DURHAM UNIVERSITY UK, AUTUMN 1974
Before I went to Durham to study in the autumn of 1974, I can with hindsight see that God had started to speak to me. I was in search of answers. I was filled with the desire to find compassion for other people in my own heart. I said to myself, “When I get to Durham I’m going to attempt to find out if God is real or not.“
I got installed in Grey College, then a college for men, and swiftly made many friends. There were mathematicians there, which was one of the subjects I myself was studying, and people doing physics, chemistry, geology and computer science, to mention a few. There was also the odd student studying English as far as I can remember. But adjacent to Grey were many other colleges – St. Mary’s, Trevelyan, Van Mildert, Collingwood and St. Aidan’s – with students reading languages, ancient and modern, and a multiplicity of other subjects. Then there were more colleges closer to the Cathedral, Castle, Hatfield, St. John’s, St. Chad’s. We were all part of the University.
Since Durham is quite a small place, a student population of 3000 at that time, really dominated the town during term time. Between eight and nine in the morning, you would see students everywhere rushing to lectures, which were spread in localities all over town; some near the Castle and Cathedral area and some on the Science Site. It was a very bustling and busy place. By noon, everyone would go rushing back to their college to have lunch in the dining-halls, before going out again to afternoon lectures, or a tutorial, or to study in some library. Then back to College again for dinner between six and seven in the late afternoon before spending the evening studying in our rooms, or going to someone else’s room for coffee. This was the life I began in the autumn of 1974.
You were meeting new people in College all the time; sitting beside someone new in the dining-hall, or chatting in the queue to get there. Over meals there would be discussions on all kinds of subjects, from black holes to whether the universe was inside out or not, to religion and politics.
COMING TO CHRIST
I swiftly became aware of a breed of men which I had hitherto not known existed. They called themselves Christians. I thought I was a Christian, coming from Norway, a country with a Christian culture. but there was a difference between them and I. They actually believed and professed that Jesus was alive. He had risen from the dead. I had not until then thought that that was relevant, or indeed thought much about it at all. But I became very interested in what they had to say. I had not previously spoken with, or met people who spoke with such conviction.
There was at that time a strong Christian union at Durham. It numbered around 300. They were Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, some Pentecostals, and many Catholics.
During the last weekend of November 1974, the Christian Union had invited someone called Dick Lucas to come up from London to speak in a series of talks to the students. He was an Anglican priest, famous at that time for his lunchtime services in London for businessmen. I was invited to go along on the Saturday evening. There I heard the Gospel preached with conviction for the first time in my life; with the same conviction, that I had seen in my friends in college.
And I will never ever forget that he preached on Luke chapter 14,7-14:
“He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”” Luke 14:12-14
Such high thoughts I had never contemplated, nor met in any person I had ever talked to. My life could never be the same again. It seemed to hit on the nail what I had been searching for in my life before I came to Durham; that somewhere in the universe there was Goodness and Truth and Compassion.
On that Saturday evening, we were challenged to make a decision for Christ. I needed time to think. I could not find peace.
By Monday afternoon, the 2nd of December 1974, I understood that God was not going to physically manifest himself to me in my room to prove his existence. Instead I had to take a step of faith, or in the dark, as it felt like – I had to trust! That evening I prayed a simple prayer: I said God, if you are real, I want you to come into my life in Jesus name. I want to commit myself to Christ, if you’ll forgive my past life.
On Tuesday morning, on the way to breakfast, I told a Christian friend of my decision and of my prayer. Later that day at a lecture (not as previously stated on my page ‘Why I am a Christian’), I became aware of a Presence that had filled my life, and that had not previously been there – filling a void, which I up until that point had not been aware of. I felt there and then that I knew God, or that I was known by him.
THE BODY OF CHRIST
Overnight, as it seemed to me, I became famous within the Christian community throughout the University; probably because I had told my friend, and the word had spread, but also because I had been quite vocal about my newfound faith both in the College and at lectures.
Everywhere I went I was meeting people who knew my name, and who seemed to love me. I had become part of a living, vibrant fellowship of believers.
I went home to Norway that Christmas, and for a month I was without Christian fellowship. I had no one to talk to and no one to answer the questions I was getting. All I had was an ancient edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the articles that I read there on Christianity filled me with doubt.
I greatly looked forward to my return to Durham in January of 1975. I was going on a house party with the Christian Union, to Whitby in North Yorkshire, in early January, before term started proper. This basically meant that I was going away for the weekend with approximately 50 other Christians, to stay in a guesthouse, and to listen to Christian preaching and teaching and to have fellowship. It was just what I needed.
In one of the sessions, the speaker was preaching from Galatians chapter 2. I forget now the message, but what I cannot ever forget was that he at some point proclaimed: “You have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer you who live, but Christ lives in you!” Gal. 2,20.
It is difficult to know exactly what went on inside me when I heard those words. But something snapped, and I was suddenly giddy, and drunk with joy – a kind of ‘out of body experience’ as it felt like then – though it was not that by any means – I was VERY MUCH AWAKE, ALIVE AND WELL! Looking back, I think this must have been my first experience of being filled with the Spirit. From then on the Bible came alive to me in a new way. Since then of course, I have needed to be filled with the Spirit many times; by faith – and without necessarily such manifestations. But I have come to believe this was my first introduction.
The College and University Christian fellowship became my first Christian home. It was my first experience of what it means to belong to the body of Christ. For this was the body of Christ at Durham University. There I was taught and tutored by older brothers and sisters in the faith; those who were in Christ before me. They were clever people, with good answers to questions that new Christians tend to ask. I say brothers and sisters, because that is what they were in Christ. We were and are a family.
They were my first examples of what it means to follow Christ. I learnt to pray, and to study the Bible; to go to prayer meetings and Bible studies – I learned many Christian songs. We taught each other, we shared our faith. We organised evangelistic events, and witnessed to our non-Christian friends. We did good works in the community. We grew together! We did this as a student fellowship; all the while belonging to various churches in Durham, with their parallel agendas.
I have shared this story with you, because it marks the beginning of my life in Christ. But that is not the only reason. Church and church politics can be a very complicated matter. I believe that the experiences I have shared, if you like in the time of my Christian innocency, were pretty near the centre of what church should be all about; the sharing of a common life in Christ, and working together in the Kingdom of God – and I have to say – though from many different Christian backgrounds – yet ONE in Christ!
Having shared this with you, it is important for me to say that God deals with his children on an individual basis. For this reason it is a fruitless exercise to compare oneself with other people. God doesn’t do duplets, everyone will have a unique story to tell. God deals with us in a way that is suited to our personality and who we are. We should not seek the experience, but the Lord. If experiences come, they come, but his plan is that we should learn to walk – not by them – but by faith! Those who open their lives to God are nevertheless bound to find that the Spirit of God will impact their emotional lives in different ways. And we are assured of his Presence no matter what we go through! Mt. 28,20.
Next time we will look at the body of Christ in Scripture!😀👍
The Greek word for fellowship is κοινωνία/koinōnia!