Thanks for the idea, too – this will make a good post, as one of the many “special cases” that college ministry faces.

Personally, I would probably answer that it’s highly dependent on the context, number of non-traditional students, and even the activities involved. So I’d take it on a case-by-case basis.

My philosophy tends to place students in groups by “locus of community,” at least to a large extent. Traditional college students often look primarily to community on campus or at least within groups of friends in the same transitional lifestyle as themselves. That seems to define their “culture,” at least to some extent.

My guess would be that non-trad students have a different locus of community. When that’s the case, then our impact of them will not be as effective, and their connection with the rest of the group won’t be as strong. So in at least a lot of cases, I would tend to point those people toward the age group ministry (generally at a church) that fits them best. While they are technically students-at-a-college, they wouldn’t be in every college ministry’s focus group.

BUT, that (A) doesn’t mean we wouldn’t still impact them as much as we can (just like we’d try to impact anybody else we meet), and (B) doesn’t mean there aren’t some specific activities that would include them. Specifically, I’m thinking about mid-day campus outreach lunches as an example.

I’m rambling philosophically here, but that’s really because, again, I’d have to pray like crazy for wisdom on a case-by-case basis!