A Cambridge God Adventure* 35) Not a 'student church'...yet!

(*please skip if you have not been following this story). Back in the 60's when I became a Cambridge student and threw myself into so many new opportunities, one of them was to join a university society for Baptist students.  Based at St. A's it was called the Robert Hall Society (RHS), named after an illustrious former church minister.  I must be careful not to sidetrack myself because I could write at length about what it meant to belong to this amazingly varied group of students who had a major influence on my life in many ways.  As a student-run organization I learned many disciplines including prayer, preaching, leadership and serving on summer missions. Friendships made have lasted for a life-time.  Actually, seven of my immediate contemporaries in this group later became Baptist ministers.  Those three cram-packed years proved to be the most concentrated spiritually and intellectually stimulating experience of my life (though I have had some good years since).

Back in those days, when denominational strength was greater and churches commended students from their churches to the care of chaplains and student groups, there were nearly thirty societies like Robert Hall based in universities across the UK.  I guess there were at least fifty plus students in our group. However,  when I became minister and was officially appointed as Baptist chaplain to the University, nearly twenty years later, only a few students belonged to RHS. It was a shadow of its former self.  Indeed, I felt something of a fraud whenever I turned up as a member of the University Deans and Chaplains group.

Yet, and this was one of those extraordinary divine by-products, with people like Andrew the organist becoming a new student and others being baptized, the Robert Hall Society sprang back into life. Indeed, this self-organizing group began manifesting just the sort of spiritual dynamics I had gone through twenty years earlier.  In October the church prayer prayer book noted with thanksgiving that RHS membership had grown to 51 students.  Below the radar, I was truly amazed at all these gifted young people identifying with a Baptist society when there were so many other options.  This was truly a gift from God.