STORY - "The Ceg with no Beer"

A keg and a 19-year-old male seem to go hand in hand, along with parties, good times and the odd wild adventure.

But for one group of Newcastle University students, the word ‘keg’ has nothing to do with a 15 gallon aluminum drum or a hazy morning after.

The Christian Engineering Group, or CEG as it is more affectionately known, gathers once a week to discuss bible readings. Afterwards, the group leaves satisfied, but without the dangerous headache caused by consuming a little too much of the amber fluid.

CEG member Tim Laidler, 20, said the group’s name may have been a “serendipitous” choice but fellow CEG member Adam Scriven, 19, said it had been used advantageously.

“One of our flyers was, ‘Can I offer you a beer Jesus?’” Adam said.

It seems a very clever take on proceedings when you consider the age of the target audience: young people, mostly engineering males, in their late teens and early twenties.

But was it the promise of a schooner that convinced Adam to join CEG, or was it something more?
“I was first approached in orientation week 2006,” Adam, who is set to finish his second year of Mechanical Engineering this year, said.

“I met someone and they introduced me to bible studies on campus.”

The former student of St Clare’s High School, Taree, joined from day one and each week for the last two years, in between a busy timetable of lectures and laboratories, he has managed to meet with about eight other engineers who share his passion.

“CEG fits nicely in between class A and B,” Adam said.

“Your mind is already active and you get to study the bible a lot deeper and a lot harder.”

But the CEG doesn’t just sit and study the bible: it’s done in a group environment where the participants are predominantly the same age.

“It’s encouraging to know there are other Christians in engineering,” Tim, a chemical engineering student, said.
Adam agrees. “The fact we have a good community going is a good thing,” he said. “Everyone knows each other and everyone inputs.”

From question sessions to bible passages and analysing contemporary relationships, the CEG covers a lot of territory.
But CEG members do not just read the bible. Once a term the CEG enjoys an outing or a gathering together, maybe a barbecue or lawn bowls. Furthermore, the members of the CEG are your traditional university students who study, love discounts, live in flats with a constant turnover of housemates and come up with ingenious ways to hang clothes inside when it’s raining.

CEG just gathers together, much like revellers to a beer keg but instead of drinking copious amounts of alcohol and speaking incoherently, CEG members discuss issues, scriptures and the bible, in a state of sobriety.
Adam’s is one of two CEGs that run at different times on the Callaghan campus, which allows the maximum number of participants from across all stages of the engineering course.

But engineering is not the only faculty which runs a bible study group once a week.

Education students meet at the Bar on the Hill for lunch, medical students meet for dinner in Wallsend and international students gather in North Lambton on a Monday night.

Each group is part of a one of the largest organisations at the University of Newcastle, called the Newcastle Christian Students (NCS). “Our members are Christian students from different churches around the Hunter and around the world who meet for bible talks, bible studies, prayer, missions, camping and other social events,” the NCS website said.

Their motto: “Hear God speak @ uni”. It is exactly what the CEG does: gathering together and discussing God’s messages and teachings.

But drinking out of this keg won’t leave you with a filthy headache that needs medication and a greasy hamburger to cure.
Instead, the CEG may just lead you in the opposite direction toward a type of spiritual fulfillment, which can be rare in between the stresses of essays and HECS debts at university.

Josh Callinan

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