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One of the best comments I heard peppered throughout my campus ministry-exploring travels was a recognition that we must consider students’ time and schedules. I was encouraged to hear that at least a few college ministers place this as a priority, and in fact it helped me realize that it must be.
Yes, students should be pushed to recognize that ministry to others, involvement in community, and other Christian pursuits should be a major part of their collegiate experience. Many of them don’t steward their time accordingly, or sacrifice in this area like they should.
But we are shepherds of these students, and we have to be willing to see both sides of this concern. I think it’s easy for us to correct their errors in underspending their time for ministry-oriented activities… while not taking responsibility not to ask too much of them.
Oftentimes the activities we expect of students – or even simply the events we offer them – make it far too easy for them to fall into a trap of spending too much of their time within our ministries… and too little time either in spiritual pursuits outside our college ministry OR on all the other equally spiritual pursuits of education, relationships, family, and any other callings God has placed on their lives.
For campus-based college ministries and institutional college ministries at Christian colleges, this includes not so filling students’ calendars that they find it all too easy to ignore church involvement.
So this has to be a priority, and it’s certainly a part of Hospitality: purposely ordering our college ministries to keep from overburdening students’ schedules.
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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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Somehow this Fridea from last week never got posted – sorry about that! So enjoy the extra Fridea this week…
I’ve been writing about Hospitality in College Ministry, and today’s Fridea certainly ties in (in a way).
Here’s a weird question: When’s the last time you talked to your students about sleep?
Sleep can be one of their biggest idols, or it can be one of their biggest neglects. And when they get out of college, they may keep those same patterns – or some of the idolizers may start neglecting sleep, while others learn to idolize it. Learning how to manage sleep well – and enjoy it, too, and use it as part of the REST God commands – will all be a big part of living faithfully before the Lord.
Sleep is a third (or maybe a fourth) of our students’ days (and their years). So I’d imagine this area is crucial to their success.
So, again, when’s the last time you referenced sleep in a message? Taught about it? Pointed students to the way doing “all to the glory of God” applies to sleep? Taught them neither to idolize sleep nor to idolize everything else in a way that keeps them from it?
So that’s this week’s Fridea: Let sleep be one of the areas of collegiate life that you address. Whether that comes through an entire message or just as an application point every once in awhile, offering your students some wisdom for their Zs sounds like pretty great Hospitality to me.
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For the third post about Hospitality in College Ministry, I wanted to introduce one test you can do right now to assess how well you’re “hosting” the students in you college ministry in an ongoing way.
Here’s the question: How well do leaders in your ministry know the students who attend?
The way you answer this will depend on the size of your ministry. In big ministries, the college minister can’t be expected to know each of the students. But the question is whether they are known – whether by the one (and only) college minister in a small ministry or by your large network of staff, volunteers, and student leaders.
So if all those in leadership took a quiz – about students’ majors, their years in school, their hopes for the future, what they’ll be doing next summer, how they came to Christ, if they’ve come to Christ, what they struggle with, what they’re good at, and on and on – how well would you be able to answer those things about the students in your ministry?
Knowing people and being hospitable toward them are wrapped up together. By being hospitable in the first place, you create time and space to get to know people. But as you get to know them better, you’re able to host them better and better, too.
I don’t know that there’s any good shortcut here, nor can we ever get anywhere near where we’d like to be with this. But if the thought of being quizzed on what you know about your college students makes you cringe… then maybe working on Hospitality is a good aim for this new year.
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Yesterday I announced a new series for a new year: Hospitality in College Ministry. But hospitality has been close to my heart for awhile, and a few semesters ago I spent several posts looking at how we can be hospitable in the “front doors” of our ministries.
So for the sake of getting you as many ideas as possible, I wanted to link to that series in today’s post. If it’s been awhile since you looked at that one, I’d encourage you to check it out. This week’s series will enlarge on that idea, but I’ll try not to cover the exact same ground again… so if you don’t take a look, you’ll be missing a big chunk of the Hospitality discussion.
Here’s that series: Front Door Hospitality
Enjoy!
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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