This month’s In Focus section looks at religion at the University – the ways it can build faith and spiritual growth, the ways it can spread through the student body, the ways students choose to express it.

Not everybody does so, and not everybody does so in support of the same beliefs. That’s OK, but the limitations of this page mean we simply can’t reach out to all of those communities.

We can, however, try to reach out to as many of you as possible.

I spent some of the past few weeks wandering campus, trying to get people to answer the question you see on this page: What does faith mean to you?

Graciously, 26 people agreed to help me, and you can see some of their responses in the graphic [you can hear them too – more on that in a moment].

But I asked more than 26 of you to respond. I’m not sure how many more, but more than 26.

Why did you say ‘no’? Lots of reasons, almost all of them perfectly understandable, I thought. But you missed out on something the 26 others got to experience: answering the question.

I got to experience it too, in a way, as I saw people struggle to come up with an answer.

I’d watch them scrawl some notes, scratch them out and start again. Others would confidently jump right in, then abruptly stop as they realized it wasn’t quite as easy as they’d hoped.

Faces contorted, they’d stammer and stutter, start over, take more notes, sheepishly apologizing for what they thought was a bad answer.

But of course, there were no “bad” answers. In fact, that was exactly the point.

But I asked people the question I did in the hope that, as people choose how and how much to profess their faith, they’d question themselves.

Did you first attend Cru or Creed on Campus because a friend did? In one of this month’s stories, our reporter suggests many of you did.

So is your faith in your friend or in God?

If you didn’t want to speak to me, I hope that as I walked away, you asked yourself my question anyway. I hope you’re still thinking about your answer.

The limitations of this page also mean you can’t see everybody who did answer the question. Luckily, we have the wonders of the Internet.

If you go to www.bgnews.com, you’ll find a special presentation with the full audio responses of all 26 respondents.

Pretty neat, isn’t it? Ask yourself, what would you say? You might be surprised at the result.