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This week in Ohio, I’m meeting with various college ministers and church planters, and one topic has come up a few times: how some of the most “missional” American churches and church plants actually take a very UNmissional approach to college ministry. Even if you’re not in church-based college ministry, I think this “classic” post could help you help churches think this through better. Enjoy – and new comments are welcome!
On page 30 of Reaching the Campus Tribes, I broach a subject that I believe is really important for churches to ponder. The interesting dilemma is that some modern-style churches may actually impact students worse while striving to break with tradition. In fact, while trying to be more missional, some churches may end up less missional.
Some churches have opted to go the “non-traditional” route by pointing students directly to their intergenerational structures, “fully assimilating” them into the adult programs of the church. They plug them into small groups, Bible classes, or other activities alongside the church’s adults – without any opportunity for small group discipleship as college students or specialized outreach to local college campuses.
(Certainly, this sometimes takes place by default when churches haven’t taken the time to plan anything for students, leaving collegians to trickle into other areas of the church – and otherwise not stick around. But I’m talking about something slightly different today.)
As I write in Reaching, the full-assimilation method “certainly reflects a clear respect for college students as full members of the local congregation.” So on one hand, I applaud the motivation behind not separating college students and treating them as a distinct congregation (as one leader at a famous Emerging church described).
But for these highly missional churches, the funny thing is that this approach may be LESS missional in regard to those college students. Why? Because this method usually involves yanking them out of their actual community.
Though a college campus is located geographically within a particular area, it rarely has a high degree of sociological similarity to the rest of that area. Especially at residential colleges, many college students have one primary community – and it isn’t the local neighborhood, nor is it particularly similar to the local neighborhood. It’s the campus, and it’s (obviously) a world of its own.
This means that these otherwise “missional” churches are being highly “attractional” (in a sense that’s opposite from their normal efforts). If I’m not mistaken, this format pretty clearly demands that collegians leave “them” to come away with “us” to do church – both in location and in identity.
If we desire to be missional with college students, we have to think through what that means in their special case. Just as reaching our neighborhoods missionally involves connecting with people “on their terms” and “on their turf,” impacting college students missionally involves recognizing their unique terms and turf, too. While it’s good to help college students get out of their small worlds some of the time, reaching them within their home contexts and teaching them to live for Jesus within those worlds is vital, too.
The way I put it in the book was:
At the same time, it must be remembered that many college students’ cultural identity and community are located not in the local neighborhood but specifically within their collegiate experience. Thus any church aiming to reach people “missionally” and contextually should consider the special situation of college students. Unless efforts are made to reach campus tribes on their own terms, we may actually be missing opportunities for relevant impact in this important life stage. And we will be removing students from the very communities in which they presently have the most influence for God’s Kingdom.
There are plenty of church planters and others who need to think these things through, as I continue to do the same! That’s one way we advance college ministry – through debate and rigorous thought. So while I’ll keep thinking, I did want to address this here. And I’d love to hear your thoughts – positive, negative, or illustrative.
[See several comments from the original post here] [Add new comments here]
I’m in Ohio this week, meeting with some college ministers and church planters looking to impact a campus up here. So fun!
In the course of a chat yesterday, we discussed a principle that fits really well into this whole discussion of Hospitality of College Ministry… but also gives us a bit of a “bonus” reason for practicing hospitality, too.
The principle? As God draws individuals into your ministry, He might use their attributes to help set the course for your ministry. For example, an influx of fraternity students into your ministry this fall might indicate you should explore opportunities within their frat houses. If God brings a student with disabilities, that might be a chance not simply to meet individual needs, but also to pray about how that community might be better reached for Christ. If upperclassmen begin to choose your ministry, it’s worth praying through whether you should begin to recruit among the Juniors and Seniors.
This doesn’t mean that every type of student needs to be met with an entirely new emphasis or niche-based ministry. Instead, the point is that we get to know people enough that we can see ways God might be directing us through whom He brings our way. A party host surely tries to get to know her guests at some level; are we at least offering that same level of hospitality within our ministries? Would we even know if God was bringing 10 people from the same sports team?
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As I’m working my way through this series on Hospitality in College Ministry, a vital note:
Perceptions always matter, but even more so in aiming for hospitality.
We’ve all had moments of sadness when we hear that students who visited our ministries didn’t feel welcomed. But we’ve also probably (wisely) learned that sometimes the visitors themselves are at fault – they expected something that wouldn’t have expected in any other venue, for instance, or they unfairly extrapolated after running into somebody who was unfriendly (who might have been a visitor themselves!).
But the danger is that we’d lean too heavily on the excuses (true though they may be) and miss the opportunity to still work on helping these perceptions change. I know “perception is reality” is a cliche (though it’s often important to see the truth there) – but in this case, the act of being hospitable does hinge on people’s feelings – feeling welcome, feeling invited, feeling happy they came.
So how are you (A) discerning visitors’ perceptions, and (B) helping improve them?
We won’t get 100% positive impressions. But if we want to be hospitable, we should probably be trying to get there.
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It’s been fun combing the archives for some great posts for evaluating your college ministry! I hope you’ll take some time to do just that, before you move to planning for next semester.
For more, check out the “Assessment & Strength” category, and find the earlier batches of “best 10″ here and here and here.)
Without further ado, here are the final 10 quick reads for evaluating your collegiate ministry:
- On (Not Only In): a quick encouragement to do this evaluation / assessment stuff
- Obama’s Surprise and the Decisions We Shouldn’t Make: why our setup should be more like the President’s
- The Anticipation Evaluation: do students get excited about your ministry events?
- Dancing around Your Grill: the first in a 4-part series of “ingredients” that are too rare within college ministries (See the whole series here)
- Our Best Foot Forward: are we dealing with our campus as well as Daniel would?
- Where We Put Our Chips: my humble suggestion for where you place your priority
- The Very Words, the Very Strength: are students words and service really God-wrought?
- Do You Hate Your Mission Field?: just what the title asks (an evaluation for us college ministers)
- Serving Well, After Weather Storms and Other Storms: making sure however our students serve… really serves
- When It’s Just One, It’s Just One: are you trying to do too much with that talk or that event?
A couple of times in the past few weeks, I’ve offered up 10 posts on College Ministry evaluation (all from over a year ago).
My hope is that you’ll spend MAJOR time evaluating your own campus ministry over the next couple of months, whether you use my tips or not!
Of course, all these posts and others can be found in the “Assessment & Strength” category. But I wanted to present another batch today, with teasers to help you decide which ones to check out. (See the first batch here and the second collection here.)
Here are this week’s 10 quick reads:
- Taking the Instruments Out: have you brainstormed things to remove from your college ministry?
- The Long View: are you only thinking about one semester or one school year?
- The Man Your Ministry Could Smell Like: remember the Old Spice Man commercials? Did you realize they teach us about our audience? This is the first post in that series, or see the whole series (with videos) here.
- Seven Keys for Revolutionary College Ministry, from an Old Minister: it’s someone you wouldn’t expect
- Legalism, Pillars, and Teaching Enough: do our students know why or just what?
- Aiming for Clean or for Crops: are we allowing enough messiness?
- Tozer and “Fair [College Ministry] Gifts”: there’s a difference between teaching and impacting…
- Personality-Driven?: is our ministry is too much like us?
- The Midweek Measure: what do our ministries look like when they’re not “doing”?
- The Good Time Evaluation: the eclectic evaluation of enjoyment
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You may know that I published an ebook, Reaching the Campus Tribes, back in 2009. I was humbled by how well it was received by college ministers (and others) from across the Christian spectrum. And I’m so excited that God continues to use it (including in training present and future college ministers, like at Beeson Divinity School). It’s still free, it’s still an easy read – and it still could revolutionize the way you understand, do, and tell others about Collegiate Ministry.
For a little while, I’m spending Mondays revisiting some of the points from the book, beginning with here and here and here.
In Chapter 4 of Reaching the Campus Tribes, I made my fundamental argument that collegiate ministry should be approached like foreign missions. This includes recognizing the vital need for contextualization, patience, realistic expectations, aggressive progress, and more.
We also need to pursue longevity, as I argue on pages 53 and 54. Here’s a portion of that reflection:
Another way college ministry parallels mission work is in the value of long‐lasting ministries. Our hope should be to build ministries that serve as powerful campus missions for decades to come.
College ministries often benefit from a lengthy tenure. For one thing, a campus ministry or church‐based group that is widely known as effective and established will receive positive word‐of‐mouth from students, campus staff, the community, alumni, and others who hear about its work (even from far away). Relationships grow deeper over time, too. Strategy and contextualization become more and more fine‐tuned. And even when a ministry isn’t the largest ministry on its campus each and every year, it may have an easier time staying “in the mix” as a staple in that campus tribe.
The net result of longevity is also a pretty powerful statistic. While other ministries may at times steal the spotlight, a consistent, long‐term college ministry can ultimately impact a much larger number of students. Plus, a long‐lasting mission effort not only gets to impact collegians, but eventually its influence can extend to faculty, administration, and other “locals” as the ministry becomes an integral part of the campus and even the city.
This seems like a great thing for us to ponder in April and May, doesn’t it? The truth is, whether your college ministry is reaching 10 a week or 1,000 a week, if it lasts long enough it could truly have an impact on 10,000 students or more. But are you establishing your college ministry so that it could do that?
Some questions for us:
- How sure are you that your college ministry will be far better in most areas in five years?
- What specific actions are you taking to help this happen?
- Have you made long-range (definitely beyond one year) plans to be a stronger ministry?
- If your ministry is more than five years old, is it having a significantly better impact now than it was two years ago? Is it run more effectively / efficiently? Have you begun to see your past long-range plans bear fruit?
- When’s the last time you planned – specifically – for ministry strength beyond the next school year?
- Are you at the point where you (or someone) can spend ample time thinking about “new initiatives” and “taking more ground” in your ministry? What would it take to have that time each month?
- If God suddenly calls you to a new job elsewhere this summer, will your campus ministry outlive you? Would it thrive in the years to come?
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Last week, I looked back at 10 posts that could be especially helpful for year-end college ministry evaluation – especially with an eye toward going forward even stronger. These were all scattered throughout the “Assessment & Strength” category, so I rounded them up and put them in that post.
But there were way more than 10 that might prove beneficial, so I wanted to post another batch today! Hopefully you’ll find at least a few that make for good fodder in conversations with your student leaders, fellow staff, yourself, and Jesus!
- Fresh Eyes: Suggestions for who might be able to help you evaluate your ministry right now!
- Resolving & Completing: A good (very small) book that could make your ministry far more effective
- Broad-Invite Worthy: Is your campus ministry qualified to recruit students?!
- Thinking through Your College Ministry’s Nexts: Five ways to decide if a new idea is worth prioritizing!
- Paying Attention to Critics in College Ministry: Like Domino’s, are we open to what our constituents – and critics – have to say about us?
- Moving Right Along: Assessing our ministries in light of students’ movement through them
- Why I Ponder Millennialness: Have you personally gotten to know your mission field well enough?
- Are Stories Being Written in My College Ministry?: A particularly interesting evaluation question…
- Producing Great Couples?: And another very interesting assessment!
- College Ministry Poles Intro: The intro to one of my favorite series ever. Or skip the intro and see all the posts here.
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April is a good time for evaluating how it’s really gone this semester and school year. (But really, is it ever a bad time for evaluation?)
As you may realize, I’ve had the chance to write a lot within the “Assessment & Strength” category, and you can see all those posts right here. But I’ve rounded up ten of my older faves. Hopefully these – and the many others you can flip through – can help as you’re asking God about where your ministry is – and where it can go.
- For the Budding Evaluator: a good place to start
- Where Do They Come From?: examining how students actually ended up in your ministry
- For a Lifetime: have we crammed or laid foundations?
- Impact Now vs. Build for Then: where have you positioned your ministry on this spectrum?
- Millennials from the Mailing List: is our ministry a fit for these students?
- Inside Information: an under-used source for figuring out what future students will need
- College Ministry in the Land of Continual Upheaval: before you make big changes
- Explore the Edges of Your Year-to-Come: considering small changes for a big difference
- What Memories?: thinking about how students will think about this year
- Missions Means Difficulty: in case you’re a little discouraged
[I posted 10 more of these the next week - see those here.]
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I’m in an 8-week class at my church, and last night I had the chance to ask one of the directors a question that had arisen while I was doing my “homework.” It hadn’t been discussed in the lesson, but I got to thinking about it.
I realized just how much I appreciated being able to ask that question. And I realized it meant I was working my own way through the material – not simply letting them feed me without doing extra processing myself.
So…
How regularly do you see students process what they’re being taught in your college ministry? How often do they ask questions, mull things over, try to figure out how to apply principles to specific life scenarios? Do they sit and take what you give them, without much interrogation? Or are they listening and following up?
Whatever your answer is to that question, what do you think it means about how (and how much) they’re learning?
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Here’s one way to gauge our collegiate ministry’s hospitality:
What happens to a new visitor who shows up to your large group meeting this week?
- Can they get into a small group? (Will they even hear about small groups?)
- Will they be greeted and name-tagged as excitedly as they would have been in January? In August?
- Can they find out about leadership opportunities… that they can participate in sooner, rather than later?
- Will someone follow up with them this week?
- Can you tell them about opportunities to connect or stay connected this summer? Do your ministry’s present students know these details, so they can share them with visitors (and friends)?
- Will the general “tone of welcome” make these students feel like you’re excited they’re here?
Lots of college ministries have first-time visitors in April. They may not have as many as in August, but they still have them. This is a chance for a gut-check: Are we only being hospitable when it’s most “efficient”? Or are we being hospitable because we care about hospitality?
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