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For a few of the last several Mondays, I’ve been highlighting some of the thoughts from my free book, Reaching the Campus Tribes. It’s a chance to point out just how missiological the work of collegiate ministry is; the more we (and all American Christians) realize this is a missions endeavor, the better off we’ll be!
This week’s quote and discussion were suggested by my time in Ohio last week, where I got to consult with several college ministers and some potential church planters. The issue I discuss here came up often (just like the one I mentioned on Friday).
In many … college ministries, there is a strong bias toward ready-made programs that have been used elsewhere. While these successful templates might be a helpful place to start the planning process, students will only be best served when campus mission efforts are tailor-made for the tribes they are reaching. Contextualization is key. This doesn’t mean new ministries have to be untrue to their sponsoring organizations or fully “start from scratch” at each campus. But form should always serve function, not the other way around. Oftentimes that will require creative adjustments to the usual template.
Wise contextualization will also reveal that not every campus is right for every national ministry. Some parachurch and denominational organizations seem to assert a “manifest destiny” to place a ministry at every available college campus. However, I would urge all groups to consider planting ministries only where their work is truly needed. As with international missions, the cause of Christ must trump the cause of a single group. (Reaching the Campus Tribes, pages 103-104)
Not only campus-based groups reveal a “manifest destiny” mentality, either; I’ve come to realize that churches can do the same thing – both standard churches (especially ones with a large budget) and collegiate churches.
We simply don’t have a right to assume that just because we can plant a college ministry (or collegiate church), we should. Not every campus needs another ministry – especially if it’s yet another ministry of the same type, aiming for similar students.
As the week continues, I imagine I’ll discuss some of the implications – and amazing options – here. But first and foremost, we each have to deal humbly with the missiological wisdom of hesitation.
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I’m taking the next several Mondays expanding on some of the points from my book, Reaching the Campus Tribes. (You can read the first installment in this series here.)
One of the key points is that collegiate contexts are widely diverse. That one fact is probably the most important (but is certainly not the only) characteristic for understanding how collegiate ministry parallels foreign missions.
Here’s a paragraph from the book:
Like any tribe, each campus has a particular context that affects the ways it will be reached best. For example, large metropolitan areas, mid‐sized cities, and true “college towns” are all separate contexts that require different college ministry approaches. A community college is a context of its own, as is a medical school or other training institution. In a large city with many campuses, the presence of a “focus campus” – like the University of Washington in Seattle, or Ohio State University in Columbus – changes the context; large cities without one “focus campus” – Dallas, Boston, Washington, D.C., etc. – require different strategies (and can be far more difficult for college ministry). Schools with a Quarter System calendar require different ministry methods than colleges using semesters. Christian colleges require a very special sort of ministry. Campuses in the Northeast are different from those in the Deep South, which are different from those in the Midwest. With nearly endless contextual possibilities, each tribe presents unique circumstances that affect how we engage it for the cause of Christ. (p. 42)
Beyond those regional and structural differences, schools also vary widely in their culture. As I note there (p. 43), you’ll even find much variation between “Harvard and MIT and Tufts and Cambridge College and Boston College, even though they’re all accessible from the same subway system.” (For more discussion of all this, check out chapter 4!)
The problem is, very few college ministers have actually examined more than a handful of campuses themselves. Many of us have only worked at one or two schools, and it’s likely those are in the same region.
So that’s probably why so few college minsters are interested in hearing things like:
- You should consider starting your new ministry very slowly, learning the context carefully before you ever decide the basics of what your ministry will look like.
- Don’t assume what you’ve learned about college ministry will necessarily transfer well to others’ situations. You may not even realize all you don’t know!
- We shouldn’t automatically assume our brand of college ministry will serve a particular school well (whether we’re a church, a campus-based college ministry, or a college minister looking for a job). There is no “manifest destiny” for any organization to reach any particular campus(es).
Believing that contexts differ doesn’t mean I believe that every school’s the same or that there aren’t any transferable principles. This is more a question of approach than it is about actions. If we enter a new mission field humbly, learning its unique context before we start our work, then we can be pleasantly surprised when some elements turn out to be familiar. Certainly, our actions may often look the same as they would have elsewhere, but we will have started in the right place for maximum effectiveness and impact.
On the other hand, if we approach a campus with our methods ready-to-go and only later try to “tweak” as we learn the campus, we’ve started well behind… and we may even damage a campus in the process. (Again, look to the history of foreign missions for this phenomenon.)
Humility is a cornerstone of good foreign missions, and it should be a cornerstone of our work, too. The contexts really are different – take it from the guy who’s seen several hundred.
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I’m throwing out some Spring Break thoughts this week – see Monday’s for thoughts on Spring Break traditions, and Tuesday for the crazy Mad Libs eBay Road Trip idea.
Today, a simple question: Have you thought about impacting those who will stay in town?
“In town” means different things for different campus contexts. But for many of us, there might be an opportunity for short-term, high-impact discipleship. Maybe a one-week book club? Perhaps a few-night topical small group? What if you and a few student leaders spent a chunk of the week brainstorming? What if you did something for students well beyond your own ministry?
It could mean a lot of different things, of course, and for many it’s not a doable idea. But the question – especially in light of my encouragement Monday – is, Have you thought about it?
And one last thing: There are few better times to think about impacting international students. They’ll likely be around, even if nobody else is! What homes and/or hospitality will they find in a lonely week?
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This week, I’ve had a couple of chances to discuss college ministries that are built contextually from the beginning, letting the mission field itself suggest the methods and activities that can be best used to reach it.
To further flesh this out, I’d like to give some examples – but examples are hard to come by. Why? For one thing, I’ve rarely seen campus ministries that have obviously been built in this way. But second, the whole point is that these sorts of ministries can only come about by spending time loving and learning our individual campus tribes.
Still, I want to do my best. So here are a few ideas of what a college ministry built “with contextual bricks” might look like:
- As a campus missionary got to know a particularly academic campus, he might realize that discussion-based college ministry that takes place on Friday nights (when students aren’t as pressured to study) makes the most sense. Because of incredibly busy schedules of many of his students, he might organize “discipleship pairs” in place of the more common small group structures.
- During my first semester in Abilene, Texas, I noticed a need for greater unity among Christian students in town, as well as a large number of students seemingly “going through the motions” in this town with THREE Christian colleges. So a few of us designed a multi-campus, multiple-church-connected freshman small groups ministry, aiming to supplement the other work going on, exhort students in specific areas we’d noticed needs in, and raise up leaders.
- One local college minister was stepping into a church role and a college ministry that had yet to establish itself very well at SMU or other local colleges. After looking at this church’s strengths and potential (as well as the prevalence of other groups on campus), we discussed the possibility of a college ministry built as a collection of “pods” – multiple niche-based ministries that would impact areas of the SMU campus not already being reached well, while some “pods” might reach other campuses, too.
- At a campus with a (well-deserved) reputation as a party school, a new campus minister might decide her new ministry needs to offer people a “better fun.” She may intentionally design several front-door structures – a high-energy weekly large group meeting, a monthly public party, a huge ski retreat each semester, an annual dinner for the whole Greek system, and tailgating before every big football and basketball game – to draw non-Christians and help introduce them to “the life that is truly life.”
If you could re-tailor your college ministry for your campus, what would it look like? What stopped you from starting in that way? What’s stopping you from re-tailoring now?
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On Monday, I wrote about one of the areas I feel is most lacking in the world of collegiate ministry: campus ministries that are built from the ground up with their individual campuses in mind.
There’s a difference, I said, in building contextually right from the beginning (“using contextual bricks,” in other words) versus building a ministry and only afterward making it more contextual (“using contextual paint”).
David Bartosik followed up that post with a question, though, and I wanted to flesh out a little better what this might mean. David said,
I don’t know if I completely catch what your throwing, pick up what you’re laying down…dont get me wrong, I am interested. I have a college on my heart even as you say this, but would love to hear more of what point you are trying to communicate.
[Are you] Meaning each campus has a particular flavor and you are asking what specifically are you doing to contextualize the gospel to that heart college?
My quick answer to David’s final question would be… Yes, but I’m not just talking about contextualizing the message – but contextualizing the methodology. And I’m not even really talking about “contextualizing” some methodology that already exists, but instead forming each method around the needs, specifics, and even eccentricities of that campus.
So I’m not simply encouraging us to make sure what we speak from the stage is contextual… because that presupposes both a stage and giving messages from it! Instead, I’m suggesting we could use many more college ministries that are built in response to loving a campus, getting to know the campus, and begging God’s wisdom for reaching it in very specific ways.
Does this mean that we need to start more slowly than we often do? Yes. Does it mean we need to put everything on the table from the very beginning, including things we would never, ever expect to consider optional? Absolutely. Does it mean we shouldn’t assume we’ll have a large group meeting, shouldn’t assume we’ll try to reach all the students, shouldn’t assume our ministry will look much like others in our national organization or denomination? Yeah… and we won’t assume anything else, either. We’ll come to know – and love – our campuses, and in the process we’ll discern the best ways to impact it.
There are lots of merits to the “standard forms” of college ministry, and in some cases they’ll be the most contextualized route we could take to reach students. But how we decide that – and how long we’re willing to take to discern this – makes all the difference here.
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After all my travels and explorations and conversations, one of the clearest conclusions is that we don’t have nearly enough college ministries that have been built – from the ground up – with their particular campus in mind.
Many, many of us are good at slapping some coats of Contextualization on our already-built ministries, ministries composed of bricks from various sources. If we spend time loving one campus long enough, we might occasionally do some minor renovations that involve Contextualization more heavily, adding a wing or modifying a previously incongruous room to match better the campus we love.
But there’s not a lot of evidence of campus ministries designed with their own campus in mind more than any other influence. This sort of ministry would be composed of local bricks, nearly every decision affected by the campus tribe in which it finds itself. These college ministries are inherently contextual rather than simply growing to fit (somewhat) the field they’re in over time.
Of course, a large number of college ministries are still doing amazing work on their campuses. The lack of ground-up contextualization hasn’t kept them from bearing exciting, enormous fruit. But what more might we accomplish?
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Instead of the usual Fridea, I wanted to offer a little more college ministry “theory” with a continuation of yesterday’s post. I noted then two of the big areas where we see major variations within the field of college ministry – Meeting Sites and “Tribal Reach.” Today, two more areas in which variations occur.
Basic Structure
Yes, we’re all most familiar with the “full-fledged” or “classic” model of college ministry: generally autonomous ministries that try to offer a full discipleship experience for college students. But there are indeed ministries – in various branches of collegiate ministry – that differ.
Some, for example, may focus only on particular areas. Maybe they only hold a large group. Others may only (or primarily) use small groups. Others may focus on a few areas of service or discipleship – like “pods” of activity overseen by the ministry. Similar to these forms are college ministries that aim to be purposely complementary to other local college ministries. They offer one area of discipleship, while recognizing their students need other forms as well.
I’ve also run into college ministries that are purposely partnered with other ministries. These tend to involve churches that purposely make use of campus-based college ministries, which function as a sort of “outsourced” college ministry for the church. Meanwhile, some college ministries may be less officially tied but may very purposely point students to participation in the other.
Constituent Students
All college ministries – of all branches – have to consider whether to / how to involve students who live locally during the summer. Church-based college ministries and collegiate churches also have to consider how to / whether to minister to their “home-grown” students – both those who go away to school and those who stay nearby.
Once we make sense of it, the variations here are predictable. But not all of us realize that certain forms exist – like campus-based ministries that reach students while they’re home for the summer, or church-based college ministries that only focus on students at the local school (and not necessarily students who grew up in the church). Those outside of church-based college ministry also should recognize that these ministries sometimes face a real difficulty in having to maintain nearly two distinct college ministries – one for school year students, and one for the summertime crowd.
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These last two weeks, I’ve been blogging through some thoughts on the field of college ministry itself. It’s been “primer,” for sure, but a lot of us don’t have many chances to think outside our own branch of campus ministry. So I hope it’s been helpful!
Today and tomorrow, I’m heading a little further down the rabbit hole – with some things I spoke about at Leadership Network a few weeks ago. I was asked to discuss different models of college ministry I’d seen, and while my audience there included only Church-based College Ministers and those involved in Collegiate Churches, there was plenty of overlap for the other branches.
As you might remember (or may have missed), I did discuss other variations in college ministry last week. I’m not completely retreading that ground, so feel free to check out that post.
So without further ado, two more areas where college ministries vary pretty widely. I’ll hit another two tomorrow!
Meeting sites
Where a college ministry (of any kind) holds its activities obviously affects its draw, its opportunities, and its options. But there’s a wide continuum here: from college ministries that function entirely on-campus (for large group meetings, small groups, and more) to those functioning completely off-campus.
Sure, church-based ministries may comprise more of the latter group. And campus-based and institutional campus ministries more often fall into the first group. But it would be a mistake to assume it always works out that way.
More importantly, this really is a continuum. For instance, many groups that hold a Large Group Meeting off-campus offer small groups on campus, while other groups may meet on-campus midweek but offer small groups in homes or other locations. The mix of these options makes for a wide variety of “campus ministry geography” around the nation – and even on a single campus.
“Tribal reach”
It’s a mistake to assume that every college ministry only reaches one campus – especially in the case of church-based college ministries. Sure, many college ministries (of the various branches) naturally focus on one campus – simply because there’s only one campus to reach! But other college ministries focus on one campus despite the presence of other local campuses. (This might not be surprising in the case of campus-based ministries, but is in the case of church-based ones.)
Other college ministries (of the various branches) rather organically focus on multiple campuses (because students naturally show up – perhaps from a local “feeder school” or because a church has youth ministry graduates who attend several local colleges). But some college ministries strategically or “fully” focus on several campuses, running what may look like individual college ministries.
On the other hand, some college ministries may choose to reach only a portion of a single tribe. They may focus on one geographical area, perhaps, or (more often) a more specific niche – like athletes or members of a certain ethnic group.
Again, it’s important to note that most of the branches participate anywhere within this spectrum. Only Institutional College Ministers, perhaps, would be highly unlikely either to reach more than one campus OR to reach only a portion of the campus they serve. Of course, church-based college ministries might be more likely to target multiple campuses (either “organically” or “strategically”), but campus-based ministries and collegiate churches do at times, too.
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Today I have the chance to share a brownbag seminar at Dallas Theological Seminar. I’ve been asked to speak on “The Four Streams of College Ministry,” introducing for students the branches that make up our field.
I’ve found it immensely helpful to think about collegiate ministry in four branches. But it’s actually been through my journeys that this nomenclature has developed, and I wanted to revisit that issue before jumping into further thoughts later this week.
In October 2009, I first broached the subject of broadening my original 3-branch system. I received some great comments on that post – comments that truly helped me digest that issue. Here’s (most of) that post, followed by a link to the comments it received.
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I believe I first outlined my classification of the “three branches” of college ministry in a post way back in February 2008. I had variously referred to those three branches before, including in my book:
- Campus-based college ministry (including parachurch, denominational, and independent ministries centering their activity on the local campus)
- Church-based college ministry (ministries overseen within individual churches)
- Spiritual development at Christian colleges (the specific people or departments in Christian colleges dedicated to student discipleship, often called “spiritual life” or “chaplaincy”) (from Reaching the Campus Tribes, pages 17-18)
Those branches are distinguished, in my mind, by a few major things:
- Campus integration (the connection of the ministry to the college campus, including where it centers its activity)
- Oversight (who tends to hire, govern, and evaluate a ministry’s leaders)
- Function (the way the ministry operates and “feels,” particularly to students)
- Field reception (the lines the college ministry community has tended to draw between these areas)
While any of these factors might be clearer or fuzzier for an individual ministry, I do feel they fairly well delineate between the various branches. So using this terminology has been really helpful to me.
But as I continue to explore and ponder, I always want to be open to tweaking my approach! One question has especially led me to consider adding a “fourth branch” to my classification (it’s the first question listed below).
The big questions:
- Collegiate Church Planting is a major strategy employed on a significant number of campuses. Should it be considered a fourth branch of college ministry, or does it fit better under one of the present branches?
- Should campus-based ministry be split into two branches: denominational / church-related and fully parachurch?
- Should ministries run entirely by students be considered a separate branch of college ministry?
- What’s the best term for Branch #3? “Spiritual development at Christian colleges”? “Chaplaincy”? Something else?
- Any other adjustments you would make to this system?
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A handful of college ministers weighed in on that post with some outstanding thoughts, leading me to the four-branch system I now use. I highly encourage you to check out those comments here.
Those thoughts also helped solidify the names I tend to use for these “Four Streams.” Here’s how I’ll describe those branches with the seminary students today:
- Campus-based college ministry (which includes both fully parachurch and denominational ministries)
- Church-based college ministry
- Institutional college ministry (specific spiritual development organized by Christian schools)
- Collegiate churches (including independent church plants and campus-focused sites of multisite churches)
In the days to come, I’ll observe some of the differences, similarities, and unique aspects of these branches! And as always, I’d love your thoughts on how this is organized – in our underdeveloped field, this is one sort of discussion we need a lot more of!
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Yesterday, I had two conversations in which I described today’s observation about the field of College Ministry. One of those was in preparation for my time today with college ministers from around the country, as they meet in a cohort with Leadership Network here in Dallas… so I’ll probably share this observation with them, too!
So since it’s on my mind, I wanted to share this thought here, as well.
As I’ve made my way across the country (multiple times!) and sat with many college ministers from the various branches of our field (campus-based, church-based, institutional, and collegiate churches), I’ve noticed that, by-and-large, there seems to be far too much sameness. Too much homogeneity, especially given the contextual diversity of the places we serve.
That diversity isn’t simply regional; even campuses in the same town can be widely diverse. We may not recognize that diversity if we’ve only served on a campus or two, but it’s truly there: Every campus really is its own “tribe.” While we certainly can find similarities and discern categories among campuses, the point is that those things must be found and discerned. They’re not obvious or automatic campus-to-campus.
But here’s the weird thing: Even within all that sameness, there’s a level of disconnected difference that also makes me sad. Yes, most college ministries look very similar (even if on the tip-top surface they seem to be different). But at the level of practices and functional models and methods, there seems to be very little sharing of “Best Practices” and other wisdom – especially outside of the more established campus-based college ministries.
So in the very place I’d love to see some similarities – simply because there is wisdom to be gained and there are skills to be shared – I see everybody simply doing “as they see fit.” Not in a sinful way, but in a way that continues to point to the underdevelopment of our field.
More on this – and why it matters practically – later. Feel free to share your thoughts!
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