Our friends at LICC are committed to empowering Christians to make a difference for Christ in the workplace, as well as helping church leaders equip their church communities to do this. Tim, from LICC shares his thoughts towards uncertainty below.

Deep sea diving scares me. It’s too deep, and there’s too much sea involved for my liking. 

I’ve been told that deep sea divers returning to the ocean surface have to be extra careful: they must come up slowly and breathe out constantly. If they resurface too fast, they can suffer ‘decompression sickness’. The CO2 in their blood turns into bubbles that get trapped inside the body. The symptoms can be disastrous – paralysis or even death.

Now that the novelty of lockdown has begun to wear off, many of us are wondering what our new normal will be like. As we begin to surface, how can we protect ourselves from spiritual decompression sickness? How will we, and the students we love, healthily ‘resurface’ from this time?

It’s a particularly risky moment for those final year students whose summers and beyond are now shrouded in uncertainty. Grad schemes, job applications and first career steps all hang in the balance. Gone is their sense of forward motion, of progressing towards the person they imagined they would be six months from now. As David Linker put it so painfully in his recent article for The Week, “a life without forward momentum is to a considerable extent a life without purpose”.  

Those of us with a calling to inspire students for a life of mission need to make sure that prospective grads don’t lose hope in the face of the shambles they perceive. We need to make sure that they don’t lose sight of their purpose.

We need to pray against symptoms of spiritual paralysis – and those prayers are already being answered by the many student leaders who, with great creativity and empathy, are pushing back the malaise and reorienting students towards Jesus. Your hard work is making a real difference in real lives. Thank you.

"As we begin to surface, how can we protect ourselves from spiritual decompression sickness? How will we, and the students we love, healthily ‘resurface’ from this time?"

LICC would love to help where we can. Through June, we’re running a new webinar series: Routed LIVE. Our vision is to see graduating students make the transition to life as ‘professional adults’ with a conviction of God’s calling and deep trust in His purposes – spiritually alive and ready to make Jesus-shaped impact wherever they are.

Routed LIVE is adapted from the Routed resource produced by LICC and Fusion, and will address the specific moment we find ourselves in. The four-part series of hour-long sessions will be multimedia, interactive, and personalised. Plus, regular student groups can sign up to the webinars with their ministry leaders and work through the content together.

Why not sign up with your student group and help them get ready for life after uni?

Whatever the future holds, we have great expectations of a great God. And when students look back on this time, we pray that they might echo the words of Psalmist: 

‘He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters… he brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.’ (Psalm 18:16, 19)

Tim Yearsley, Programme Leader – Emerging Generations, LICC