A Sunny Update

By Dustyn McLaren

UniSc O-Week 2025 is coming! Starts Feb 17!

It’s exciting to be preparing to get back to Uni ministry for 2025. Who but God knows what lies ahead and whose path he will bring us across!

Dustyn and his daughter, Laylah, will be working together this year. Photo: supplied.

Please be in prayer for us as we prepare those who are joining us for Orientation Week. Pray for Adrien, Hayden, Callan, Ollie, Laylah and others who God may yet bring to the team. So cool to have my daughter joining me at campus this year!!

O-week is a special opportunity as new students are particularly searching for where they fit in, how they will be involved at uni and who will talk to them. Many are looking for conversations but are afraid to start them. Others just can’t wait to make new friends. Pray God will guide our steps and lead us with wisdom to have inspiring conversations that will lead people to spend time with us, be keen to open the Bible together and eventuate in believers and disciples of Jesus who join us in labouring in the harvest.

Continue to pray for pre-believers in whom we are investing, including Michael, Matt, Simon and others.

High School Opportunities!

I am looking forward to sharing the Bridge Illustration as an elective for the teachers at a local Christian school during Personal Development week. The aim is to equip them with an accessible, clear and visual way to easily share the gospel. I am praying this may be personally reclarifying to those who choose this elective and inspire them to share it with others in their lives, but particularly with the students they teach. The school has also provided other opportunities to invest in the lives of students and God has provided some of their graduates to join us in Uni ministry.

Many Other Things!

I am thankful for God’s blessings from 2024 including the Asia Pacific Emerging Leaders (APEL) conference.

Nathanael and I have been praying for Josh for a long time and he surrendered to the Lord in October. Pray for his new mentor as Nathanael moves to Sydney to study at SMBC this year.

Over the Christmas break I had the unusual opportunity to co-host Gympie City’s ‘Christmas in the Park’ community carols. Not my normal thing to be fully suited-up and on-stage in front of more than a thousand people. It was great to give Jesus glory in front of so many.

Dustyn labours in the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, and is supported by his wife, Hannah, and their three lovely daughters. To find out more about their ministry, visit: https://navigators.org.au/staff/mclarendh/

Called to Follow the Fruit

By Tim Mapperson, Melbourne Labouring Community

It was mid-June. Stepping out into the cold winter night, we closed the door for the last time. We had been meeting at this Community Centre in Carlton for many years as a campus ministry. Tonight was to be our final night. This season was coming to an end. (more…)

Next Door to Everywhere … in Brisbane!

By Luke Midena, National Leadership Team

The National Leadership Team met with the National Council on the first weekend of April to hear from God’s Word, pray, study Job, and plan and discuss this year’s priorities. Luke gives us a glimpse into what’s happening in one of our communities – Brisbane (and Queensland, for that matter) usually “flies under the radar” and we don’t often hear about what’s going on up there. But, the Lord continues to work in people’s hearts, whether we see it or not. He is prompting established and new generations to reach out in cities, universities, churches, local communities, all the way up to remote regional areas. (more…)

God-talk, the Gospel and the Pub

By Luke Midena, first published in Compass Winter edition 2020

Friday afternoons at the ANU campus are a highlight of every week – I get to meet with a group of believing and unbelieving students at a pub, to discuss life’s big questions around meaning, suffering, belief, freedom and morality. (more…)