Ben Jackson is a Student Worker at King’s Church in Portsmouth. Each year his church receives a list of students who have signed up to the Student Linkup app* and are coming to study in Portsmouth. Here he tells the story of the ‘radical transformation’ of one of the students who appeared on this list.
I’m a Student Worker now but in my second year of uni I was out on the streets doing mission. We met a guy called Matt who was on a night out and chatted to him for over an hour. He came to church that Sunday and really seemed to enjoy it. We invited him back the next week and he didn’t get back to us. He became unresponsive to our messages and eventually we fell out of contact. It’s always quite gutting when that happens.
A couple of years later Matt’s name appeared on our Student Linkup list.
Download and Delete?
By chance Luke Smith (a Fusion staff member) had followed Matt on Twitter and so Matt had seen a link to the Student Linkup app. He’d downloaded it, but then deleted it because he felt stupid. But he had already signed up and sent his details to churches in Portsmouth.
Matt started coming to our student events. He got stuck in and really connected. He had been living an extreme life by student standards. He had been involved in bar fights and threatened at knife point. Throughout this time he felt a pull to come back to church. Around the same time he signed up to our app he had been to a festival. Afterwards he was telling a new workmate how drunk he had got. He workmate explained that he was a Christian and didn’t get drunk. He started telling Matt about faith and Matt gave his life to Jesus there and then.
The Matt of today is a really radical transformation from the guy we met a few years ago. And it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t downloaded the Student Linkup app.
Matt’s Story
‘I’ve found out so much more about myself, about God and about my relationship with him, whilst making new friends within church, going to small group (sometimes leading it), praying out loud and having the courage to speak up. I can now chat with non-Christian friends, feel confident about chatting about the bible and prayer, with them actually taking me seriously and realising that this is what I about. This is something I think in first year, when I first met Ben, would never have been imaginable… As I write this now looking back it makes me so excited about God’s plan for me with what he’s done so far, and what adventures there will be in the future, but this time on the right path with God on my side all the way.’
