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The mission was impossible. Take the head of a public research university and hide him in plain sight for a week. But the University of California, Riverside accomplished it at the request of the hit CBS reality show “Undercover Boss.” (from the UCR web site)
While it wasn’t my favorite episode of Undercover Boss ever, the season finale DID provide an awesome chance to go undercover on a college campus! Chancellor Timothy White dyed his hair, donned a fake ‘stache, and added some specs to complete the disguise – so he could tour his own campus from the inside.
As college ministers, it’s a very cool chance to think about schools the way administrators do – something we don’t spend enough time doing, in my opinion. There are so many moving parts, important (but unrecognized) people, and daily decisions. I appreciate what this Chancellor did to better learn his campus; hopefully we’re doing what we can to learn (and love) ours.
(I also learned some cool stuff about the Highlander tribe of UCR!)
The link below will take you to the video (which may go away soon), and be sure to notice there are seven bonus clips down below!
And for more, here’s the Los Angeles Times‘s coverage of the episode. You can also read a post I wrote awhile back that applied something I learned from Undercover Boss to our world – and it’s still one of the campus ministry ideas I’m most intrigued by.
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Sometimes it’s just helpful to have a pile of ideas or resources to think about in regards to college ministry – especially as we enter the summer and start thinking (or continue thinking) about next school year. (Meanwhile, some of us – including many church-based college ministers – are jumping right into their “second college ministry” with summertime students.)
This small pile of ideas, links, and thoughts comes directly from my amazing time with the BASIC College Ministries leaders at their Propel conference this week. I wanted to give everybody those same things, as well as provide an outline of my talk – which obviously provides a whole “pile of ideas” itself!
So here you go. Hope it’s helpful.
- Simple Church. I brought up this great book several times to help college ministers think through the “path of progress” they’re providing for / expecting of their students. Though it’s written about churches, it’s easily “translatable” – and profoundly helpful for us.
- The Books of Daniel and I Peter (and probably Esther, too). These all came up in the context of how campus ministries live “under captivity” (or something like that). How do we work, serve, witness, and thrive within a campus tribe that may be not only indifferent to our message but even concerned about our methods? These books of the Bible answer this question differently than popular Christianity and even some college ministries do.
- The Dip. This came up a couple of times, especially in the context of newly forming college ministries. Are you prepared to do what it takes to establish a long-lasting and long-effective campus mission? And have you considered all the options for the scope of your ministry – including not aiming for a traditional, full-fledged college ministry? This secular (and very short) business book will help you answer those questions.
- CruPress and NavPress both came up multiple times as great places to look for tips on leading small groups (especially the former) and curriculum for small groups (especially the latter).
- Veritas Forum came up multiple times as a great example of an outside group that can be awesome for multiple ministries on a campus to rally around (and thereby unify around). I also discussed Veritas as really helpful for providing Christian forums that can still appeal to a fully secular campus.
- I actually failed (I think) to give most of the group the address for my (free!) ebook. You can find that at www.reachingthecampustribes.com.
Here’s the outline of my two seminars from the weekend. Remember, I was speaking to leaders from multiple church-based college ministries, so these seminars tilt that way. But there’s lots in there that would apply to most of us.
SEMINAR ONE: WHO WE ARE
We Are College Ministers
- we have an awesome and noble calling
- we must be learners (whether our personality tilts that way or not)
- we are missionaries to a specific tribe
We Are Missionaries
- this is difficult
- long-term and short-term strategy is vital
- we should be building toward longevity
- contextualization is fundamental
We Are Part of the Campus Tribe
- we should respect the land we’re called to
- we should love the land we’re called to
- we should connect with life there
- we should connect with and join in with what God’s already been doing there
We Are Sent By a Church
- there are some advantages to being church-based; use them!
- we should share our story and our specific role with our church; help them understand and support us!
- we should help our church own the vision and work toward a long-lasting, fruitful campus mission
- we should consider how we’re shepherding home-grown students – perhaps even first
SEMINAR TWO: (NEW?) IDEAS WORTH PONDERING
- Purpose-based Methods (every time)
- Preparing students for an excellent Transition Out (to the “real world”)
- Don’t be afraid to love your campus
- Don’t be afraid to take a step back and make sure you’re building the best possible College Student Plan
- Don’t be afraid to invent
- Be excited about what you can do
- Learn more about the Millennials (since they’re our mission field right now)
- Don’t be too student-centered (they need adult direction and wisdom)
- Prioritize teaching students to be “great in the basics”
- Get great in the basic skills of college ministry
- What you’re doing – campus ministry – is so very worth it
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One of the simple but very, very important things I was reminded of on Road Trip 15 was the difference in what “success” might look like campus to campus. It’s important to realize that our “percentage of the student body reached” formulas (formal or informal) are at best only guidelines.
Sometimes a great ministry – well-established, well-run, full of Spirit and truth – won’t draw the number of students we “think it should.” In fact, one campus may be populated by several ministries like this and still not see nearly as many students reached as some less effective, less efficient ministries somewhere else.
Sure, I hope we see inroads and dramatic revival and even new, God-revealed methods that help grow our impact on campuses formerly thought to be quite difficult. We can’t use Hard Soil as an outright excuse (and I don’t meant it to be one here). But we should recognize it as reality.
- So we celebrate the victories we see, including every life we see changed.
- So we determine to push and tug until our ministry is the very best it can be.
- So for us not already on a certain campus, we’re careful not to encroach on what God is already doing in tough places. We refuse to assume that our college ministry efforts would be helpful. Maybe they would be. But maybe not. Maybe the soil’s just hard, but there are enough campus ministries.
And we who are in Easier Soil settings must beware that we not assume we’re fulfilling our ministries just because we’ve got a lot of people or saw a lot of lives changed last year. It’s a bigger temptation to be mediocre when you can still draw a hundred…
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I’m on my 15th multistate, college ministry-exploring road trip! (Details here.) So whenever I can write, I’ll be posting an “under the hood” look at what I learn and experience on these trips. Enjoy!
This morning I had great chats with two college ministers here at UNLV: Mattie Goins, director of InterVarsity’s chapter here, and Steve Timmons, head of the Christian Challenge ministry here (and the guy who brought me in to speak tomorrow). As usual, these college ministers were able to give me an amazing “insider’s” view of this campus – including the tricky, sticky efforts to reach it for the Lord.
I might post later in the week about the uniqueness of this Rebel tribe, once I’ve got time to get pictures posted. But what I wanted to list here were some of the interesting ideas today’s conversations left me with.
1. Why aren’t we all about planting college ministries on community colleges and other under-reached campuses? Mattie described efforts in her region along these lines, but people who are willing to stand up for reaching less “name brand” campuses are few and far between. That stinks.
2. I’d be intrigued to hear from ministries that are the ONLY Jesus-devoted org on their campus. It would be fascinating to hear the experiences and insights from those ministries that have no counterparts in college ministry reaching their particular tribe.
3. Short-lived church efforts are legion. This wasn’t news to me; in fact, there’s a small chunk of my book devoted to the topic. But a history of “turbulence” or “fragility” in church-originated college ministry work came up again today. Not so coincidentally, fixing this is a big focus of tomorrow’s seminars…
4. Come from abroad or learn broadly. I was also reminded of how helpful it can be to have college ministry staff that has experienced another campus. Too often our ministry worlds are way too small. If we do have limited experiences, then we’ve got to make up for it by learning others’ contexts all the more.
5. But… be local or get local. But Mattie reminded me of the flipside, too: There’s value in understanding Las Vegas and UNLV as she (a local and UNLV alumna) can. Outsiders sometimes don’t realize nuances that locals do. So for us who aren’t actually locals or alumni of our ministry campuses, we’ve got to do all that’s necessary to “get local” – learning our context beyond just surface measures, and loving our context as our very home.
6. Money. Needed. This came up with both ministers, too, but Steve described the recent vote to defund various college ministry work around the state of Nevada. (Southern Baptist ministry is, in many states, funded via churches collectively rather than through individuals.) For all of us, it’s worth considering alternates and additions to the funding we’re used to. My Books-to-Impact project is one way to help campus ministries do this, but I betcha there are many others we can come up with! Maybe it’s time to start trying.
By the way, this idea-generation happens in nearly every conversation I have with campus ministers – I’m left with something cool to ponder for our field, whether it’s something I’ve never thought about before or just something unique I haven’t considered for awhile. Asking good questions – and even moreso, just plain listening to a college minister talk about his or her ministry – yields a surprising bounty of ponder-able goodness!
Written from the Student Union of the University of Nevada – Las Vegas
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I’m on my 15th multi-state, college ministry-exploring road trip! (Details here.) This week’s blogs are a chance to ride along with me, both on the fun stuff and the ministry learnin’. Enjoy.
It makes sense to spread far and wide the “Spring Forward, Fall Back” reminder for clock-adjustment… until you come here. As you may be well aware, Arizona doesn’t “celebrate” Daylight Saving Time, so at this moment they’re in line with Pacific Time; come mid-November, they’ll be tracking with the Mountain Timers.
Similarly, it’s natural and helpful to discuss strong August college ministry ideas, or to share an excellent approach to reaching students in each half of the school year. Until you’re talking to college ministers at the dozens of Quarter System schools.
One might be tempted to call regular on-campus meetings an “obvious” “Best Practice”… but that just means we haven’t met too many campus ministers at commuter schools.
And I’ve heard about methods trumpeted because of their fruits at one campus… then seen the scars left from those same methods on several other campuses.
It looks like this road trip is going to involve some purposeful time spent getting to know a couple of campuses and God’s work there. But I already know that both schools are great examples of campus diversity. UNLV is clearly in one of the most unique metropolitan areas in the U.S.. And last time I visited, I thoroughly enjoyed stumbling upon its large Hotel Management school (makes sense in Las Vegas, right?).
Northern Arizona University, on the other hand, is where I once met a college minister devoted to niche ministry among outdoors-lovers. NAU, surrounded by mountains and in the middle of the very unique town of Flagstaff, naturally inspires unique ministry.
And THAT’s why it makes sense to travel 1200 miles to explore a little more of the college ministry world: because I can’t really learn about Northern Arizona University by studying SMU (the closest university to where I live). In fact, studying SMU wouldn’t even tell me an awful lot about impacting University of Texas at Dallas, TCU, Texas Wesleyan University, or any of the other schools within 50 miles of my house.
I’ll get the chance on Wednesday to talk to some Las Vegas pastors about reaching their local “campus tribes.” And I’ll tell them the same thing I blog about often: College campuses are different, so we’ve got to figure out how to reach each one.
Fortunately, they won’t have to travel 1200 miles to evaluate their mission fields. And as for me, I’m happy to do it.
Written from Motel 6, Holbrook, Arizona
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Hopefully you’ve been able to link over to Guy Chmieleski’s blogathon this week! Yesterday’s posts provided a first round of thoughts on the future of our field, from six different perspectives!
My own entry is called “Further In: A Future of Deeper.” It begins,
The brightest future for any individual college ministry might be found in going deeper, not simply wider. And coincidentally, this could just be one of the most exciting paths forward for our field as a whole, too.After exploring the wide world of American college ministry over the last four years, I’m occasionally asked about anything that I’ve found disappointing. One of my common responses: “It all seems too similar.” I’ve seen hundreds of ministries in action (in all four branches of college ministry), and while I’m quite excited about what they’re doing, it’s still rare to find ones that seem, well, all that different.
Of course, I’m not saying ministries are identical. But it’s far too rare to find… [Keep reading - and add your thoughts - at the Blogathon!]
A couple of my other faves were Russ Martin’s very simple, very practical exhortation and Jamie Noling-Auth’s reminder about the half of our audience (or probably more!) that we may be missing…
I’m at College Metro this week (it’s in Ft. Worth this year, so that’s easy enough!), so these blogs are springing from that awesome event.
I know a campus ministry conference is going beautifully when I get two blogs out of the first night!
Eric Bryant, whom I mentioned yesterday, is a former church planter (in Seattle). So during our Q&A time, I asked a question that is always fun to ask the church planting crowd:
If we want to reach our campuses better, we obviously need to get to know them. Do you have any tips from your days as a church planter for exegeting our contexts?
He noted a few different ideas, but one in particular stuck out as a great Fridea for this week – and it’s something that’d be worth doing no matter how long you’ve been serving in your particular campus context.
His idea: Ask a non-Christian student to show you the campus.
In general, we’re likely to view our entire campus through the eyes of Christians. We observe certain things (and our eyes are presumably Christian!), and we learn more about the campus through our core students (also probably Christians). Even when we first exegete our context, we might go to other college ministers or local pastors to learn about this mission field.
All that is really profitable, of course. But we should realize that we need other views of our campus – and asking non-Christians to show us their campus might bring insights we wouldn’t have had otherwise.
But of course there’s more to this: This becomes an opportunity to develop a real friendship with a real unconverted person. (Or even a group of ‘em!) So even if they show you nothing new, they’ve gone out of their way to benefit you – and there are few better ways to connect with someone.
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As I continue to encourage us to CELEBRATE the work of College Ministry this week, I want to highlight something that we don’t often think about – especially since our noses are so often buried deeply within our local mission (as they should be).
But think about this: Who else – in all of Christendom – gets to work within such a varied field? Besides what is normally thought of as Missions, American college ministers probably serve in more wildly diverse contexts than anybody! (And that’s one of the reasons I continue to compare us to the other forms of Missions.)
If there are “categories” of our mission fields, they would have to be determined by not just region but also by size, specializations, admission requirements, history, governance, and more. (All this is why it’s such a fallacy for anybody to assume that narrow experiences among one or two campus tribes can be extrapolated blindly.)
But there’s more. Our field isn’t just diverse, it’s beautifully diverse. Today is one of the days that highlights that, as 32 schools from across the country are represented on the first main day of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
When the Belmont Bruins play the Wisconsin Badgers, you’re watching a small Christian college (with a unique tilt towards training in the Arts) play an enormous state school that, like many other capital city colleges, tilts toward the liberal end of the political spectrum. An Ivy League school older than our country faces a state school in a very different part of the country. BYU competes today, and so does Utah State; those schools likely have some big comparisons (because of the state they share) and some big contrasts (as a religious Mormon school and a public school, respectively).
And on and on we can go, noticing the wide-ranging contexts of Gauchos and Owls and Bearcats and Nittany Lions. Really – it’s not just the mascots that differ. I’ve been to those four campus tribes (and a total of 46 in this year’s tournament). And while I’ve gotten to know some mission fields better than other, I can certainly say… They’re different. And it’s glorious.
a picture (and 300 pictures) of campus diversity
This week, I finally finished putting together a project I had spent most of last year working on: My Campus Tribe of the Day photo albums. Using the T-shirts I’ve collected from 300+ campus tribes, I wore a different one each day (usually with a reason for the choice), and I saved ‘em all in two Facebook albums. When all was said and done, I had quite the mosaic.
If you wanna see that representation of our amazing diversity, take a quick look at the albums here and here.
This month’s big basketball tournament involves only a small fraction of the schools out there. There are thousands in our country alone, each with a different story and a different makeup and different needs.
Who are we, that God has seen fit to drop us in the middle of such an amazing field of ministry… a field made up of many fields, of many beautifully diverse fields?
Click on the pic if you wanna see the “tapestry” a lot bigger.
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What impact can an ad really have? Can it actually make a city feel better about itself? The answer this morning seems to be yes…
That’s how Monday’s FastCompany article on Chrysler’s Super Bowl ad begins. Did you see that commercial? It was well into the game, but it ran for a full two minutes, separating itself from the entire mass of well produced commercials that evening. (Even watching it again, though, it sure doesn’t seem that long.)
I spoke earlier this week about extrapolation, about the First Lady’s minor Charlotte flub and the way we too can assume that what applies to one campus or one region will apply to another.
But that’s the negative side of an amazing, beautiful reality. These places have a richness in their “localness,” in how they stand out from all the other campuses in the country. When we extrapolate, we’re actually denying the individuality of each campus, refusing to know it well enough to know the ways in which it is, simply, itself.
If you have a second, I encourage you to read the FastCompany article about the Chrysler ad before viewing it again (below). It helps point out the ways this commercial tied itself to its subject – not its apparent subject, a car, but its real subject.
A city.
And then ask yourself, “Could I produce something like this for my mission field? Have I let God bring me to love this campus enough, have I entered into its rhythms and life enough, that I could speak of it with tears in my eyes and fire in my belly?” Even though we place ourselves within these “campus tribes,” are we still relating to them as outsiders? Or have we immersed ourselves, made our home here, prayed not only to see but also to hear,
touch,
smell,
and taste these glorious places?
I urge you to “lose yourself / in the music, the moment” of your campus, that we might stand in a long line of missionaries indeed.
P.S. On a side note, the ad company behind this also created the Old Spice Man ads, which actually had a lot to teach us about college ministry, too. You can read about that right here.
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Yesterday’s post had Barack; today’s features Michelle.
I don’t know if you saw the surprising (and funny) little flap last week after the First Lady announced that Charlotte would host the 2012 Democratic Convention. But the mini-hubbub has something to remind us college ministers.
In her email announcement touting the choice, Obama wrote,
Charlotte is a city marked by its southern charm, warm hospitality, and an “up by the bootstraps” mentality that has propelled the city forward as one of the fastest-growing in the South. Vibrant, diverse, and full of opportunity, the Queen City is home to innovative, hardworking folks with big hearts and open minds. And of course, great barbecue.
The funny thing is, the residents of Charlotte apparently want us all to know that is not – I repeat, is not – known for its barbecue.
As Politico reports, everybody from the editors of the Charlotte Observer to a retired UNC professor weighed in to make it clear that the First Lady’s compliment wasn’t accurate. Which, of course, seems a little funny. But those North Carolinans are proud of their barbecue… and apparently that pride includes clarifying where to find the best of it.
I certainly wouldn’t have had any idea that Charlotte didn’t have great barbecue. The First Lady (or her email-writers) made the same mistake I could have, extrapolating from what they know about the state of North Carolina and (wrongly) applying it to Charlotte.
We do the same thing in campus ministry, believe it or not. We extrapolate from what we’ve seen to what we haven’t, assuming things like
- What worked in college ministry at my alma mater or former campus will work here
- Every chapter of that campus ministry organization is like the chapter here
- My years of experience in one setting means I know what campus ministry is like everywhere
- This campus will benefit from our version of college ministry just because it’s working over there
- It’s not incredibly important to spend real time exegeting my context before ministering
Whether you serve at the local level, regional level, or national level, how well have you gotten to know the campuses you serve? Are we assigning “great barbecue” where it doesn’t fit?
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