Uni’s over for another year. You may be looking forward to your holidays, and the prospect of next term may seem far a distant horizon. But for some CU members, now is the time to be praying and planning for one of the most crucial weeks in the CU calendar.

• Freshers’ week is when the CU can build the mission team.

This year, thousands of Christians will move from school up to your university, and the CU need to pick them up from day one. Every person who can join with you and the CU in its mission to reach the campus, multiplies the team and who it can reach. You and the CU can help ground new students in the gospel and stand with them shoulder to shoulder, so that they impact every corner of university life as they live and speak for Jesus.

• Freshers’ week is also a vital chance to make Christ known.

Everything is new for Freshers. Everything is to be experienced. Everyone wants to find where they fit. You may remember it well!

Most Freshers have never encountered Christ and need to hear Him proclaimed and see Him lived out. Many from nominally Christian backgrounds will be surprised to see the authentic Christian lives and real faith of their new peers. And those who are already Christians need to grasp from the outset the model of the CU as an outward-facing mission community, not a holy huddle.

So whatever you’re doing this summer, don’t stop praying for Freshers to join the mission team, for many to come to know Christ, and for you and your CU to be bold and clear in your life and witness.