Taniela Vuli Levuka Qeleni is in his early 50s, and married with two children. He lives in Fiji, and has been working with Pacific Students for Christ (PSFC) since 2015, most recently as the general secretary. He was first introduced to PSFC 35 years ago when he attended university and was invited to a Christian Fellowship.
He shares, “I love the ministry because when I was young in my Christian life, I was introduced to something called ‘Inductive Bible study’. A team from the USA came over to Fiji, but this particular lady, Edim Lang, she came and taught us a bible study from the book of Luke”.
“Traditionally, the church doesn’t do that. But to be able to read the Bible correctly, we were able to find Jesus in that context. That drew my attention to this ministry. Since then I’ve been with PSFC. I also found my wife through the ministry of Pacific Students For Christ!”.
Training the Next Generation
The vision of PSFC is for students to reach students for Christ Jesus. Taniela shares, “Our key verse is Colossians 1:28, “He is the one we proclaim and we admonish to teach and bring everyone to maturity in Christ Jesus.” That’s what we do. Our focus is that we bring students to Christ Jesus, we run training programs for our students, firstly teaching them how to read the Bible. We have four questions and we go through passages. The students can ask questions and we zoom into the Bible and answer from the passage”.
“We also run leadership training, to train up these students to not only be Christ-like leaders, but also to model leadership and be influencers to the churches, family and community, even in the nation as a whole. There are people that went through this ministry at university that are now a Dean of a University, medical students, professors, ministers, and health ministers in the government that are there influencing the organisation or business for Jesus”.
There are 16 university campuses in Fiji with over 23,000 students attending the three largest. There are 12 nations represented at the universities, including people from the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Samoa and Tonga. PSFC works with the universities, and is reaching not only Fijians but the whole region with the hope of Jesus.
From Decline to Growth
In 2000, there was a change in leadership and focus which resulted in a loss of Bible teaching, and a move to prosperity teaching. Taniela shares, “They saw this decline in our ministry in terms of students not being grounded in the Word. Everything was haywire.”
In 2016, they were introduced to Langham Partnership, he says “Langham is a gift from God for us.” He continues, “The Langham Level One training helped us to see how to write a Bible talk, and how to see things formed within the passage. And for us as a staff, there was a big turnaround. It was a great tool and it was beneficial for us to read correctly and learn how we could present it.”
Taniela has done all four levels of Langham Training, and is now trained to lead the training. All the staff have completed Level One and it is now a prerequisite to complete all levels to join the PSFC ministry. He shares, “It’s a joy to see that through Langham these young staff are speaking from passage to passage and are now doing Langham Preaching Club. Every month there’s a text given, so all of us do our own Bible talks and then we critique. And for me it’s a blessing to see what Langham has been doing through us. It is reproducing speakers within our ministries that are speaking the Gospel in the right contexts.”
One of the biggest challenges for PSFC is students not understanding how to read the Bible and to re-engage them with the Word. Taniela shares, “Some of the problems that our university students bring when they come to the university is that they don’t know how to read the Bible for themselves because of the traditional or other teachings that they have been taught at church.”
“Early on under the other leadership, we only had approximately 10 to 20 students come to our campus groups because they said it’s boring. It’s not what they are taught at church. But now, because of Langham, students are coming. They’re able to see Jesus from the passage and from there apply to themselves now. So, that’s what Langham has done.”
Prayer Points
- Pray that more people at the universities will attend PSFC and find Christ Jesus.
- Thank God for Taniela and the ministry of PSFC and their passion for seeing young people come to know Jesus and learn how to read the Bible properly
- Thank God for Langham training that is equipping the staff of PSFC to learn how to read and teach the Bible truthfully and accurately