Overseas Christian Fellowship Australia
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The Overseas Christian Fellowship Australia (OCF Australia) is a parachurch Christian organization which ministers to overseas students studying in Australian universities and colleges of higher education. OCF Australia is inter-denominational and evangelical in its doctrinal stand. Historically, members of OCF mostly consists of students from South East/East Asian countries, such as Brunei, Canada, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea, as these form the bulk of overseas student population in Australia since the 1950s. OCF also ministers to students from other countries, most notably those from island nations near Australia, such as Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Tonga. In recent years, students from mainland China have gained prominence, reflecting the influx of mainland Chinese students.
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[edit] History
In the 1950s, there began an influx of Asian students into the capital cities of Australia. Christian overseas students were meeting independently almost unknown to one another in a few cities, starting with Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne.
OCF Sydney took the initiative of inviting other Christian overseas students in Melbourne and Adelaide to their Easter Camp held in 1958. That meeting provided great encouragement to the ministries and that friendship paved the way for the inauguration of OCF (Australia) the following year. OCF Melbourne was officially formed immediately after the Sydney camp, and OCF Brisbane followed suit a few months later.
It was decided that meeting together annually was a profitable activity that would mutually encourage one another. OCF Melbourne volunteered to take responsibility of organising a conference the following January and during the Convention held at Cowes, Victoria, the body known was Overseas Christian Fellowship (Australia) officially came into being after much prayer and discussion.
With this, overseas university students at the Cowes Convention laid the foundation for OCF Australia, and gave it the vision and aims upon which all future OCF chapters (called "centres") based their activities. They were joined by Christians in Perth, Western Australia in the following year and by 2005 had covered six states and one territory, spanning some 24 centres [1].
Currently OCF Australia's official website is located at [1].
[edit] Vision
The vision of OCF (Australia), as set out in the OCF Handbook is,
To reach out to all overseas students in Australia,
build them up to be Christ's disciples,
and send them back to their home countries as disciple-makers (OCF Handbook 2005)
While the gist of OCF's work centres on reaching the existing university campuses across Australia, the fulfilment of the vision can only be achieved when we godly Christian men and women rise up in their respective countries as disciples of Christ, challenging and building others up to be disciples and reaching to previously unreached groups across the world.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ (OCF Handbook 2005)
[edit] References
- Overseas Christian Fellowship (Australia) (2005). Overseas Christian Fellowship Handbook, 7.
