NTE Frequently Asked Questions
A typical day involves spending time in the morning with your strand group, made up of 12 other students from across Australia led by two staff workers who will train you in how to read and teach the bible. After lunch we’ll have campus time where everyone at the conference from Campus Bible Study will gather with the purpose of planning for NTE mission and summer. You’ll also get some free time in the afternoon before attending an elective on a topic of your choosing. After dinner everyone at NTE will gather for the night session involving singing, interviews and a bible talk by Vaughn Roberts on identity. You’ll then chat with people over supper (or a Maccas run) about what you’ve been learning before going to bed and repeating the next day!
Standard Registration closes on the 9th of November, so make sure you rego now or set a reminder in your phone so you don’t miss out! The link to register for the conference is: https://nte.org.au/register/
If you have an exam clash you will be able to receive a full refund for any days that you can’t attend NTE. You will just need to email nte@afes.org.au with your details before the 12th of November 2022.
Please fill in the CBS NTE form on https://campusbiblestudy.org/nte so that the NTE team can help you organise transport down to Canberra and to mission. Feel free to organise your own transport down to Canberra if you are able, but please still fill in the form.
Yes, NTE doesn’t provide tents, just the camping ground so make sure you BYO sleeping bag, sleeping mat and tent, or find a friend who has camping gear that you can camp with or borrow their gear! Pro-tip: expect rain when preparing for camping gear. This might mean using some sort of plastic container to pack the gear in.
NTE does have bathrooms with showers and all meals are provided so you don’t need to bring cooking or cleaning supplies.
The NTE dorm accommodation will be held in various locations in Canberra, likely to be in motels. This means that dorms will be offsite rather than the camping option which is onsite. Transport to and from dorms will be organised once you get to NTE.
While you have freedom to organise this we recommend that for the sake of loving and including others you make use of the NTE accommodation options- see it as a fun family bonding experience!
Sadly financial assistance is not available for CBS students. But if this is a big barrier, feel free to talk to Michael King (michael.king@campusbiblestudy.org).
While it is possible to just come to the conference part or the mission part of NTE, we highly recommend you to come to both. Mission is a great way to put into practice what you have learnt from the conference part of NTE.
Mission usually involves serving alongside the partner church that your mission team is allocated with. Generally this involves helping out with the youth group, leafleting, Christmas evangelistic events, door-knocking, kids church and being interviewed at the Sunday service/s. Every member of our mission team will typically have a billet to stay with from the local church. You will likely be paired up at the billet’s place for safety. Accommodation on mission does not cost anything thanks to the generosity of church billets.
Please fill in the CBS NTE form on https://campusbiblestudy.org/nte so that the NTE team can allocate you into a mission team.
If you were planning to go on holidays, you would typically love your church by swapping serving responsibilities with someone and let them know to not roster you on. NTE mission is not a holiday, it’s a serving opportunity! So it’s even better to block out your Sundays now and plan to be on NTE mission.
We are partnering with 13 churches for NTE mission this year! They are located in Sydney (Hurstville, Minchinbury, Chester Hill, Gloucester, Gregory Hills, Georges Hall, Oakhurst, Rouse Hill, Marsfield and Kingsford), Canberra and country NSW.
Our preference for your friends is to join their university Christian group’s NTE mission team. This helps your friends serve and partner with those they will see on their own campus. However, if there are special cases, feel free to speak with your CBS trainee or pastor.
We’re really glad that you’re willing to try and make exams work with NTE so you can come along. We want to help you as best as we can with having the space to do your online exam.
There is currently no room that will be set apart at the conference site for people taking online exams. We cannot make any guarantees about there being a space on-site where you will have quiet, a desk to work on and a stable internet connection.
However there are other options. It might be that you could use an Airbnb booked by some fellow students? You could go to the ANU library (Chifley library) where you should be able to access free wifi with your zID on the eduroam network? If you ask around, you might know someone who has family that could host you at their home to take your exam?
If you are struggling to make arrangements, feel free to chat with one of the trainees in your faculty who could help you come up with a solution.
As a rule of thumb, we encourage you to go through the strands in a progressive way. Start with ‘Strand 1 – Exegesis’ and work your way up to ‘Strand 5 – Teaching a Series’ (kudos if you’re able to get through all of them!).
There are however some exceptions to this rule of thumb.
Firstly it might be worthwhile skipping strands 1 and/or 2 of NTE because their content is very similar to the strands run at NextGen conference. If you have been to NextGen and already done the similar strands, you might want to jump ahead.
Secondly, if you are graduating soon and this is probably your last chance to come along to NTE, you might want to pick the strand that you think would benefit you the best. Have a chat with one of the trainees in your faculty and see what they say.
If you think that it might be wiser for you to do another strand than the one you enrolled in, please message the NTE team through their contact form before the 18 December to let them know: https://nte.org.au/contact-us/.