The Lion is on the move!

I have had the tremendous privilege of seeing God work in colleges and sixth forms up and down the UK for the last 17 years. In all my time with Festive, I have never been as encouraged as now.

There is talk at the moment of a ‘quiet revival’. I heard another organisation recently using the term ‘soft awakening’…

Just yesterday at my church – we had three baptisms. One lad absolutely sums up the kind of thing that seems to be happening. His testimony? He’d tried everything else, made messy and bad life choices and was feeling empty and in a bit of a pit. He explained how he had been trying to research about Christianity online for the last couple of years and was hungry to find out more about Jesus, so when two of our ‘door knocking’ team arrived at his door (they were inviting our community to a seekers course that was just about to run!) he didn’t just want to wait for the course – he was ready to meet with our vicar, thrash through all his questions and go through the beauty of the Good News. About a week after that knock on his door, he’d given his life to Jesus. Three weeks later and he’s standing in a baptistry pool, radiating with the forgiveness, joy and hope that only Jesus can bring.

And at Festive?

We’ve had more believing students sign up to our network this year than we’ve ever had. We are hearing of new CUs started and reports of 40 or 50 students coming within the first few weeks. We are receiving lots of emails asking for prayer as unchurched mates are coming along with their Christian friends to church or youth group – accompanied with some wonderful requests asking us to pray for close friends who’ve just come to trust in Jesus!

We are hearing prayer request after prayer request for Christian students in tough places (because, don’t get me wrong – the terrain is still difficult!) Prayer requests for courage, boldness, integrity and for God to use them to point peers to Jesus despite their fears.

As we looked ahead at the potential for gospel outreach in Further Education this Christmas, the thought that came to my mind (with my ‘resources’ hat on) was “Go big or go home!”

Providing CUs with bulk orders

This is why we have launched a larger-scale sponsored project for Christmas 2025. We’ll be making available 1000 copies of “Is Christmas Unbelievable?” by Rebecca McLaughlin, and 1000 copies of a brand new Christmas edition of Luke’s Gospel from Hope!

Our prayer is that through this initiative, 2000 young people will hear Good News of great joy!

Christian Unions in colleges and sixth forms up and down the country can place orders for 50, 100, 150 or 200 of either (or both!) book to use in their mission events this Christmas.

Some CUs have already sought permission to set up a ‘hot chocolate’ station for the last week of college and plan to give away wrapped up Luke’s gospels to everyone along with a free hot chocolate as a gift from the CU. Some are planning Christmas quiz events, carol services and Christmas stalls…they’ll be able to order what they need from these two books and give them as gifts to everyone who comes along to their Christmas events.

With a larger network of believing students than we’ve ever had, and an increasingly ‘more open’ spiritual hunger among the younger generations than certainly we’ve seen in my time with Festive – it is an encouraging, exciting season.

Get involved!

Please join us by pausing now and praying that students will be filled with creativity and courage and that many, many seeds are sown among this age group this Christmas.

If you would like to give towards our sponsored Christmas 2025 gospel project - you can do so here.

If you’re a student planning a Christmas event where you study, please get in touch so we can pray for you! You can get your free bundles of the outreach books here.