Beginnings

The Beginnings

Properly told, the story of the Sydney University Evangelical Union (SUEU) goes back to the Protestant Refomation in Europe in the 16th century, and indeed to the apostles of the early church and the Lord Jesus Christ himself. However, the SUEU is particularly a product of the great evangelical awakenings in Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th centuries, lead by such men as George Whitefield, the Wesley brothers and Jonathan Edwards, out of which were formed the first recognisably evangelical student societies. The Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU) was the largest and most important of these. Formed in 1877 out an informal student movement which began almost a century earlier under the work of Charles Simeon, the CICCU was instrumental in the formation of the British Intervarsity Fellowship (IVF). And it was this group which made the decisive move in 1930 when it sent to Australia an impressive and faithful young medical graduate called Howard Guinness (below).

Striking in appearance, forceful in personality, tireless in energy and adventurous in spirit, Guinness is rightly remembered as the catalyst behind the formation of the SUEU. Having landed in Sydney early in January, as the Travelling Secretary of the British IVF, he went directly to the Katoomba Convention, where he met forty or so members of the "Sydney University Bible League", envisioning them with reports of work amongst students in Great Britain and Canada, from where he had just come. This new "vision" led to a 3 day retreat for prayer and addresses immediately prior to Lent term, out of which was born - on the 31th March, 1930 - the SUEU, the first group of its kind on Australian soil.

Howard Guinness spoke at the first Public Meeting of the new SUEU on April 7th. His topic was "Men, Women and God", and the meeting was to function as a means of recruiting for the houseparty to be held the following weekend. The write up in the University magazine, The Sydney University Reader, summarised the message: "that the sex instinct provides temptations of no ordinary magnitude is a known fact, but powerful as are the temptations of the world and the flesh, there is yet a mightier power, that of the indwelling Christ". What is most remarkable about this meeting, apart from the fact that it shows the issues for students never change, is that it attracted an audience of 300 men, more than 10 times the membership of the group at the time. It was a spectacular start, but would the new group survive?

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