Our Vision

BUCU is a Missionary Community, and as a CU we are:

"United and Rooted in the Gospel to Encourage and Equip one another to Live and Speak for Jesus Christ"

Why we exist

We believe that as students at Bristol University we are in a unique position to share the good news of Jesus Christ with other students and are therefore committed to evangelism as Christ's ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20) so that every student can have at least one opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel.

The good news of the Christian faith is that although as humans we fail to meet God's perfect standards and deserve his righteous punishment, God sent his own son Jesus Christ. Jesus became a man and lived a perfect life before he was crucified. Three days later he rose from the dead and later ascended into heaven to reign at God's right hand. Through this event of God's loving mercy, Jesus was punished for our sins, so that we might be forgiven for all our sin and accepted by God as perfect and blameless in his sight (1 Peter 3:1) and are adopted into his family as most loved sons and daughters.

CU:Central meetings and Hall CUs exist for us to encourage to each other in living and speaking for Jesus Christ, whilst at University. We believe in one church and the importance of students' involvement in church in order to be built up and encouraged as part of the body of Christ. As we are not a church, we do all we can to encourage students to get stuck into a local church in Bristol (We have a lot of good ones - which we will show you on our Church Search).

We therefore, do not exist to do the work of the church, but to be the missionary arm of the church on campus, where the church can't run events, and believe this is most effective by coming together and uniting as one student witness to Christ.

Our Beliefs

As a Christian Union (CU) we are committed to the evangelical basis of faith of the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) outlined below. We stand for these truths and want to make them known. We believe them, strive to live by them and so want all our activities to be consistent with them. We do this by asking all speakers to assent to this brief statement when accepting an invitation to a CU event. This is not an exhaustive statement of Beliefs and we realise that some Christians may not fully agree, but for ourselves, these are the central truths of the Christian faith as we discern them in the Bible:

1. The God Head - There is one God in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
2. God is Sovereign - God is sovereign in creation, revelation, redemption and final judgement.
3. The Scriptures - The Bible, as originally given, is the inspired and infallible Word of God. It is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour.
4. Man's Fall - Since the fall, the whole of humankind is sinful and guilty, so that everyone is subject to God's wrath and condemnation.
5. Jesus our Lord - The Lord Jesus Christ, God's incarnate Son, is fully God; he was born of a virgin; his humanity is real and sinless; he died on the cross, was raised bodily from death and is now reigning over heaven and earth.
6. Jesus our Redeemer - Sinful human beings are redeemed from the guilt, penalty and power of sin only through the sacrificial death once and for all time of their representative and substitute, Jesus Christ, the only mediator between them and God.
7. Salvation - Those who believe in Christ are pardoned all their sins and accepted in God's sight only because of the righteousness of Christ credited to them; this justification is God's act of undeserved mercy, received solely by trust in him and not by their own efforts.
8. The Holy Spirit - The Holy Spirit alone makes the work of Christ effective to individual sinners, enabling them to turn to God from their sin and to trust in Jesus Christ.
9. The Holy Spirit - The Holy Spirit lives in all those he has regenerated. He makes them increasingly Christlike in character and behaviour and gives them power for their witness in the world.
10. The Church - The one holy universal church is the Body of Christ, to which all true believers belong.
11. The Second Coming - The Lord Jesus Christ will return in person, to judge everyone, to execute God's just condemnation on those who have not repented and to receive the redeemed to eternal glory.

Bristol CU statement on Women Speakers

Bristol University Christian Union (BUCU) deplores the recent exaggerations and misrepresentations in some parts of the media of its position on women's ministry in the church. It is well known that Christian churches differ on this question. BUCU is not a church, but a student society, so it has never had a formal policy on women's ministry. In recent months, the Executive Committee have been exploring ways in which BUCU can best accommodate members with divergent and strongly held convictions, while expressing our unity as Christian believers. In line with our basic position throughout that process, which has not been widely publicised, the Executive Committee now wish to make clear that we will extend speaker invitations to both women and men, to all BUCU events, without exception. BUCU is utterly committed to reflecting the core biblical truth of the fundamental equality of women and men.

BUCU Executive Committee 05/12/12

See also: http://www.uccf.org.uk/student/news/uccf-statement-on-women-speaking-in-christian-unions.htm