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I think college ministers should rely much more than they do on outside expertise.
There, I said it.
Yesterday I sat down with some staff members of a local church. They’re considering taking one of the programs they do particularly well, and offering it in a different form to college students.
In the course of our discussion, I noted that need: for college ministries to regularly make use of experts from outside their ministry (and outside collegiate ministry altogether). We college ministers don’t have to be one-man-shows – but so many of us act as though we should be experts on dating relationships, on apologetics, on any biblical passage we share with our students, on handling time and money well, and so on.
But God has positioned other people to be far better than you at each of these. Right?
Sure, God may indeed want to use many of us as the primary teachers in our college ministries (though that’s far from being a “given”). But we should still be willing to bring in expertise – through other teachers, videos, studies, or other means – or point our students to other opportunities – retreats, other ministries’ teaching venues, seminars, conferences, etc..
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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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On Mondays for a little while, I’m looking back at (and expanding on) some points from my book, Reaching the Campus Tribes. So far, I’ve looked at our need to use greater means to reach the campuses and the truly contextual nature of college ministry (even if some college ministers don’t really like hearing it).
Today, a section from the final chapter – a substantial epilogue, really – entitled, “Into the Harvest: A Road Map Forward from a Road Trip’s Findings.” I start that chapter by expressing that we need heroes – including potentially an organization that will display the wisdom and breadth to help jump-start Collegiate Ministry advancement. But then I turn the corner to look at individual ministers:
Of course, many of college ministry’s heroes will be men and women called to impact students directly as college ministers. We need to pray for God to send more people into the harvest field of the campus tribes, whichever branch of college ministry they serve in.
And hopefully a number of these ministers will become college ministry “lifers,” those women and men who serve for decades in this noble cause. As I saw numerous times throughout my trip, veterans have a wisdom for other college ministers (and for their students) that simply can’t be matched. Having an increasing number of seasoned collegiate missionaries will be enormously powerful in helping our field develop.
College ministers also must do their part in helping draw others to this task, by sharing their stories with the greater Church. From early years, even children and teenagers should hear the stories of faithful efforts among the campus tribes. Articles and books should be written about these missionary efforts, and local congregations and even larger audiences should be privy to the captivating testimonies. God may use those stories to call other people to join this noble missions effort – whether they are called to pray, to give, or to go.
It’s the second and third paragraphs that I wanted to focus in on. Have you considered what role you’re meant to play inthe field of college ministry as a whole? Is it possible God wants you to help impact beyond your own ministry, to help college ministry thrive in other places?
Just as not every foreign missionary is called to spend some time appealing for the cause of foreign missions, not every college minister will take part in this task. But some should. Let me reiterate all the possibilities I mentioned, only this time a little more personally:
- You can serve in our field for years and years, and share your seasoned wisdom with younger ministers
- You could help recruit more college ministers
- You could help draw others to impact students and invest in college ministry – like churches, organizations, and other Christian people and groups
- You can tell stories of your work (and others’ work) among the “campus tribes”
- You could submit an article or even write a book about the glories of college ministry or what you’ve learned
- Through any of these methods (or others), you could help raise funds for college ministry work
- Through any of these methods (or others), you could help increase prayer for college ministry work
Is it possible your college ministry passion and knowledge are meant to be shared?
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One more note – but it’s a biggie – following yesterday’s post.
If just about everything your college ministry does is “your style” or even your idea, then something’s wrong.
I’m not saying everything shouldn’t be your decision – if you’re the college minister, then the buck stops with you. But if you’re trying to reach people who are different from you (and they’re college students, so in some ways, they all are!), then you should be deciding to do things that don’t… exactly… fit… you.
College ministers have to be able to recognize good ideas that aren’t really their own preferences. But it’s far too easy to let your own personality overshadow your ministry to the point that much of your “wisdom” is really just personality-based and nothing more.
If your personality is running your campus ministry, then your personality might be RUINing your campus ministry. What are you doing that you don’t enjoy?
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A while ago, I had the opportunity to guest-blog at the BASIC Concepts for Campuses blog. In case you missed it (or need a refresher), I wanted to post it here, too!
There’s a big problem with making a list like this: There are plenty of other items that could end up on it.
That being said, here are some of the areas your college ministry might want to rethink – or consider in the first place! Each of them has the potential to take a ministry to its next level of impact, so hopefully two or three of them (at least) will give you some pondering-fodder in the months ahead!
1. Get smaller. What would happen if you devoted a heavy portion of energy to impacting one particular “people group” on campus – the Theater club, for instance, or one dorm floor where a few of your ministry’s students already live? This is niche-based college ministry, and it’s one strategy always worth considering. If (by God’s leading) you put disproportionate effort into reaching deeply into one campus segment, you may find that you actually reach more students that way… and more non-Christians, too.
2. Learn the tribe. How much time have you, as college minister or student leader, put into “learning your tribe”? Any missionary would likely spend months observing, studying, and discussing his particular mission field. Do you know your campus’s demographics? Do you know the goals of the administration for the next 24 months? What segments of campus are other college ministries reaching well? What’s the history of your mission field? If you don’t know the answers to these and other questions, you’re not making the impact you could.
3. Prepare for success. College ministers should be evaluated on how well their graduates are doing two years beyond college. (That’s not the only measure of success, but it’s a big one.) How well is your ministry doing at preparing students for “the real world”? While this should be a purpose throughout the college years, it should receive special attention as students near graduation. How are seniors being discipled in choosing a church, handling money, finding community, dating, being a Christian employee, and the many other struggles of life beyond college?
4. Share whys, not just whats. How often do you encourage students to do something without helping them understand why? It’s easy to push students to service opportunities, invite them into community, or urge them to excel in their studies without once teaching them what the Bible has to say about these things. (And students probably won’t argue that they’re each important.) But giving instructions without biblical motivation is legalism, and it makes us no different from their fraternities and service clubs when it comes to encouraging “good behavior.” A quick test: For each aspect you consider to be a “pillar” of your college ministry, have you engaged in ministry-wide discipleship on that topic?
5. Evaluate. When you really think about it, do you know that your ministry is making an impact? How do you know? One of the trickiest things about college ministry is figuring out how to evaluate our work, but it’s still worth attempting to do. Are students remembering (and applying) your weekly talks? Are small group leaders communicating well? Is your annual on-campus service project accomplishing what you hoped? Are students actually succeeding spiritually in the years beyond college? Are visitors feeling welcomed and getting the information they should? If you don’t have regular and effective means of evaluating your activities, it’s time to develop some!
Have you considered these areas in your ministry? What other areas in your ministry have you realized needed to be reconsidered?
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The last couple of days, I’ve encouraged us to be in love with our campuses enough that we recognize the various opportunities that arise in the course of any school year. Further, to take advantage of those opportunities, we have to remain flexible and leave lots of space to adjust our methods to our ever-changing mission field.
One last quick thought on this, based on what I’ve seen in the world of college ministry.
For many of us, it’s quite tempting to let our present students’ felt needs determine the course of our ministries. For instance, a campus minister might decide to speak on a certain theme because…
- our students always get excited about that topic
- we think the theme or approach will draw students
- we’ve heard students recently clamor for a certain style (“to go deeper,” for example)
- our ministry’s students have recently begun checking out another ministry on campus
- it’s a theme that has “worked really well” before.
And we can have the same mindset in other areas, from service events to fun traditions – letting students inside our ministry “steer the ship” to such an extent that we (their college ministers) are no longer really shepherding.
Our students’ felt needs, their various opinions, and the potential to draw (or keep) them shouldn’t be the linchpins of our decisions about our ministries. Yes, those things matter as we’re making programming decisions. But students don’t always know what they need most, and they don’t always desire what they need most. And no matter how much they want a certain topic or a certain fun event, those methods must constantly be made to bow before the particular purposes they’re meant to serve.
So to sum up:
- I’d guess that many college ministers need to let the climate of the campus influence their methodological decisions more.
- And I’d also guess that many need to let their own students’ wishes influence their methods a little bit less.
So the most important question is, How well are you doing in both of these areas? Which of these areas might you need to work on?
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Yesterday’s post considered how well we recognize and connect with the “pulse” of our campuses. Are you noticing the many opportunities within each semester? Are you taking advantage of those opportunities?
A big key here is, of course, knowing your campus well enough to see what’s taking place. But it’s possible to “know the times” and still not be able to respond to the opportunities presented to us… because our ministry structures don’t offer space for changes.
Some ways this works out (in my mind, at least!):
1. Things that have worked well in the past must still be reevaluated for the present. Once a campus ministry is developed, it’s very easy for its leaders to discover effective, efficient practices… and then stick with them month after month or year after year.
Learning from our successes is great, and traditions can be very valuable. But we run the risk of falling into what so annoys us about some churches: Traditionalism. Traditionalism doesn’t only look like stained glass or 1950s methods; traditionalism can look like taking the same mission trip each year or throwing the same fun event during New Student Orientation each August. If you started from scratch, would you really choose to do this method in this way again?
2. If your full calendar is set a year in advance, your ministry probably isn’t responding to the campus like it should be. Do we need to plan mission trips months or years beforehand? Sure! Does God sometimes reveal our message themes and small group topics well in advance? Of course.
But when it comes to your own children, how many of you consistently map out their exact discipleship routes, fun activities, and “teachable moments” a year in advance? If you did, would that be best for them? The same goes for our students (and the students not yet touched by our ministries).
If we’re loving our campuses well, it should be impossible to determine exactly how we’re going to reach those campuses over the course of a school year. Yes, some planning is valuable and important. But if you’re always deciding in July what students will need to learn next March, then you’re probably “doing college ministry” more than you’re reaching college students.
3. Your activities shouldn’t only be determined by those already in your college ministry. Remember, we’re not only responding to our students’ growth and other changes. The whole campus is our mission field, so in some part the whole campus should inform our agenda. More on this in the next post.
4. Requiring flexibility and leaving space for change will force you to know (and respond to) your campus. If you’ve already decided that a large part of your calendar a couple of months (or a couple of weeks) from now will be determined by the needs of the moment… then you’re going to be more attuned to the needs of the moment. That’s just the way it works!
[The follow-up post can be found right here!]
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Today, I also did a guest post for BASIC College Ministries, a cool northeastern group I got to speak for last year. Check out “5 Areas Worth (Re)Thinking About” right here.
This month is (among several other things, I’m sure) National Social Workers Month. That’s why my girlfriend has flowers on her desk this week… and it’s a really smart move for national Social Work groups. Giving themselves an “official month” each year gets their work spotlighted in a focused way, whether that’s from companies that employ social workers, the news media, financial supporters, the government, or others.
The field of Collegiate Ministry runs on support and recognition, right? Many of us (particularly in the campus-based world) request donations from ministry partners – and we’d love to draw more partners, too. At Christian colleges, the directors of spiritual development need budget support and recognition from their higher-ups. And church-based college ministers need those same two things – budget help and recognition – not only from their bosses but from their congregations, as well.
So if all that’s true, where’s our Month?
The truth is, if you’re a college minister of any kind, you’re probably in a position to request (if not outright declare) a special month of focus from
- your church body (whether you’re a church-based campus minister or not)
- your financial supporters
- your larger organization
- your denomination (whether you serve a denomination directly or not)
- bigger ministries in your region
- your college campus (imagine that – your school highlighting the contributions off the “religious community” one month each year!)
And here’s what I’d suggest: Make it March. Yes, I know it’s halfway through at the moment, but I still think March might just be the best month for most of us.
But today, I want to encourage you with that idea: Request (or declare) a month to spotlight the importance, achievements, and needs of Collegiate Ministry.
Tomorrow, why I think March is the way to go.
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Yesterday and today, I’ve had the opportunity to lead a gathering of church college ministers from across the Evangelical Free Church denomination (along with a few other college ministers who have joined us). We’ve been using the phenomenal “whiteboard-collaborative” method, and it’s already generated some neat conversations among the guys and gals here.
So since I’m in the thick of all this college ministry discussion, this week’s Fridea is going to be a challenge that isn’t exactly new to this blog – but is awfully important for anybody who wants to be the best college minister they can be.
The challenge? Meet with other college ministers – including other kindsof college ministers – to “talk shop,” share methods, ask questions, seek wisdom, and even brainstorm together.
I’ll say it again: If you’re not actively learning from other college ministers, you’re NOT excelling at college ministry like you could be.
And I’ll take it a step further for some of you: If you’re only learning from other college ministers in your own circles, you’re NOT excelling at college ministry like you could be.
That means you’re not impacting students like you could. Your methods aren’t as great as they should be. Your ministry is presently behind where it would be… if you’d accept the wisdom of many counselors. (Not to be harsh, but it’s true.)
So how can we make this happen, practically? Well, it likely starts with eating lunch with some of the other local college ministers – with intentionality about sharing ideas, methods, and theories. But it goes further, too, along these lines:
- Setting up a conference call with other college ministers in your state who also work with international students
- Taking a trip once a month to visit another ministry’s large group and eat lunch with its staff
- Cru and InterVarsity chapters from a couple of different campuses trading a staff member for a week
- Attending a conference or gathering of college ministers, organized by a different organization or denomination
…or whatever other combinations you can think of.In any case, learning isn’t optional if we want to fulfill our ministry.
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One of the best comments I heard peppered throughout my campus ministry-exploring travels was a recognition that we must consider students’ time and schedules. I was encouraged to hear that at least a few college ministers place this as a priority, and in fact it helped me realize that it must be.
Yes, students should be pushed to recognize that ministry to others, involvement in community, and other Christian pursuits should be a major part of their collegiate experience. Many of them don’t steward their time accordingly, or sacrifice in this area like they should.
But we are shepherds of these students, and we have to be willing to see both sides of this concern. I think it’s easy for us to correct their errors in underspending their time for ministry-oriented activities… while not taking responsibility not to ask too much of them.
Oftentimes the activities we expect of students – or even simply the events we offer them – make it far too easy for them to fall into a trap of spending too much of their time within our ministries… and too little time either in spiritual pursuits outside our college ministry OR on all the other equally spiritual pursuits of education, relationships, family, and any other callings God has placed on their lives.
For campus-based college ministries and institutional college ministries at Christian colleges, this includes not so filling students’ calendars that they find it all too easy to ignore church involvement.
So this has to be a priority, and it’s certainly a part of Hospitality: purposely ordering our college ministries to keep from overburdening students’ schedules.
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