Relay Blog: June 2018

We’re wrapping up our 2017-18 series of Relay guest blogs with this end-of-year reflection from London Relay Worker Hatty Haines.

Here it is. The final Relay blog post for this year.

What a time it’s been! The Relay programme has certainly lived up to all the quirky tales I heard before I started:

‘It’s incredibly difficult to explain what Relay actually is!’

‘The year goes absurdly fast.’

‘Mission week season is nuts.’

‘The study programme is incredible.’

‘Working with students is as much blessing as it is battle.’

For some, Relay has been relaxing and nourishing compared to their demanding degrees:

This year has been a real time of rest and growth after a hectic final year at university. It was a privilege to spend time re-focussing my ambitions onto God and seeing him work in me in this new way of living.

Scotland Relay worker

For others, Relay has been the hardest thing they’ve ever had to do. It’s involved taking a step back from the CU roles they came to know and love, and a step into roles they’ve found challenging and uncomfortable.

For me, one of the hardest parts of Relay for me was moving from Leeds to London to work alongside students there. Community looks completely different in London universities, because the students live far and wide, so I found it hard to feel fully integrated in the CU.

The London CUs also tend to be on the smaller end of the spectrum. They’re based within a hugely diverse range of cultures and religions – things that make London the exciting city it is! But this makes the prospect of evangelism incredibly intimidating.

Whether Relay has been a breeze or a struggle, it has been a gift to every one of us. We have been brought into a closer relationship with God; knowing his character more deeply, and his purposes more fully.

I feel so blessed to have had a year out to just learn more about God’s love for me, my adoption as His child.

Central Relay worker

We ended the year with a week together, spending time in God’s Word and gearing up to step out into whatever’s next. We focussed on 1 Peter, thinking through what it looks like to:

‘Abstain from sinful desires’ and ‘Live such good lives among the pagans… that they may see your good deeds and glorify God’

1 Peter 2:11– 12

Some Relays are going into full time Christian work, others will be moving onto jobs in the ‘secular world’. I say this in quotation marks, because we were challenged to stop labelling work as ‘sacred’ or ‘secular’ based on where a person works, but rather on the attitude with which a person approaches their work. In smaller groups we prayed for one another that, wherever we find ourselves working in the future, we would be doing it for God’s glory, and therefore taking part in in sacred work for the rest of our lives!

We also spent time thinking about what the next ten years may hold. The average person in their twenties typically goes through nine accommodation changes, four job changes, pay change, relationship change and much more! These all hold challenges and temptations that we must not overlook – we have got to look out for the false promises of materialism and worldly success that are so pertinent and pernicious to wealthy westerners.

I come away from Relay grateful and amazed at how much God has changed me in just 10 months. I am hungry for more, and feel challenged to never settle for worldly ambitions, but to keep my eyes fixed on the eternal inheritance Jesus Christ won for me.

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.To him be the power for ever and ever.

1 Peter 5:10– 11

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