an opportunity to make a decision
on their own. We try to help them make that decision.”
Sunago’s approach is to help students
“bring God back to the centre, as the redeemer of all things”
– including the occasional atheistic and anti-religious professors;
those campaigning, at the level of student politics, for abortion; and
those who campaign against abortion. “They all need Jesus,”
says Funk. “We encourage our members to be an influence on campus,
and in the workplace afterwards.”
The approach seems to work. With the original 20
supporters from Colwood no longer needed, Sunago draws 50 to 90 students
(depending on how imminent final exams are). And it appeared as if all of
them were there last month, for the baptism-barbecue.
May 2009
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