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I had the awesome chance to speak last weekend for the college ministry retreat of Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto. A great group of students (from Stanford, Santa Clara U, and a few other schools) and their college ministers gathered in a cool little retreat spot, and we got to hang out Friday through Sunday.
And as always, I tried to notice what I was learning or being reminded of for our work as a whole.
Since taking my yearlong road trip and better developing my view of “campus ministry as missions,” I haven’t had too many opportunities to share this idea directly with students. (This view is best laid out in my ebook, Reaching the Campus Tribes.)
But every once in awhile, I’ve had the chance to speak either to a college ministry’s student leadership team or – in this case, at least – the ministry as a whole. And what I’ve noticed is that college students are able and willing to rise to the challenge as “college ministers” themselves. Even though they are in the throes of the college experience themselves, like the “indigenous” leaders raised up within foreign missions, students can get excited about serving as “missionaries to their own tribe.”
This is more than just asking them to serve as Student Leaders within the college ministry we (as college ministers) are directing. This is empowering them and encouraging them to take the added step of taking responsibility for the reaching of their campus. Yes, it’s still often best for them to have direction or oversight from somebody a little bit older. But there’s a difference in how much ownership they assume.
When I called the students to this – and encouraged them therefore to be open to ALL the ways God might direct their “missions” – they ran with it! For example, several students apparently stayed up late one night conspiring to reach a local community college with a Bible study (even though only one of those students actually attends that school).
In the days to come, I’ll share some of the points I used this weekend to push this idea. Hopefully those will help you do the same! But for now, my point is this: College students can rise to the challenge of a high level of “ownership” in your mission to the campus. How much do your students “own” the mission right now? Have they taken on the role of missionaries to their own campuses?
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Sorry that this Fridea is coming kinda late, but it could at least help toward planning how you’ll respond to next year’s Halloween!
I do recognize that October 31st is “celebrated” differently campus-to-campus, and many schools may not see much when it comes to this weekend or the night of Halloween. But other schools see quite a bit – it’s the moment when everybody drinks, perhaps, or when the costumes come out (and not unto holiness), or when debauchery is otherwise at its worst.
So my Fridea and encouragement this week is to respond as God leads you and your ministry. The subject line offers some thoughts on that:
- View what takes place, like a missionary would / should. Let it break your heart. Let it open your eyes and your students’ eyes. Let God use what’s actually happening – not just what you assume is – to provide ministry ideas for next year. (I’ll likely prayer-drive through the “scene” myself tonight or tomorrow.)
- Serve students. Like Spring Break mission trips or finals week, your campus might respond well to free midnight pancakes or van rides. Yes, you’ll need to work through what’s best (and what might only encourage more problems), but it’s worth considering how you can serve – and build relational bridges to – students.
- Think long and hard about how you can best serve, impact, and encounter your campus at the Halloweens to come.
- Pray. Pray as you view, with your students, or otherwise. This might be a night for all-night prayer, or it might be something you intercede about regularly, leading up to next year’s Halloween.
- Teach. The issues raised by Halloween – and not just the occult issues, though those are real, too – are worth discipling about, right? Why shouldn’t a girl “dress to impress”? Why wouldn’t a college student drink to excess? What’s so wrong with a night or weekend of debauchery? How can we serve our peers when they’re wrapped up in these things? Have you taught even your Christian students this stuff?
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I wrote Tuesday on the need for us to consider those who have, up until this semester, been a part of our community. Maybe they graduated in the Spring or Summer, or maybe they’re just temporarily gone – on an internship, perhaps, or studying abroad.
If we’re willing to consider doing this – and I beg you to consider doing this – I would also encourage a strategy, like a program or a team, to get this done.
Because while we love to think that our students will receive that kind of encouragement and exhortation “organically,” it’s tough. Honestly, we can’t really expect people thrown into the “real world” (whether permanently or temporarily) for the first time to be good at navigating this, can we? They haven’t had to navigate this world before, so they’re unlikely to seek out all the community they need. And their friends are either in the same boat (if they, too, have left college behind) or those friends don’t know how to deal with people who aren’t still in their world.
And we’d like to think we – their college ministers – will be good – naturally, organically – at contacting those students who have left our community. Chances are, the realities of our local ministry will override the desire to shepherd those away from us.
Unless we plan for it. Unless we plan for helping these students, either directly or by organizing others to do it.
And we can, right?
- We can calendar it.
- We can train students for post-college spirituality before they leave.
- We can train other students to be good friends to those who leave.
- We can help parents who – like their students – are figuring out something new.
- We can organize a student ministry team – for real – meant to help all of this happen better.
What else?
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How are you ministering to the students who were in your community last semester but aren’t at school this semester?
They might be studying abroad.
They might be taking a semester or year off.
They might have a missions opportunity, an internship, or a co-op.
They might have graduated in May or August, and they’re now eking out their new existence in the “real world.”
Whatever the case, it’s likely you’re the main Christian community they’ve had up until now. You and/or your students are those who have known them and have been known by them.
So there’s no way “Out of sight, out of mind” should be our guiding principle here. If we don’t shepherd them now, who will? And yet an expectation (on either side) of “everything staying the same” for distant or graduated students wouldn’t be wise, either (or healthy for the student).
More on this to come, I imagine. It’s been on my mind.
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Yesterday, I wrote (in passing) about gleaning college ministry learning from the broader teaching we get to hear. One of the guys at last week’s College Ministers Cohort, Seth Caddell, did just that. I asked him to provide a guest post based on something he got from the Catalyst Conference. (Seth’s blog is at www.lifeasexperienced.com.)
In his opening message, Andy Stanley addressed a difficulty lots of ministers face: The more successful we become, the less accessible we become. Instead of bemoaning this reality, he encouraged us to respond in one key way… as Seth describes (and applies to our field) below.
The number one temptation every minister faces is to do as much as you can for as many as you can. We can’t help but want to help. We want to hear each problem; we want to care for each student. But we can’t. We wish there was enough time to work with everyone, and often we try. We spend 30 minutes here and maybe 15 minutes there, hoping to impact as many as possible. Yet that doesn’t really work.
Sure, we could continue investing little bits of time and making our ministries as wide as possible. Sure, it’s cool when lots of students know our names and when we feel like we are having lots of “great conversations.” But this last week at Catalyst, Andy Stanley offered a game-changer.
What if we went deep rather than wide? What if we did for a few what we wish we could do for all our students? What if we invested hours upon hours in a couple students instead of spreading that time over 50 students?
We would begin to make disciples – that’s what would happen!
Obviously, many of us would be unemployed if we totally rejected all but 2 or 3 students. But we also hinder our impact when we spread our time so thin. We have to find a balance between hours with a few and minutes with many.
Maybe we need to rethink the way we are doing discipleship. Perhaps many of us who are Lone Ranger types need to start recruiting some help. Maybe we need to empower our students to pour into other students while we pour into them.
Regardless of what solution you find, I’d challenge you to start thinking of a few students you have the opportunity to impact in the ways you wish you could impact everybody!
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I wanted to revisit one of my favorite recent posts today, encouraging us to consider – strongly – spending time this school year building a stronger college ministry. My encouragement back in August, as it is now, is to pick at least one of the following “hills”… and climb it this semester.
Now that we’re past those invaluable first weeks of school (at least if your school is on the Semester system), I urge you to ponder these ideas.
How much better will your ministry be in November or March than it is in August?
Ministry improvement should be a year-round endeavor, not just something we tackle in the summer or at an occasional conference. In fact, many avenues for growth are only or primarily available when school’s in session. So hopefully you’re considering how you can move your ministry from a “7″ to a “8″ (or even from a “2″ to a “4″) well before next June.
As we stand at the base of a new semester, we have the choice to keep our ministries here for nine months… or to carry them toward new heights! So as you look at the possibilities for improving your college ministry, consider tackling at least one or two of these hills.
Strong small group leader training. Most small group leaders (students, adults, or even staff) aren’t naturally great small group leaders.
There are small-group-leadership skills (practical and spiritual) that can be taught, trained, tried, tested. While plenty of your leaders might be useful and impactful, if they’re untrained… they’re still untrained. Yet small groups are, for most college ministries, the “front lines” of discipling students – why leave this area underdeveloped?
Want to see your college ministry improve quickly? Significantly training your small group leaders might make the biggest difference of all.
Evaluating effectiveness (instead of impressions). If your big evaluation questions are “What went over well? What fell flat?,” then your effectiveness is suffering. (Even worse, of course, is not evaluating at all.)
The impressions we campus ministers take away from a big event, a message we deliver, or an entire semester aren’t of primary importance. Even less important are the impressions our students walk away with. OF COURSE impressions matter… but they simply don’t matter as much as overall effectiveness matters. Our biggest question for every activity has to be, “How well did we accomplish the purposes we planned around?” …which of course implies some things about how we planned in the first place!
Make this your primary assessment after every activity, and every aspect of your ministry will benefit.
Tailoring your ministry. If your decisions and activities aren’t particularly campus-specific, you’re not succeeding (or loving!) like you could be.
Another hill to consider climbing this Fall? More consciously tailoring your work to your specific campus. I’ve seen how different campuses are from each other, but college ministries don’t share nearly that level of variation. But just like with loving individuals, adapting our work to the campus will provide the best impact. You might even invent brand-new forms of ministry, after you notice the necessities and opportunities around you.
You have a unique mission field. Is yours a unique mission?
Learning your calling. If you’re not a learner, you’re not the college minister you should be.
Please notice that I didn’t say, “If you’re not a natural learner…” Not nearly all campus ministers have a personality bent toward regular learning. But if God has called us to college ministry, he’s called us to get better at college ministry – a field full of skills, aptitudes, areas of inquiry, and better methods to be explored.
So if you’re hoping to “up your ministry’s game,” it might have to start with… upping your game as a college minister. There are resources to learn from, and there are people to learn from. If you make it a priority, you can be a better college minister long before next summer.
Building barns. If your semesters aren’t building on each other, why expect a better ministry in the future?
The principle of Barn-building (taken from Tim Elmore’s Habitudes) teaches us that given two choices, we should choose to build our barn before we build our house… because the barn helps pay for the house! In our college ministries, we should be investing in a better future; though “Barn-building” may exist behind-the-scenes, it’s paving the way for greater impact.
This may mean training future leaders, choosing to teach on foundation-building topics, exploring support-raising avenues, spending months exploring a new ministry avenue, or building “quality” into your ministry before aiming for “quantity.” Even the four other ideas in this post have an aspect of Barn-building within them, too.
Barn-building isn’t as flashy or fun as our more obvious programs, but it makes all the difference for future semesters. So while Barn-building may not fit perfectly under “Ways to Improve Your Ministry for Fall 2011,” your College Ministry of Fall 2012 will thank you for attending to it now!
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Happy Monday!
Following up on last week’s Fridea, three easy aspects many college ministries probably need to make more explicit:
1. Your student leaders. How many members of your campus ministry could point out who the “official” student leaders are? We might like the idea of those guys and gals serving without (much) recognition, but the positives of making their positions explicit outweigh the negatives.
2. Opportunities for student leadership (and other involvement). If you have “ministry teams” of some sort, are those opportunities clearly laid out… often? Do all your students – new ones, irregular attenders, regular attenders – know how to plug in? Your opportunities for future student leaders AND for other volunteers should be quite explicit indeed.
3. The mission of student teams (both ministry teams and small groups). Can each of your student leaders…
- …give an “elevator pitch” for their ministry area? Are their activities and emphases clear and organized in their own minds?
- …clearly articulate (from memory) the specific outcomes their team or small group is aiming for this semester? If they don’t know what they’re aiming for…
Explicit. It matters.
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Another great aspect of the student leader retreat I was involved in last weekend involved student leaders making their work explicit. The college minister directed each team to share their purposes and plans with all the other teams. In fact, he had them write their goals and plans on wall-hanging Post-it sheets hung around the meeting room. Everyone was told to read those sheets during the course of the weekend, and time was also spent sharing plans out-loud.
Sometimes we forget how important it is to make our leadership roles and activities explicit for not only the other leaders, but for the entire college ministry. It’s easy for a campus ministry’s Leadership Team to run in the background, dutifully but quietly getting things done.
But there’s a lot of value in highlighting both student leaders’ work and the leaders themselves:
- Your college ministry will cultivate what it honors; as leaders are honored, more students will step up in the future.
- Your leaders could likely use some additional help from other student volunteers. As Teams and other opportunities are made known, it allows students to consider joining in the fun… and you’re likely to raise up quite a few future leaders through that process, too.
- Publicity can be a crucible. By highlighting what leaders are doing, it forces them to have their plans “public-ready.” There’s a sort of accountability here – not only to having a well-formed idea of their mission, but also to persisting in their commitment well as the year continues.
- Sharing what’s being done will give other students the chance to think about what’s not being done, too. A college ministry that appears to be running smoothly might lead many students to assume “everything’s being handled.” You and I know the truth. We need students to think about how they could help strengthen our movement!
So that’s this week’s Fridea: Make sure your leaders and leadership teams / positions are explicit for the entire college ministry. Highlight and “honor” them regularly.
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As I spoke to the team of student leaders last weekend, one theme I visited was the concept of “Better Brainstorming.” It’s something I’ve discussed before here on the blog; you can listen to a longer version at the links below. (There’s a shorter, somewhat different explanation at this post, too.)
The purpose of this method is to help anyone creatively “tweak” their present ideas to better accomplish their purposes – even those ministers or students who don’t feel they’re very naturally “creative.”
But I added something to my explanation this weekend: Not only did I encourage students to consider how they might adjust the “Who,” “What,” “When,” and “Where” of their projects, I also urged them to add a With Whom axis. I told them that for each of their plans and events, they needed to purposely consider what other teams might be good to consult or cooperate with.
If the Activities Team plans a Game Night, they probably don’t have to take care of everything themselves. They can get some advertising fliers designed by the Advertising Team. The Freshman Team can make sure to tell first-year students specifically. The Team devoted to reaching out to another, underserved local campus can help Activities figure out an appropriate date/time if they want those students to attend. And so on.
There are always possibilities to bring more people into the discussion, and I love the model of cross-planning among campus ministry ministry teams. Each team can focus on building expertise in their area, then making it available for any project where it’s useful.
I realize not every college ministry has this sort of developed “Ministry Team” structure. But many ministries have individual students, volunteers, or staff members devoted – formally or informally – to individual areas of the ministry. The more these leaders see each other as resources and teammates rather than simply “other leaders in charge of something different,” all the better.
For audio of my “Better Brainstorming” talks, Campus Ministry United has made them available. Just use the links below; either right-click to save the file to your computer (by clicking “Save Target As,” “Save Link As,” or something similar), or just click to play them directly.
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One of the most awesome moments of helping lead the student leader retreat last weekend involved one soon-to-graduate gal. At various points throughout the weekend, her college minister and I were able to help find her place in the ministry.
She’d been on leadership team for this college ministry for a few years now. And as she approached graduation, she wondered about connecting her major – Exercise Science – with the ministry. Fortunately, her college minister gave her wide latitude – and during the course of the weekend, she was able to take some real steps toward understanding just what this might look like.
I bring up that aspect of the weekend to ask an important assessment question for your campus ministry: How many of your student leaders are serving in positions that match not only the needs of the ministry, but ALSO their life callings or very unique gifts and talents?
It’s the “also” that’s tricky, right? Because certainly, we need to ask many of our students to step into positions that wouldn’t exactly be described as their “Dream Jobs.” Sure, they hopefully have aptitude and passion there, but that’s different than tailor-making a position to fit them. That’s part of learning service, in fact; we don’t want our collegians to ever learn that service is more about “the experience” than the actual results. (It’s loving in “deed and truth” rather than just “word or tongue.”)
However, we’re also trying to disciple our students to find the callings (including the so-called “secular” callings) that God has placed on their lives… and to connect all those callings to Faith. One key way to accomplish that might be letting students explore ministry roles that fit those specific callings. So while your well-laid plans on the College Ministry Dry-erase Board this summer might not have included a “Graphic Design” student leader position, the presence of a Senior who’ll be chasing that calling for the next forty years might be all the impetus you need to, indeed, tailor-make that position.
And while you may never have an “Exercise Science” team, an Outdoors team might allow those students to “exercise” their calling in a ministry setting.
And so on.
The unique individuals God brings to our ministries make up part of how He directs our ministries, yeah? If He’s brought faithful servants with specific gifts and unique callings, then He might just have something specific and unique in mind for them, at least at some point during their collegiate career.
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