In September 2001, about 15 young people from the Jerusalem community gathered for a first ‘studentenmeeting’. The concept was simple: gather for some prayer, a guided bible meditation, and a beer. We started meeting every other week and changed locations between Gent and Leuven, the two main student cities in the country where young people from our community were studying.

Very quickly a desire grew to invite our friends to these meetings and little by little people without any link to the Jerusalem community found their way to our prayer meetings. During the next three years our concept stayed the same and these meetings were a source of strength and courage for all who attended the students that attended.

The Christian student group that was meeting in 2003.

In January 2005, we decided to turn our attention toward evangelism and creating a bigger outreach impact.  In order to do this effectively, it became necessary to centralize and focus our efforts on one location.  Thus, Leuven was chosen as our outreach base because of the number of students from KU Leuven that were involved in this new outreach.

In September 2007, Sam Geleyn came back from a Gap year in London and started implementing some of the things he learned. He set up a team of students to run the outreach, we choose the name Pharos, built a website, looked for an office space, received official recognition as a student society at LOKO, created a logo, wrote a mission statement, etc…

Since then, we have organized a variety of events and courses: weekend retreats, prayer meetings, Alpha courses, Life in the Spirit seminars, the Life in Christ course, street evangelism events, pizza discussions… We have never been a very large group but have always maintained core group of about 20 student and have seen many lives impacted and blessed throughout these years.

Since November 2010, Pharos has had a ‘Gap Programme’. This means that we host foreign students who come to Leuven for a year of formation and service primarily through Pharos. These ‘Gappers’, as we call them, spend their year learning Dutch, receiving training in evangelism and basic theology and are key to keeping our work and mission going and growing. This year we have 4 Gappers (3 from the United Stated and 1 from Lebanon). To find out more about who they are, see The Team!