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One of the pastors at my church was recently describing the annual process the staff uses to decide what outside ministries we’ll partner with as a church. Apparently, they vet the entire list each year to make sure values line up, they can trust the leadership of those entities, good work is actually taking place, etc.
It reminded me that this is one of our most important roles as shepherds of college students. We are (or should be) regularly vetting:
- Vetting potential student leaders
- Vetting the service opportunities we point students to
- Vetting the materials our small groups use
- Vetting the churches we encourage students to check out
- Vetting the guests we have speak to our students
- Vetting the details of what we teach
- Vetting the adults who volunteer in our ministries
- Vetting the summer opportunities we encourage students to check out
It sounds so… judgy, right? But this is really discernment, and it’s absolutely vital for us who have dared to serve as overseers of the souls of our students.
Part of the reason we love ministering to collegians is because they’re at such a crux in their lives AND are so moldable and impact-able! But that means that a little error or unhealth now can do great damage – and lasting damage. “Guard your life and doctrine closely” – and as shepherds, we have to guard their spiritual lives as much as we can, too.
I really mean this post as an encouragement for those faithfully “vetting”: You’re not wasting your time when you have students fill out those long applications for leadership, when you meet one-on-one with a potential adult mentor, when you write long emails to “make sure this guy’s legit,” when you follow up with those you trust to make sure a church is healthy, when you spend 30 minutes Googling to make sure that local ministry isn’t a cult, when you check out a rumor that somebody’s gone off the deep end.
It’s worth it. In fact, it’s ministry. You are doing an important work; don’t grow weary in well doing! I celebrate your faithfulness.
Of course, not all of us like detail-work, not all of us like to imagine that troublesome people-doctrines-practices can hurt our students, and not all of us like the conflict that can arise when we pursue wisdom and purity in our ministries.
But this is being a good shepherd, whether our personalities enjoy it or not.
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Friday’s post accidentally ended up behind Thursday’s for awhile. If you missed it, be sure to check it out! Here’s Part 2 on the same idea…
For this week’s Fridea, I threw out several ideas to consider for making any weekly announcements you give a little more engaging. Nothing’s rocket science here, but some of these things might fit your college ministry – OR get you thinking about something else that will.
Here’s that first post. And today, a few more ideas:
6. Exposure redundancy. Not everybody is an auditory learner, and even those who are can be helped by the visual. So if your announcements are only spoken, they’re not as engaging as they could be. I’m a big fan of making announcements redundant – add something to the screen behind you (if you have a screen), and hand out an announcement sheet when students come in.
The latter suggestion – about the announcement sheet – also gives students an opportunity to read the announcement items later in the meeting or even back in their dorm room. Hooray for a little redundancy!
7. Trim where you can. Of course, one of the reasons we (and our students) struggle with (or struggle through) announcements is that there’s sometimes so much. Limiting our announcements as much as we can will therefore make the remaining ones more engaging.
Be realistic: If none of your students will actually make plans based on your announcement about a retreat coming in three months, does it have to be announced this week? Sure, building hype is great… but maybe only when you have the room in the announcement lineup.
8. Believe! Do you believe that what you’re announcing really matters? Do you believe that it’s purposeful, that it’s exciting, that it’s eternal? You should, because it is. (And if it’s not, well, that’s a bigger problem.)
Whoever is delivering announcements should believe that what they’re announcing is super-important. Pray it through. Spend time thinking about these announcements. If the events you’re announcing serve true ministry purpose, they are no “less spiritual” than the teaching that happens at your Large Group Meeting.
If the announcer believes this is important, it’ll show. (And they’ll put the effort into preparing for these announcements in a way worthy of that importance.)
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When I first posted this, it accidentally ended up behind the “10,000 dips” post. If you missed it on Friday, here’s this week’s Fridea… and the follow-up will be posted midday Saturday. Sorry about that.
Last week, I wrote a post with 7 ideas for “upping” our weekly Large Group Meetings. One of those was to make our announcements more engaging, and thanks to a follow-up comment on that post, I wanted to revisit that idea with some ideas… maybe even all weekend long!
So this Fridea will be continued (at least) tomorrow.
And I would LOVE to hear any ideas you’ve got. You’ll benefit a lot of campus ministries…
I’ve visited an awful lot of college ministries around the country, and this is certainly an area I feel like, on the whole, we could give a little more focus. I’ve also led in ministries in the past, and I know how tough the announcement experience can be…
So, some ideas.
1. It all starts with purpose. No matter who’s doing announcements, if they’re not starting with purposes in mind, those announcements aren’t going to be as good as they could be.
And yet what do most of us (or our students) do? We just get up there and “do announcements,” counting on our personalities and humor to share this important stuff. If, instead, you’ll actually plan your announcements with a very clear idea of what you want the audience to leave knowing, feeling, and doing, this important part of your meeting will improve.
2. Students! If don’t feel like your announcements are hitting the target, using students in this role can be a real win. Yes, there are some college ministers who are particularly good at taking this role. But overall, that might be the exception, not the rule. (Plus, adding variety to the “stage personalities” in any given meeting is a helpful thing.)
A wise and fun and strong-communicator student (or better yet, a pair of ‘em) will fairly naturally relate to their peers well. If they see this as a ministry – and start with #1 above – this could suddenly become one of the best parts of your Large Group Meeting.
3. Cameos! A corollary to #2, another interesting idea would be bringing in a different “cameo” each week. Different students each week, faculty or staff of the school, local “celebrities” in town, whatever. Give ‘em the announcements to make, and enjoy their spin (or their stumbling).
Now, information is still information, and if this format keeps #1 from being accomplished, that’s NOT a win. But if you do this in a way that both draws interest AND communicates, then that’s the ticket.
4. Video. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen video announcements in a college ministry, but I’ve seen them in several church worship services. And I love ‘em. Some are even set up like little news reports, with different “anchors” and all that. The audio-visual combo is obviously helpful for retention, and it can all be pretty fun, too.
Don’t let this zap all your time, no matter how much you enjoy editing videos. Plus, a highly-stylized video won’t necessarily accomplish those Purposes much better than a quick YouTube video shot on your iPhone. Furthermore, this is a great task to give to a student or a team of students.
And speaking of YouTube, if these are fun to watch, you can put ‘em online and get even absent students to watch Announcements. Imagine that!
5. Refer back… even with prizes! My dad, who helps out with the youth at his church, gave me this incredible idea. If you give announcements early in the meeting, what if at the end you gave prizes to those who can remember details? “Where do you need to meet on campus to leave for the retreat?” “When are applications due for student leadership?”
Even if you don’t give out prizes, asking questions at the end doubles-up your announcements without exactly having to cover all the same ground. Not a bad idea, especially for the most important stuff.
More to come.
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I wrote earlier this week on the need to raise up students who will accept and even revel in the unsettled, “sojourny” experience they’ll likely have after college – if indeed they’re open to the preparation and adventure God has for them.
Two helpful thoughts from recent books that could help here:
1. The 10,000 Hour “Rule.” In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell famously presents a notion that to be truly great at something may just require 10,000 hours of work. You can read more about the idea in the book (which is phenomenal, by the way), or catch the Wikipedia take on it in the Outliers article.
And while there’s no sense in applying this sort of thing in a legalistic way, it’s at least a good principle to help our students understand that they’re probably looking at a long time of nose-to-the-grindstone work before things “feel” more “concrete.” (10 years at 20 hours a week would cover that “rule.”)
2. The Dip. Perhaps even more useful, get your students to read Seth Godin’s The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick), or read it yourself and help them understand the principles. (Really, this incredibly quick read could change the way you approach projects within your college ministry. It’s fantastic for us AND our students.)
Like Outliers, this is a secular book, but there still isn’t a better go-to book I’ve found for helping anybody who’s considering undertaking any sort of project.
And here, Seth Godin helpful compares and contrasts the 10,000 Hour Rule with The Dip.
I honestly believe that either or both of these books / ideas could help fuel your preparation for students’ long-term success – including a realistic understanding of the road ahead of them. They don’t replace the biblical wisdom, to be sure, but I do think there’s real wisdom here.
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Last weekend, I had the chance to attend my church’s small group leader training (for the small groups throughout our congregation). It reminded me how important I feel the training of small group leaders really is.
In fact, if you need a suggestion on where to put a lot of your “chips,” I’d put them right there. I’d spend time, energy, effort, and excellence in the training of those who lead your college ministry’s small groups. (This post assumes, of course, that your campus ministry has small groups as a major part of its strategy. Most do, but there are complementary models, for instance, that might not.)
In all my own experience serving within and overseeing college ministries, as well as my observations of hundreds of college ministries around the country, this is an area we could probably improve in.
Some beliefs:
- There are real small group leadership skills that can be learned.
- For most people, training is required to lead small groups well. And if I must say it even more boldly, I can: If you aren’t putting effort into training small group leaders, your small groups aren’t being led well.
- Being a strong Christian collegian or adult volunteer does NOT automatically impart small group leadership skill.
- Having good small group materials is not the same as being trained.
- For most college ministries, this is the most direct level of discipleship most students will experience. It’s the front lines, in other words.
If you need something to take greater priority – even if it means sacrificing other areas – this is an area to consider. Train your small group leaders well, and you’ll be changing your ministry (and your campus) before you know it.
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Ten years ago this month, I began my sojourn of sorts. I’m still very much within that trip, yet to find out where (or when, or if) I’ll “land.”
I had graduated from Texas A&M in the middle of the expected collegiate career, leaving behind what I would later realize was the most flourishing college ministry climate in the country. That last semester was my best semester, and it came on the heels of perhaps the most formative year of my whole life. That last semester, Fall 2000, was the last time life was “normal” or “expected,” you might say, and beyond that it was genuinely fun.
But in January 2001 I followed God up to Abilene, Texas, to minister to college students among three Christian schools out there in West Texas. Five and half hard, interesting, good years were spent in Abilene, filled with seminary papers and paper routes and bookstore-creation and random large road trips that I stumbled upon (little knowing they were only forerunners of much longer treks). Those pictures remind me just how elusive I found stability and normalcy to be.
Then a year in Dallas and another college ministry gig. Abilene had always felt “sojourny”; Dallas seemed like it might provide a chance to land. But that comfort didn’t last long.
God adjusted my call after that year to serving the entire field of college ministry, and off I went on a yearlong road trip to 44 states, Mexico, and Canada by accident. That amazing year has been followed by two-and-a-half more, happily aiming to lay down my life for our cause among the campus tribes.
For someone like me – not your natural adventure-seeker – this decade without “my ducks in a row” isn’t the most comfortable proposition, even in hindsight. But God has stretched me and taught me to enjoy this wandering. Truly. Usually.
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A year or two after I graduated from college, I happened to visit my alma mater and sit in on a church’s weekend conference for college students.
At one point, the speaker shared something that (I’m sure) those students and (I know) one semi-recent college grad didn’t want to hear. He told us we shouldn’t assume that the entire span of God’s preparation will be contained in the four or five years of college. Instead, he said, God often uses ten years or more .
Ten years of preparation. Ten years of sharpening. Ten years of becoming useful for a person’s major life purpose.
The point came home (at least to me); we shouldn’t assume we’ll step from graduation stage to centerstage. In fact, we might find ourselves seemingly sojourning in this sense for many years after the glories of our college years fade.
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I celebrate these past ten years, and I’m happy to share it with you guys. But my main reason for writing this is to encourage us to remember that we’re raising up wanderers. Our strong, mature, awesome students may very well spend the next several years still preparing to be used in the ways God wants to use them.
And of the biggest temptations they’ll face is the temptation to choose stability over sojourn.
Though each person’s spirituality certainly isn’t evaluated by just how “awkward” his or her adventure happens to be, I pray we’re raising up lots of students who are at least willing to wander, and to wander well.
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Last night, I was talking to a friend about the new small group she’s leading as a college ministry volunteer this semester. As it turns out, she’ll be going through a Tim Keller study on Galatians with a bunch of gals.
But the interesting thing is that their college minister is also walking through Galatians in their Large Group Meetings. So their group is doubling up!
Obviously, I geek out a little bit about college ministry ideas, and any little “tweak” to standard practice always gets me thinking. In this case, I recognize that ministries commonly use small groups simply to go deeper on the large group topic (instead of working through completely different topics). There are lots of campus ministries that take that course. (And if you haven’t allowed your ministry to consider that method, you should. It’s not always what’s needed, but it’s a very useful arrow in your quiver.)
But with my friend’s college ministry, they’re clearly offering a chance for these students to hear two different viewpoints on the same “material” (in this case, the Book of Galatians). This isn’t a study guide or a bunch of questions prepared by the college minister to dovetail with his weekly message. It’s a whole separate chance to dive into Galatians, aided by a whole other teacher.
So like the more common method, students should get the value of going deeper, since they get the chance to discuss, ask questions, have a little more time, etc.. But by using material from an entirely different source, they also get the chance to learn from a multitude of counselors. They get a different spin on the subject matter, they get to wrestle over areas of difference, and they gain from the strengths and focuses of the different teachers. They’ll probably also get a heaping helping of redundancy, but it’ll be redundancy that doesn’t feel like it. And redundancy is a great way to help things stick.
I think this method is available for both series straight from books of the Bible as well as topics. I can easily imagine a college ministry teaching on a topic (“Service,” “Leadership,” etc.), with fully prepared messages, while also having small groups go through Hole in the Gospel or Spiritual Leadership. You’d want to make sure the speakers aren’t just getting all their ideas from the same book.
I love the idea of complementary counsel, and this would be one cool way to provide that to your students.
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It’s another form of immersion. A chance to learn about our campus… but more than learning about, it’s a chance to learn our campus. It might just be a chance to meet students. Or professors. It’s a way to keep your feet firmly planted within the campus tribe – and not simply in the daily workings of your campus ministry.
The idea (and this week’s Fridea)? Sitting in on a class or two.
You can take this to a lovely extreme and actually audit a course (or take one for credit); this can be a really powerful way to connect. But today’s idea is really just about dropping in on a class here and there.
This is a major crux of our students lives. But has it been years since we’ve actually been in a classroom? That should probably change.
P.S. You might also learn some neat stuff. (As for me, maybe I’ll go check out a Psych or Religion course at SMU…)
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Since most of us are still on the front end of our semesters, I thought I’d brainstorm (with you? at you?) about some options for a college ministry’s big weekly meeting. (Some of us affectionately call that thing the Sing-and-Speak.)
Of course, there’s a big list of 49 Large Group Meeting variations I’ve actually seen around the country – and it’s always worth purusing.
But today, I figured I’d throw out seven ideas that I personally believe are highly worth considering (if you haven’t assimilated them already). Not every one will be right for your ministry, but they’re ALL very worth contemplating, in my humble opinion.
1. Testimony, interview, “charge,” or other mini-message. Campus Crusade for Christ’s “student testimony time” is status quo in that organization, but this certainly isn’t something we all have as part of our weekly gatherings. It’s worth considering, for sure, and not only because today’s students love eclectic presentations.
2. Make announcements particularly engaging. This is more common, but it’s certainly not pervasive. Announcements contain a lot of important stuff; they deserve being presented in a way that really draws (and keeps) attention… and spurs to action, even with our distracted students.
3. “Punch your points.” I don’t know if I made up that term or not, but it’s something I remind myself to do. Students can best remember your message in bullet-points, whether you like it or not. Make sure your points are purposefully punched – highlighted, put on the screen, repeated, drawn on a board, whatever you’ve gotta do. I have sat through a lot of college ministry meetings where it was unclear what exactly we were being called to.
*Bonus: One method along these lines is to offer a final charge – maybe even after the final song or announcements or whatever you usually do after the message!
4. String ‘em together. Whether you (or others) speak in a series or not, there’s not a lot of downside to reminding students where you have journeyed previously. Would it be helpful to use reminders each week, whether through visual aids that pile up through a semester, a two-minute recap, or other means?
5. Pray. This one – maybe more than the others – depends a bit on the audience you’re drawing and how your Large Group Meeting fits in the overall scheme / strategy of your campus ministry. (You do have an overall scheme and strategy, yes?) But you could consider a genuine prayer period – even a few minutes or more. It’s amazing what God does when our students actually seek His face, and raising the expectations for what He’s going to do in the rest of the meeting can be a powerful thing.
6. Tie the music to the message. There are a lot of reasons to do this. I know it’s easier not to… but that’s probably the only reason not to. Have you considered building everything in the meeting around the purposes for the meeting?
7. Consider when you sing. The main thing here is to realize there is no “best time” for singing. Instead, your Sing-and-Speak’s purposes should determine when and how long your group sings (before, after, some of both… and I can imagine even zanier options, like singing in the middle of the message). The key is to think and pray this one through and not simply follow a pattern just for the sake of “presentation” or tradition or those sorts of less-important things. (While it’s certainly not best for every group, I am occasionally reminded that some groups have been really blessed by moving most of the singing to the end.)
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At that statewide campus ministers’ conference I attended last weekend (called the Intersect Retreat), Tim Elmore offered one little nugget that I’ve heard him urge before – but I’m not sure I’ve blogged it.
As college ministers, he said, we should make sure we tell students the decisions we expect them to make. It’s easy to “assume” students understand what we want them to do, what we believe the Lord has for them, what the next steps are, etc. But there’s no telling what students actually know… unless we tell them.
While he was pastoring an eventually-enormous college ministry in San Diego, Elmore and his staff realized that of the 13 decisions they hoped students would make (starting with coming to Christ in the first place), they were only making SIX of those explicit to the students. With the rest, they were (accidentally) presuming they’d just happen upon those important decisions.
Do your college students know what choices you – as their shepherd – hope they’ll make? Are you regularly and repeatedly making those things clear?
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