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What is RUF and Why Should We Care?

On Monday the 29th, the RUF ministry from Virginia Tech will be at GCC at 7:00 PM for a dessert meeting. Reverend Andy Wood is our Reformed University Fellowship pastor at VT and is one of eight campus ministers that GCC supports through her giving to the Presbytery of the Blue Ridge. We directly support Reverend Shawn Slate at UVA in our annual budget. Those campuses include Christopher Newport, Lynchburg (area), William and Mary, UVA, VCU, VT, and Washington and Lee. For those of you who have an interest in Virginia Tech (students, parents of students, alumni, fans), I’d love to see you Monday night to meet Andy and hear about his ministry.

There are lots of different campus ministries out there. What makes RUF unique? It stands for “Reformed University Fellowship.” It is the official Presbyterian Church in America campus ministry. Personally, I am very thankful for men like Shawn Slate and Andy Wood and the work they are doing on our college campuses. RUF’s unique design for ministry means that it is very well-suited for the needs of students on today’s challenging campus environments.

RUF ministers are all ordained pastors in the PCA. This means they have been seminary trained in addition to their specialized training for campus ministry. The university climate is tougher than ever for the college student from a Christian home. The faith of our students is immediately assailed in class as well as in the social life of the university. How important it is to have well-trained, godly leaders to assist our college students through these struggles! Campus ministers need to be well-prepared to help students through the assaults on their beliefs that they will face. Given the right teaching and training, those assaults can be reversed and turned into opportunities for the gospel. The world makes no sense without God. RUF pastors can shepherd students to understand a biblical perspective of reality. Students learn to see the world the way God sees it, the way it actually is!

In some sense, the college campus reflects the brokenness of our time. Our kids are coming to college more broken than most of us parents realize. A grace-based and gospel-centered ministry gives the freedom our hurting students need. When so many of our students struggle with feelings of deep unworthiness, what a blessing it is to have ministers right there on campus to proclaim and explain the righteousness that is by faith in Christ alone. How urgent is it for someone to minister to students who can explain and live out our adoption by our Abba Father? RUF is steeped in the biblical view of our comprehensive need for God’s grace. This is a consistent teaching and ministry philosophy across the campuses. They teach that our relationship with God is dependent upon Jesus Christ’s performance for us, not on our performance for God. They help students learn to live out of their union with Jesus Christ, producing spiritual fruit from a relationship with Jesus.

College life is no easier for unbelievers, is it? How much tougher is college if you have no spiritual background and no faith? RUF is prepared to bring the gospel to those who have tried other alternatives and found the emptiness of life without God. Our RUF pastors are trained to handle the hard questions that tend to appear in academia concerning the existence of God and the veracity of the Bible. More importantly, they are prepared by God to do so with pastoral tenderness and kindness.

Lastly, RUF emphasizes connecting students with the local church body. RUF pastors are intimately involved with a local PCA church, and they encourage their students to connect with a local church as well. Why is this important? Because the discipleship that begins in the college setting will continue in a local church setting, or not at all. Too many of my friends from college did not continue their growth in the faith, at least in part because they did not learn the importance of ongoing connection to a thriving, biblical church. RUF is having an impact in preserving the fruit of campus evangelism and discipleship.

I am more convinced than ever the RUF’s model of theologically astute pastors, who are grace-based and gospel-centered, meets the crying need of the hour on the university campus. Whether it is our own students who are struggling with the assaults on their faith and their own deep brokenness, or unbelievers whose lives run dry the broken cisterns of sin, I believe this is the ministry model for the current college scene, as well as the model for the future.

Feel free to join us for dessert to learn more about RUF at Virginia Tech. If possible, please let me know you are attending by emailing me at dward@cvillegrace.org.

In Him,

Don

Don Ward

Senior Pastor

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