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I’m leading a small gathering of church-based college ministers from around the U.S. later this week! (I’ll blog more about that in the days to come.) One of the tools we’ll probably use is the post below, looking at just how diverse even college ministry’s most basic methods can be. So since it’s a good one (and has been a popular one), I figured I’d repost it for everybody today.
Since most of us have only seen a few different college ministries in action (and sometimes no ministries outside our own circles), we haven’t had the opportunity to learn all the other ways that ministries organize service projects, recruit freshmen, or fundraise. But it’s funny: Once we observe even a few “alternate universes,” we may start to realize how many options are truly available.
Nowhere is this more true than in the staple of college ministry: the Large Group Meeting, the “Sing ‘n Speak” that is the cornerstone for so many. Starting with the decision about whether to have a Large Group Meeting or not (yes, some college ministries have decided not to), you’re making lots of choices… even if you don’t mean to.
But if your choices aren’t conscious decisions, they’re less likely to be as impactful as they could be.
Below is a list of decisions you’ve already made about your college ministry’s Large Group gathering. How do I know you’ve already made these decisions? Because this list is based on actual variations I’ve seen in campus ministries across the country.
Each of these 49 areas differ within U.S. college ministries – so how many did you make a conscious decision about?
Decisions you’ve made about your college ministry’s large group gathering
Schedule, organization, etc.
- Day of the week?
- Time of night (or day)?
- Length? (I’ve seen 30 minutes to 1:30+)
- Number of times in a week / month? (Besides the more standard weekly meeting, some have daily meetings, monthly gatherings, and less-than-monthly gatherings)
- What do we call our Large Group Meeting? (formally and informally)
- Location? (off-campus or on-campus, and then the decision of where beyond that)
- Is the bulk of the meeting organized / run by students or by adults?
- Does the Large Group Meeting involve only one college ministry, or multiple ministries? (multiple could be from the same organization across a city, or from multiple organizations across a campus or city)
- Who is involved in setup and how is that managed?
- Are adults / volunteers (besides staff) present at the meeting?
The Start
- What do students see when they first approach the meeting area?
- What takes place as student wait to start? Congregate and talk? Sit down? Pray / prepare? Eat something?
- What takes place before the start? Music? Announcements on PowerPoint? A countdown video?
- Do students wait inside the room, outside the room, or both?
- Does greeting of members and/or visitors take place before the meeting? Is that greeting organic? Systematic?
- Nametags?
- Start on time? Purposely start late? Accidentally start late?
The Music
- Are songs regularly sung at the Large Group Meeting? (nope, not everybody does)
- How many songs are sung?
- Does the majority of (or all) singing take place before or after the message?
- Is the singing broken up by announcements or other activities?
- Are the worship leader and/or band involved in the college ministry (outside of this meeting)?
- Is the worship leader and/or band required to meet certain spiritual qualifications?
- What is the song choice based on?
- Are there other worship stations (art, prayer, etc.) available during this time?
*of course, some “special gatherings” might involve other variations on the singing – like a whole meeting of only singing, a certain type of music, no music, etc.
The Message
- Standalone message, or part of a series? (and if so, how long is the series? A few weeks? Semester-long?)
- How is the message topic / passage chosen?
- Who gives the message? Does that change week-to-week?
- How long is the message? (I’ve probably seen from 10 minutes to an hour)
- Is there organized group discussion of the message within the meeting time?
- Are suggestions given for further study of the topic (either verbally or on paper)?
- Is there interaction with the audience during the message?
*of course, we could ask a billion more questions about message content, speaking aids, components of a message, etc.. I’m sticking to broader issues here, but those are all important decisions, too.
The More
- Are announcements given? If so, what is their tone and method? Who gives them?
- Are announcements from outside organizations allowed?
- What students / kinds of students are “honored” or placed in front of their peers? (Thanks to Bob Wriedt from the original post’s comments for helping me think through this one.)
- Is there a “greeting of those around you” time?
- Is there a corporate ice breaker and/or skit?
- Is there a set-aside time for prayer in groups and/or an extended time of silent prayer?
- Is an offering taken? (yes, plenty of ministries do this)
- Are visitors pointed out during the meeting?
- Is attendance counted, or are attendees recorded somehow?
- Are the college minister and other leaders identified to attendees?
- Is there an opportunity given to take any sort of next step immediately? (this could be anything from an evangelistic appeal and invitation to a “5-minute party” to share about the ministry afterward)
The After
- Do students congregate afterward? (yes, even this is partly our decision!)
- Is there space / opportunity for students to connect with each other (even casually) after the meeting?
- Are there activities organized after the meeting? Are these for (small-group) discipleship, fellowship, or some other purpose?
- Are sign-ups and/or advertisements available for students at the meeting?
- Do we sell / give away anything (T-shirts, stickers, etc.)?
- Who is involved in “tear-down,” and how is that managed?
Look for the follow-up later this week. But if you want more now, check out the the original follow-up post, which asks whether these should be seen as a bunch of methods – or one “method bundle.”
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Every college ministry has “pillars” – those areas its leaders feel are essential for the mission they’re called to, the methods and themes that it’s most important to do well and get right. Often one college ministry’s pillars will be different from those claimed by other ministries (including other ministries on the same campus); they’re the main aspects of a ministry’s “DNA.” Deciding your ministry’s “pillars” usually involves both discernment up-front and observation over time.
After writing a bit about pillars yesterday, I wanted to address three important ways these pillars should be used in any campus ministry (although sadly, these steps are far too often avoided). In other words, these are pillars for your pillars.
In a college ministry, your pillars should be:
- Taught. The why of our pillars must be taught, and it must be taught ministry-wide. If Service is a pillar of a college ministry, then just offering service opportunities isn’t enough; if Evangelism is our focus, then it should be the focus of some of our teaching, too.
- Accessible. If Leadership Opportunities are a pillar of your ministry, is the road to leadership obvious and available to anybody (even if they aren’t in some evasive “inner circle”)? And if Small Group Involvement is a pillar, then group sign-ups shouldn’t only be available in the first few weeks of the school year… right?
- Repeated often. Along the lines of yesterday’s post, our pillars should be regularly spoken, among our student leaders and all the students. Can it be as explicit as having everybody repeat the pillars of your ministry, out-loud, on a regular basis? Sure it can, as long as you aren’t creepy about it. And whenever the opportunity arises, slip in a comment: “We’re donating to a Microfinance ministry, because International Involvement is one of the focuses of our club.”
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If they haven’t spent 3 hours combing through your ministry’s web page, what details are new visitors discovering that encourage them to continue coming? If students didn’t make your annual “vision-casting” message at the start of the school year, how clear are your ministry’s main themes, activities, and purposes?
We college ministers – along with our student leaders – know everything there is to know about our campus ministry. We know its strengths, we know our “pillars” (Bible study, Justice, Evangelism, Leadership, Discipleship, Local Service, or whatever), we know what events we do on a weekly, regular, or annual basis.
But will this week’s visitors all hear about those things?
If a non-Christian visitor, for instance, has a personal love for foreign aid, will she hear that your ministry sends students each summer to be involved in helping end sex slavery in Africa?
Will another visitor who’s never really seen Christians have fun hear about the parties you plan to throw?
Will the future seminarian find out that serious Bible study is common in your ministry (even if you happen to be a very practical Dating series right now)?
We don’t always do a good job of putting much out there about our ministries that visitors might want to know. Hopefully we’re great at being friendly, welcoming, and rallying, but students nowadays are often going to make choices on much more than that. I don’t know how – in your ministry’s case – this needs to happen. But the more reasons we can give different kinds of people to keep checkin’ us out… the better!
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It seems to me that true Hospitality is characterized by – among other things – a recognition of all, not just many.
When I’m thinking about Hospitality (in college ministry, churches, or otherwise), it helps me to consider how the perfect party host handles her soirees. Does she aim to host the bulk of her crowd, or all of her crowd?
I think she considers the All.
That doesn’t mean she acts the same to all (in fact, Hospitality recognizes that people need to be treated differently). And she doesn’t give in to every single expectation of each person, either.
But she thinks of all, she acknowledges all, she does what she can to host everyone at the party.
I would never say that a college ministry needs to (necessarily) target all students, cater equally to all students, or involve all students in the same way. But it seems to me… I think… that a Hospitable college ministry will indeed consider all students who make their way into it, for a day or a semester or longer.
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And… we’re back!
Over my break, I’ve been working on a possible book – only this one’s not about college ministry, it’s about the weird, intriguing, magnificent time I spent visiting 165 weekend church services during my yearlong road trip. Yes, the main purposes of that trip – and by far most of the hours spent – were all about exploring American college ministry. But I’m kind of a church geek, so I took the chance to visit a jillion churches on the weekends. It was pretty stinkin’ interesting, to say the least.
Anyway… a real focus of that book is how churches think about hospitality toward visitors (whether newcomers or longtime attenders). And that’s something that needs to be thought about constantly within our field, Collegiate Ministry, too.
So since I’ve been mulling those sorts of thoughts, I figured I’d make a blog series out of them; the start of a semester or quarter is a great time to think about Hospitality anyway. And since this is the first entry, that’s actually what I wanted to ask: How much have you thought about hospitality lately?
Sure, I imagine you’ve got some “plays” designed to welcome guests, and you designed some other things (maybe awhile back) to make your Large Group Meeting fun and inviting. But when’s the last time you really thought about how well it was accomplishing those purposes – and all the other purposes that make up true “hospitality”? Can you even list out what a truly “hospitable” college ministry might look like in your context?
Or what about your small groups? Do the leaders there think regularly about hospitality?
Have you identified students and leaders within your ministry with the spiritual gift of Hospitality? What roles do they play in your ministry?
In the days to come, I’ll be looking closer at some of these areas – and I’m sure a few more, as well. But for today, I’d encourage you to ponder (and even pray about) what role Hospitality – as a disciplined, purposeful pursuit – has played in your campus ministry… and what role you want it to play in the future!
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Before Thanksgiving Break, I wrote plenty about the need to prepare our students for the Break. And, whether we had the chance to do that or not, I encouraged us to work strategically to ready collegians for the long Christmas Break.
But there’s another important step a friend helped me realize last night: Debriefing.
What if this week’s small groups or Large Group Meeting was dedicated to talking through the good, the bad, and the ugly of your students’ Thanksgiving Breaks? Or what if you offered the opportunity at a special lunch or online forum? If you can’t take those steps, what if you at least encouraged students to talk to you, other adults, or student leaders about what they faced at home?
Some of your students feel like a semester’s worth of spiritual growth was unraveled in just a few days, and they’re wondering what that means or how in the world they’re going to handle Christmas. Some feel a tinge of homesickness now that they’ve returned – maybe for the first time this semester. Others were reminded – deeply – of all the reasons they were so glad to leave home for college. Some feel like they missed some opportunities to impact their friends or family.
Others had really neat times at home – and their stories would be great for other students to hear. (And some made mistakes that they can help others not repeat.)
There are all sorts of reasons why a post-break Debrief makes enormous sense. Yes, if you can’t get that together this week, then I’d definitely encourage starting that tradition in January. But as my friend pointed out, debriefing Thanksgiving is one more GREAT way to prepare students for the Christmas Break that’s coming soon.
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Today’s my spiritual birthday. It’s always a neat day to remember what Christ has done in my life (both before and after I acknowledged it!). I realize theologies differ on exactly when conversion happens, but as best I can figure, it was on August 25th many years ago that I entered a personal relationship with God through Jesus.
In light of my own lil’ holiday AND as you face a new school year, I wanted to repost one of six ways I suggested we could energize evangelism in our campus ministries:
Commemorate spiritual birthdays (the first one and later ones). If we believe that there really was a moment in every Christian’s life when he or she went from death to life, then that’s a big deal! So yes, celebrate when people come to Christ, but it’s also quite fitting to celebrate the date people came to Christ – last year or last decade! (See the other five suggestions here.)
I later expanded on this idea (including 12 ways to accomplish this celebration!):
In my family, my parents would treat my spiritual birthday (like my sister’s) like another holiday in our year. So every August 25th, I’d get a card and a congrats. Later on, I have often taken that day as a special day to seek the Lord, review His work in my life over the past year, and celebrate His salvation.
I s’pose our attention on “spiritual birthdays” as a family made me think about celebrating them within my first college ministry experience. So as I made the info forms for our Upstream Freshman Bible Study group, I (1) put a “Spiritual Birthday” line on those forms. (I either did it then or later, in my second Freshman Bible study. Either way…)
Not only did that provide a helpful gauge for whether or not people claimed to be Christians, but it gave us something to celebrate within the year! This is a very easy way to get this info; you could, of course, (2) simply ask individuals you’re discipling. Or perhaps you could (3) encourage your students to put it on their Facebook pages - that could actually be a phenomenal witness, couldn’t it?
Then what do we do with the info? Honestly, whatever you do for physical birthdays could probably be done for spiritual birthdays, too: Perhaps (4) an announcement, (5) birthday treats or a cake, (6) listing it in the weekly email, (7) sending a Facebook message, (8) putting it in the “program,” (9) giving a little present in Large Group.
You might consider (10) something special for the first anniversary of people’s conversions, too. That highlights students coming to Christ at this age, and I bet it’s pretty encouraging for those newer believers.
And for everybody, you might indeed (11) encourage them to make that day a personal spiritual holiday. Take it from me, that can be pretty awesome.
Lastly, it’s important to (12) realize that not all Christian students will know their spiritual birthdays. So we gotta work that in somehow. You can find some thoughts on doing that here.
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