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Yesterday, I recapped most of what I’d noticed in five church visits last Sunday. Because it was clearly a special day in Christendom (the Sunday before Christmas), I figured I would pay special attention to anything unique. Here’s the conclusion of those observations!
All signs point to college ministry. Actually, I only saw one sign, but it was still exciting. Even though they don’t appear to have a regular college ministry, First United Methodist does have a 
special Christmastime Sunday school class (see the foyer sign on the left and the bulletin announcement above). That’s a great idea for churches with lots of away students!
In the other churches, I saw some bulletin entries: in one, a college group meeting listed on a church calendar (hooray for continuing to meet during the break); in another, an outdated college ministry announcement (which was inaccurate during the Winter Break).
These were probably the things most pertinent to our field I saw all day. I wish college ministry was more prominent and simply more present in our churches, including at Christmastime. One day.
Tweaks for a Big Day. Only one of the five churches appeared to make any drastic adjustments to its program for Christmas Sunday.
In this case, that one church made three interesting Christmas Sunday tweaks. The first was to have a classic “invitation” toward the end of the service (for conversion, needing prayer, or rededication). While I know that’s not this church’s normal pattern, a special explicit invitation does fit on a day when non-Christians could be present and everybody is particularly mindful of spiritual things.
Second, the pastor had congregants pray together for a minute at the end of the service (in pairs). That was a pretty cool thing for connecting with each other, as well as for encouragement and supplication in the face of a week that can be strange, hard, hectic, and/or exhausting.
Third, that same church rather inexplicably decided to test a new worship service method. We watched a video replay of the sermon from earlier the same day, instead of the pastor preaching live – even though the pastor was present. Christmas Sunday seemed like a strange day to try that out, for all kinds of reasons… so I have to guess that there was some unexplained reason the church was testing this method this Sunday (illness of the pastor? an immediately upcoming need to use recorded sermons? Christmastime fatigue?). In any case, it was one more tweak on this Christmas Sunday.
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So… that’s kinda it for my Christmas Sunday observations. I’m sorry I didn’t see more for students and young adults… maybe that’s coming during tomorrow’s Christmas Eve services?
On a big day for American churches – the Sunday before Christmas – I decided to be on the lookout. How would Christmas Sunday fare for visitors – especially college students and others in the Millennial generation? What other reflections might arise regarding how churches “do Christmas”?
The churches I visited yesterday:
- First United Methodist Church, Dallas
- First Baptist Church, Dallas – the DayOne contemporary service (Southern Baptist)
- Highland Park Presbyterian Church, Dallas – the 1105 contemporary service (PC(USA))
- Watermark Community Church, Dallas (nondenominational Bible church)
- Trinity Hillcrest Church, Dallas – the After Dark contemporary service (conservative Episcopal church)
(How’s that for a mix of denominations?)
Of course, all my observations are anecdotal and some of my conclusions are explicitly guesses. But this was still some good food for thought for me.
Christmas carols. Millennials especially like the “rootedness” of the old, and carols (like many hymns) certainly fit the bill. But I wonder how many Americans sang “Gloria in excelsis Deo” today without knowing what it meant? It doesn’t seem like it’s hard to put its translation on the Powerpoint slide, or to give a brief explanation of the theology behind some other Christmas song we’ve been singing all our lives. Why don’t we do that more often?
Authentage. Of course, vintage Christianity extends beyond carols. So does the authenticity that makes “vintage” worthy. I got to see some wonderful authentage yesterday: the ancient tactility of baptism, opening up actual hymnals, liturgical / scriptural readings, several references to the church calendar (it was the Fourth Sunday of Advent, you know), the Apostle’s Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and Linus’s reading of Luke 2 (my favorite moment of the day, and yes, Charlie Brown is always authentage). We might be surprised at the way mysteries and depth and “roots” can both attract and impact Millennials, if we’ll wield them well.
Visitor instructions. As I located the churches I would visit, I was surprised this “season for church visitors” wasn’t reflected much on their web sites. To me, it seems Christmas is the time to put hearty-and-helpful welcomes front-and-center.
I think we’ll see more and more and more people starting their church experience at our web sites. They’ll also expect to find the information they need, and quickly. So here are a couple of reasons I figure we should make an extra effort before Christmas (or Easter) Sunday:
A) This is a Sunday prime for first time visitors. So on these key days, why not make a big “WE’D LOVE TO HAVE YOU WORSHIP WITH US” graphic right there on the home page? Link to all the information that could possibly serve those individuals.
Thought: What if the Christmas and Easter seasons became ministries’ traditional moments to review their visitor aids (FAQ, maps, parking instructions, what to expect, etc.) – just like homeowners check their smoke detector batteries when Daylight Saving Time changes? I bet if we did, we would end up serving our visitors better and better with each successive “tweak.”
B) Christmas Sunday can also be a particularly tricky Sunday for visitors, with everybody and their mom (literally) coming to our churches. That means instructions are all the more important – including items like easy guest parking, an encouragement to get there a little early, and any seasonal sched changes. Those unfamiliar with our church (or any church) particularly need “tips” like these, and all the more on that crazy Sunday.
Okay, that’s it for today. More in the next post, including some specific college ministry things I saw (or didn’t see).
I’m delaying today’s main post until after today’s explorations.
PreChristmas Sunday is a big day for Christians (and church attenders in general), so I’m going into it with College Minister eyes. Lotsa students are home for the holidays, and they might just flock to church today with their parents. I wonder what they and other Millennials will find.
After attending at least a few church services (up to six, actually) on this unique American Christian holiday, I’ll report what I notice later on today.
(And don’t worry; I’ll certainly be worshipping right along with watching. I did that a lot on the road trip.)
I noted yesterday that college ministries are, at times, evaluated harshly by overseers who don’t understand how best to assess this specialized area.
But there’s a rhythm drumming inside my head that cuts those overseers some slack. It goes something like this:
Who has told them any differently?
So far, how many Christian opinion leaders are helping pastors see college ministry differently from, say, youth ministry?
What “best practices” for evaluating college ministries have been included in ministry magazines, academic journals, leadership conferences, or textbooks?
How many future Christian leaders are learning these things in seminary?
How many education ministers have training in the unique theory and practice of Collegiate Ministry?
How many denominational leaders, Christian college presidents, regional leaders, parents, direct financial supporters, or others with a say in overseeing college ministry have heard accurate, well-reasoned information along this line? Have they heard the need to judge college ministries by the rules of college ministry (and with the specific context of the particular ministry in mind)? And not the rules of youth ministry, general Christian education, or other ministry areas we’re more familiar with?
Until they hear, it’s hard to blame them when they judge us awkwardly.
Based on my own experiences and my encounters with numerous ministries, it appears the time needed to “establish” a new or restarting college ministry is very often 2 to 3 years – at least. That means that before this time, evaluating a ministry should be done especially carefully, and its numerical growth during that period won’t necessarily be a good indicator of its future success.
Patience! Patience!
An interesting note on this: Often church-based college ministries bear the brunt of impatience. Why? Probably because while campus-based ministries tend to be evaluated by fellow college ministry professionals, in church ministries that’s rarely the case.
Because of the specific nature of college ministry, it’s difficult for anyone without experience in this field – pastors, parents, and others – to correctly evaluate a college ministry without really careful study of the issues involved. (It’s hard enough for those who are college ministry trained to assess a ministry.)
I strongly suspect that plenty of college ministers have caught the raw end of that whole deal.
Clearly, we all hope for more and more public discussion of college ministry – theories, ideas, explanations, methods, models, research. Books are welcome. Articles. Dissertations. Debates. Classes. Theories. Bring it on!
But because Collegiate Ministry as a whole isn’t particularly well-networked, we have to work extra hard to develop our ideas from a breadth of sources, even beyond our own ministry experiences and circles.
Some areas where I’m finding breadth to be particularly helpful:
1. The campus-based / church-based tension. College ministry’s position outside individual local churches is certainly the greatest “debate” in the field Collegiate Ministry. However, much of what I hear / read from both sides doesn’t seem to cover the actual situation very completely.
Hopefully more of us can have more contact with more college ministry contexts (and can talk to more college ministers from both models).
In other words, we need breadth on this one.
2. Evaluating uniqueness. I wrote about this during the trip, and then it sorta came up in the blog again yesterday. Basically, some labels of “unique” are only accurate inside a limited “region,” whether that region is geographic or otherwise. But greater breadth helps us find out what’s really out there.
Read that older post for more.
3. Creativity. I still don’t have a better way to spur my own creativity than by simple breadth of experience. The more I experience, the more ideas I have – not only because I can use what I see, but because those ideas have a way of catalyzing even more ideas.
In other words, the broader I go, the bigger I think.
For more on “experiential brainstorming,” here’s another past post.
I love theme days.
Thursday I had three – count ‘em, three – different interactions with churches that are investing in college ministry extraordinarily, here in the Dallas / Fort Worth Metroplex.
The first church has provided the requisite patience, allowing the college minister the years and support needed to grow a developed-and-developing college ministry.
The second church has recently decided to invest in their college ministry up-front, investing before the numbers arrive, not after.
The third church’s college ministry has long been established, and the whole church is now reaping the rewards of college students plugged in all over the place. I was told tonight the church’s senior pastor compares college ministry investment to blowing a dandelion – not all the seeds may end up planted locally, but the impact spreads all around the world. What a Kingdom mindset.
These churches are not the norm, but they may be soon.
There’s a good interview of the authors of Essential Church?: Reclaiming a Generation of Dropouts over at Ed Stetzer’s blog. Click here for the blog post; you can find the book here.
The best part is that in the Comments below the post, the authors answer real-life questions from real-life people, several of which connect to Collegiate and Young Adult Ministry.
If you’re unfamiliar with Essential Church?, it basically addresses what churches can do to slow the dropout rate we’ve seen among young adults, and particulary with those 18 to 22. So… awfully relevant for us.
If you’re counting, that means we have another book related to college ministry. We may not have many, but the number is increasing!
(A sample of Essential Church? can be downloaded here.)
There are other models for college ministry out there. We just have to find them. Or invent them.
When I first ran across The Refuge, a college student worship gathering in Baton Rouge, it was the busy end-of-semester in Chapter Four of the road trip. So my opportunities for research were limited.
That was remedied Sunday night.
Here’s the kicker:
- Is the Refuge the worship gathering of a campus-based ministry? Yes – none other than Campus Crusade for Christ at LSU.
- Is the Refuge the worship gathering of a church-based college ministry? Yes – a church called The Chapel.
In fact, the Refuge has long been the worship service and “hub” for the community groups of The Chapel’s college ministry. But a couple of years ago, Crusade leadership approached The Chapel with a unique question: What if they joined forces?
Longish story short, they did.
One worship service? Coordinated small groups? Joint advertising? Associated missions opportunities? But still two ministry identities? Really?
Talking to the directors of both the church’s ministry and Campus Crusade on Sunday night, I heard a lot of mutual appreciation. A lot of mutual benefits. A lot of Kingdom-mindedness. A lot of opportunities.
And a model that isn’t traditional.
They’re out there. Or we can invent them.
Written at Steak ‘n Shake in Mobile, AL
Most of us in college ministry recognize the difficulty of ministry to Community Colleges. It’s such an important mission, but it’s tricky.
More surprising (to me, at least) was another tricky situation I explored around the country:
The big city setting without a focus campus.
Seattle, Austin, Columbus, Minneapolis… these are Metro settings that DO have one “primary,” all-eyes-on-us university campus – U-Dub, UT, OSU, and Minnesota, which Twin Cities folks notably call simply, “The U,” even though there are plenty of other “U”s in town.
My point exactly. Even though you might have a million schools around, it helps to have that one BIG one to sort of “centralize” the way ministry happens.
Boston, Atlanta, D.C., Houston, Chicago… these are Metro settings with either no “super-major” campus, or several that could be considered a pretty big deal. In either case, these contexts can have a trickiness that you might not expect, given the size and stature of the cities, and the hundreds of thousands of students who live there.
Dallas is like that, too. Oh, I could tell you about Dallas… TRICKY.
Why do you think it’s tricky? What could be done to help in these kinds of settings?
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