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This week I’m writing on Spring Break options a little bit – starting yesterday with a question about Spring Break traditions. Today, a repost of one of the ideas people have talked to me about the most – yes, it’s a little crazy, but if it fits your ministry’s purposes, it can be an amazing thing.
How does your campus ministry’s Spring Break look? Will you be mission-tripping this year? Are as many students going as you’d hoped?
If you’d still love to consider a Mission Trip for Spring Break (or this summer) OR wouldn’t mind throwing out an additional option for students (that doesn’t require any planning), here’s an idea I’ve mentioned before.
It’s also a perfect last-minute idea for your college ministry because it is, in fact, the Unplanned Mission Trip. This is something I’ve personally done, and it was highly successful. It takes more than a few lines to explain (sorry), but the idea is actually pretty simple.
The Purpose(s)
ANY method isn’t valuable if it doesn’t actually accomplish our most-needed purposes, right? So let’s start there.
The Unplanned Mission Trip can…
- highlight God’s out-of-the-blue blessings
- remind us and our students that sometimes we don’t have to have everything “all planned out” in our lives (so it can help your “Type A” students)
- shake up a lethargic (or boring) college ministry
- teach our students to look for opportunities to serve and grow can pop up any day, anywhere
- build relationships (like any trip, but with an added adventurous twist)
- experience other settings, cities, people, campuses, etc.
- become a unique “bonding experience,” since it’s such an interesting experience
How It Works: The Setup
The basic Unplanned Mission Trip requires ONLY three pre-trip preparations:
speaking and “consulting” in new york
Yesterday I flew up to Lima to serve as a speaker at Propel, the ministry leadership conference of the BASIC College Ministries. BASIC is a fellowship of church-based campus ministries mostly located in New York state, and I get the chance to share a whole bunch of key ideas from what I’ve learned.
On top of the seminars I’ll deliver, I also have the awesome chance to participate in some Catalytic Conversations. In eight 30-minute slots, I’ll sit down with the leader(s) of individual ministries to offer brainstorming, coaching, encouragement, or whatever the need of the hour (or half-hour!).
Please be praying for me and us. (I love college ministry conferences!)
visiting students is the bomb
One of the best – and most random – parts of this trip was getting to spend a couple of hours in Rochester with a student from Dallas! He’s been in my church’s college ministry during the summers, and now – right before he graduates – I got the very cool opportunity to see him within his own campus tribe, the prestigious Eastman School of Music up here in NY.
Remember, even if you’re a campus-based college minister, your students would love a visit when they’re away from you this summer – even just a lunch gathering in that city where several of them live, perhaps. And church-based college ministers have two groups they can visit: home-grown students who go away to school, and students who go to school locally but live elsewhere in the summer!
This is definitely a very cool way to love students (and to explore some other campus ministry settings while you’re at it!).
textbooks lead to money which helps with impact
Meanwhile, I’m excited to see how this season of Books-to-Impact has gone (as many schools finished their Finals this week). I know some college ministers are hesitant to get excited about something new like this, but things continue to look really good for this fundraising effort. I believe it could be helping dozens of college ministries to raise money for ministry or causes (or both!) over the next couple of years. If you haven’t taken a look at Books-to-Impact, I hope you will.
And please be praying that this round of Books-to-Impact work would be a huge financial blessing to the ministries involved (including my own!).
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This may not be particularly Valentine’s Day-related, but it is one of the ideas I’m most proud of. Hope it helps your group, or even just stretches the bounds of your own brainstorming!
How does your campus ministry’s Spring Break look? Will you be mission-tripping this year? Are as many students going as you’d hoped?
If you’d still love to consider a Mission Trip for Spring Break (or this summer) OR wouldn’t mind throwing out an additional option for students (that doesn’t require any planning), I wanted to repost an idea I’ve mentioned before.
In fact, a group that’s bringing me in to speak at a conference just blogged about trying this, and that reminded me about this crazy idea.
It’s also a perfect last-minute idea for your college ministry because it is, in fact, the Unplanned Mission Trip. This is something I’ve personally done, and it was highly successful. It takes more than a few lines to explain (sorry), but the idea is actually pretty simple.
The Purpose(s)
ANY method isn’t valuable if it doesn’t actually accomplish our most-needed purposes, right? So let’s start there.
The Unplanned Mission Trip can…
- highlight God’s out-of-the-blue blessings
- remind us and our students that sometimes we don’t have to have everything “all planned out” in our lives (so it can help your “Type A” students)
- shake up a lethargic (or boring) college ministry
- teach our students to look for opportunities to serve and grow can pop up any day, anywhere
- build relationships (like any trip, but with an added adventurous twist)
- experience other settings, cities, people, campuses, etc.
- become a unique “bonding experience,” since it’s such an interesting experience
How It Works: The Setup
The basic Unplanned Mission Trip requires ONLY three pre-trip preparations:
Yesterday I broached the possibility of finding another college campus (or another college ministry on another campus) to form a sort of “sisterhood” with, like some cities in the U.S. have “sister cities” across the world.
Today, I wanted to explore what might be gained from this relationship!
fruit and fun from a sister campus
- Fun together. Having a sister campus gives your ministry a fun focus. For example, who better to cheer for when the NCAA Tourney comes along? Just imagine – every student you’ve got rooting for the same school. (And this is all the more awesome if yours is a multi-school ministry. Unity around a sister campus!)
- Missions. One of the newer trends in college ministry seems to be forming long-term missions relationships. This is one of those opportunities! You’d be surprised the benefits to your students in purposely loving any mission field (including a college campus) over a length of time. And how better to help students see their own campus as a mission field than serving another campus through the years?
- Service. Whether a campus is near or far away, having a sister campus provides awesome opportunities to serve in real and lasting ways – outside the norm of ministering only in students’ personal little world.
- Community within. By rallying around a sister campus, you’ve added one more “tradition” or “inside joke” for your group to share!
- Community without. Of course, if you form relationships with another ministry, those bonds – over time – may go deep indeed. How fun would it be to occasionally spend time with students from another ministry? (And then… who knows? You’ll probably get to preside at all kinds of inter-campus marriages in a few years!)
final thoughts
- Let God do the pickin’. For all the fun this idea can be, praying comes first! You don’t want to try to force a connection, right? (Be extra-careful if you’re considering pushing your own alma mater as your sister campus…) And don’t rush it; “sisterhood” will come when it needs to come.
- On the receiving end… Don’t forget, the “sister campus” thing could even become a two-way street! How great would it be if your ministry at the University of Georgia (for example) connected with a ministry at the University of Wyoming (for example) for the next 10 years… trading mission trips, interns, T-shirts, staff, students, letters, pennants, teaching materials, lives, love, and food?*
*Food? How ’bout trading Taco John’s for Chick-fil-A?
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This would probably be a little early for most of you serving Quarter System campuses, but for the rest of us, it’s not too early to remind your students to plan on using their summers well!
Perhaps your ministry has pre-arranged options for summer missions or other activity during the summer. Maybe not. But regardless, we want students to pray this through, give due diligence, and wisely examine ways to use their summer well, no?
Now’s the time to start talking about it.
Many of the options – big missions opportunities, summer camps, internships, other endeavors (even student-originated ideas) – will require applications sooner rather than later. And the end of the semester isn’t the time to first be thinking of such things.
They might also not achieve their first choices, they might have to whittle down the options, they might discover something new they never would have considered… if they keep from procrastinating.
Just an idea. Just a Fridea, actually. Use as applicable.
The biggest point: Help students use their summers well. They don’t have many.
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Sorry for missing yesterday (it was my birthday!), but I’ll make it up with TWO Frideas today – look for the second one later today.
My church’s college ministry started up on the SMU campus last night, and I was reading the student newspaper. (That, of course, is a practice college ministers should be in the habit of!)
One of the things discussed was the Common Reading undertaken by “first-years” (what freshmen are often called among the Mustang tribe). Like some other campuses, incoming students all read a certain book (in this case, Zeitoun), and presumably discuss it or otherwise learn together from it.
That got me thinking: What if a college ministry dovetailed with that experience? For example, Zeitoun is about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It seems to me that may present the opportunity for…
- a small group examining spiritual themes in the book
- talking about service
- discussing God’s role in suffering and the Problem of Evil
- or perhaps other “tie-in” discussions.
Or maybe a mission trip slated for New Orleans might strengthen this “teachable moment,” or perhaps a ministry could bring in a speaker to discuss one of the themes from a Christian perspective.
In other words, as something all the freshmen are participating in, there’s at least potential for some kind of small groups, large events, or other connected forums. And there might especially be opportunity to draw seekers, as we offer a spiritual spin on something they’re already encountering.
And THAT thought got me thinking about other common experiences among freshmen at various campuses:
- New Student Orientation
- specific new-to-campus seminars students are forced to endure offered for their edification (like alcohol awareness, safe sex, dorm seminars, etc.)
- even various freshman-mostly classes
- and whatever else your own campus offers or requires for first-year students
This is what it means to work the ground we’ve been given: We consider ways our campus ministries might connect with what’s already happening. Can you imagine starting a small group to discuss themes brought up in Philosophy 101 or Freshman English? How about a speaker to offer a Christian perspective on “student success”? Or simply connecting your Large Group message with the New Student Orientation speaker’s topic that all the freshmen heard only a few weeks before?
Just a thought. Be creative.
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This Fridea is not only timely, it’s timely. And timely.
I think it was a Passion conference where I first heard the appeal for Christian college students to get their passport – even if they presently had no plans to go overseas. That appeal makes all the sense in the world, for both practical and spiritual reasons:
- It keeps legal barriers from standing in the way if & when an opportunity to go overseas comes. Since regular processing time is 4-6 weeks and expedited is still 2-3 weeks, it’s wise to be ready. (Details here.)
- This is a step toward global awareness. And it actually helps that it’s a little costly – both in effort and money. Once students have actually spent something, their own global awareness and openness to God’s call will likely increase.
- This also encourages openness to any call God might give and presents a (small) crisis of faith. For some students, getting a passport might be a scary step – since it implies they might indeed serve overseas at some point. That’s a good thing for students to face, right?
So that’s this week’s Fridea: Organize a passport drive.
I mentioned above that this is timely. Why? Not only is it a good idea to help college students apply for a passport well before summertime, it’s also a great idea to do it before the upcoming GIANT RATE HIKES. As reported here by CNN, substantial fee hikes are planned for both first-time passports and renewals – but, says the article, the earliest they would take effect is probably April.
Timely reason #3: March 27th is “Passport Day in the USA.” While I don’t completely know what that means, you can read about it here. That fact might increase the opportunity to get those outside your ministry involved.
(Passport issues are also on my mind as I locate my own passport to check the date! More details on that situation to come – but it should be my very first international college ministry exploration…)
Some thoughts on the Why and the How:
- This would be excellent to do within your ministry, especially combined with a talk or other activity on God’s global interests (whether that’s missions, social justice, or something else).
- But there are lots of opportunities to connect campus-wide on this one, too, in an emphasis on global concerns. Social justice? Various ethnic identity or international affairs clubs? Certain majors?
- While you can’t complete the Passport process on-site, you should be able to… (1) Provide filing forms, (2) Help students understand requirements and fees, (3) Offer photocopies of necessary ID documents (using a printer with copy capabilities), (4) Provide passport photos (possibly – be sure to follow the rules). All those steps are explained here.
Also, remember that a passport is now needed to travel anywhere outside the U.S., including Canada, Mexico, or the Carribean. (There are special passport cards for such nearby places, but why limit yourself?)
If anybody has any tips on doing this, please let us know!
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A while back, Chuck Bomar posted a great thought on adding value to college ministry mission trips. I’d encourage you to read the post, but Bomar basically argues that when traveling overseas, we should not only involve our students in the direct “mission” of the trip (whatever that may be), but we should also expose them to other missionary work. By seeing multiple ways foreign missions truly takes place, students gain a much broader view of what being a “missionary” can mean.
I’d like to springboard from that post to this week’s Fridea, which is applicable to mission trips, ski trips, retreats, or any other treks you take with your students – whether your travels take you far away or stick pretty close to home.
Here’s the Fridea: Spend some time on other campuses with your students.
I remember a collegiate mission trip I got to help plan while I was serving in West Texas; we took about 100 students from Abilene to Boston, MA. Obviously, Boston is one of the most “collegiate” cities in the U.S., so any visit there (even a vacation) might include visits to Harvard and other famous campuses.
But I appreciated the fact that our planning team decided to take an extra step to connect students with those Boston-area campuses. While there, we not only encouraged our students to visit various campuses, we participated in prayer walking and other campus ministry experiences. And not just at Harvard or MIT, but also at less-known (but still amazing) places like Northeastern U.
And so our Abilene students left the world of their various Christian colleges (all three of the big schools in Abilene are Christian schools!) and encountered fellow students in very different settings.
Campus visits and connections to other campus ministry activities can be a fantastic way to…
- increase students’ awareness of the needs on their own campus
- catalyze their creativity for reaching their classmates
- and spur them to the missional approach they should be living out day-to-day
This can be as simple as ducking into a campus on the way to the ski slopes or a conference – for lunch and a little prayer walking, “spiritual exegesis,” or a quick tour from / discussion with a campus minister. Or campus participation could make up a piece of your plans during a mission trip or retreat… or perhaps even the focus of the trip!
Even a quick road trip can easily bring you to a “foreign” campus tribe, offering an eye-opening and heart-stirring teachable moment. Why not take advantage of that opportunity?
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While this week’s Fridea actually shares some affinity with last week’s Fridea, I actually stumbled upon it through an entirely different connection. Here’s the Fridea:
Pool your resources with other college ministries, for specific endeavors or ongoing events.
Obviously, cooperating on single events or even ongoing activities isn’t an entirely new idea (though it’s sadly unpracticed in some quarters). But this Fridea takes that a step further – or perhaps just explores the edges of that idea.
On a conference call with some Southern Baptists of Texas church-based college ministers the other day, someone brought up an interesting idea. What if one ministry sent students on a summer mission trip – organized by another college ministry? I thought this was intriguing – especially because this didn’t involve ministries in the same town.
The big question: Is it always wisest for every college ministry to plan its own mission trips? What about for every college ministry to design – from scratch – its publicity materials? Or to plan its own Fall Retreat? To write its own curriculum? Design its own web page? To participate in its own leadership training or record-keeping or administrative work? To brainstorm with only its own leaders and students? What if one leader in Pittsburgh is really strong at producing advertising materials, while another in Philly is awesome at designing web pages? Could they somehow trade?
If you’ve read this blog for more than a week, you know I’m a strong proponent of contextualization in college ministry… so it might be surprising that I would suggest creating “collectives” of college ministries at all. But like all Frideas, this will not be a fit for every ministry. Any idea (whether normal or innovative) must be applied only when it matches the purposes of the activity and the unique context of the particular campus tribe.
But I can imagine situations where resources could be conserved and maximized through pooling, collaborating, or even “tagging along” (with permission, of course). And by resources, I mean far more than money – I mean time, energy, talents of the individual leaders and students involved, and any other resources we have available.
Look at each of the suggestions listed above, and think about how this might work. Any experience with this sort of thing? Any other ideas for College Ministry Collectives?
Find synopses of all the past Frideas over here.
written from the middle o’ Pennsylvania
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Road Trip 13: Day 40 recap
recap: a full day hanging with national staff at the headquarters of the CCO (see all explorations so far)
T-shirt: the Purple Ace (!) tribe of the University of Evansville
friday: on to State College, PA, where I’ll spend the weekend!
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