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Earlier this week, I continued my earlier series on Hospitality in College Ministry – see all the posts so far here!
Are you geographically hospitable toward college students? In other words, do you try to accommodate their locations when you can?
This might show up in more ways than you think. Check out this list of possibilities, and feel free to add your own!
- Where you hold your Large Group Meeting
- Offering carpools / pick-ups for activities off-campus
- Recognizing that many students don’t have cars – and responding in hospitality
- Meeting students on-campus for meetings / discipleship / etc.
- If you don’t have a building – or are a church-based college minister stationed a ways from campus – considering finding a way to have some permanent space near / on campus.
- Purposely hanging out (having a “ministry of presence”) in public places on campus
- Holding leadership meetings near your students
- Offering small groups in apartment complexes where you have students
Hospitality often means simply thinking through the unique situations of those we want to serve. Have you considered where most of your students live? Where they congregate? How you could make things easier for them? Other ways to be “geographically hospitable”?
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As I picked up the Hospitality series again yesterday, I urged us to consider if there are some mature Christian students we might be overlooking in our ministries.
Before moving on, I wanted to post some quick ways to make sure we’re addressing the needs of those who have been walking with Jesus for awhile.
- Use them as leaders (of course), but also attend to their own needs for growth.
- Ask them for input, not just management of your ideas (or longstanding traditions).
- Offer “201″-type studies, specifically geared for those who have a steady, growing walk with Christ and are ready to be challenged in that way.
- Find mentors / disciplers for them – even from outside of the college ministry.
- Get them to disciple other students one-on-one.
- Open them up to “self-mentorship,” by exposing them to classic books, special topics, etc.
- Provide chances to learn from fellow mature students, including mature students of the opposite sex.
- Treat them as individuals, seeking to discern (and help them discern) where they need to grow next and how they can be used best. Be creative, and allow for messiness and new opportunities. The further we walk with Christ, interestingly enough, the more and more “individual” we seem to become.
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I’ve been working on a book about my visits to churches around the country (165 of ‘em in a year), so I think a lot about Hospitality these days. Early this year, I wrote a 6-part series on Hospitality in College Ministry – and this week, I wanted to continue that series.
The posts will be short – it seems like that kind of week, for many of you and for me. But hopefully they’ll be helpful as you ponder Hospitality for this summer or Fall 2012!
the solid… but ignored
I recognize that there’s a lot of merit in college ministries (and churches) focusing on the unsaved and immature. We rightly work hard to cater to them, draw them, welcome them, share Christ with them, and disciple them in the basics of faith.
But in the midst of all that, it’s easy to ignore some of your more solid, faithful, long-present students. We don’t seek out the mature Christians within our ministries, even though God has been building them to use them. Nor do focus often enough on helping them “excel still more” in their walks with Christ; how many of your Bible studies or talks would actually stretch someone who’s been a growing Christian for 12 years?
Many of your students have been growing Christians for 12 years.
So for the sake of Hospitality – at the very least – I urge us to a better “both-and” approach here. I know it’s a little messier and a little harder and a little less exciting. But shouldn’t we seek to impact everybody God brings to us?
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My guess is you have some pretty good info on your students: Class Year, Major, Phone Number, maybe a Birthday or their Hometown.
Have you asked them their passions? (Surprisingly, these may not be the same as their majors…) Have you asked them the ways they really like to serve others, or what they’d do if they had unlimited time and opportunity? How do they hope to change the world? How do they hope to change their world, and soon?
Might God want to speak to you about the future of your ministry through the passions, strengths, talents, and other characteristics of the students He’s brought you? Or is the format and programming of your ministry far more about your passions, personality, etc., than it is about theirs?
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Whether you are based in a church, directly supported to work on campus, or otherwise in this field called Collegiate Ministry, it’s likely that at least some of your students won’t be around this summer. Some of us will be spending the summer with students on a Summer Project of some sort; others will have a new batch of in-town students, home from their far-away colleges.
But still, many of the students attending our ministries right now won’t be living nearby, won’t be on a Project, and won’t be in any sort of “official” ministry activity at all – like Camp or a missions experience. Instead, they’ll likely be at home, far away from you and your ministry – and likely not being discipled in any sort of college ministry environment at all.
So what have you begun to do to prepare for their discipleship over the summer?
It’s important that we see ourselves as the primary shepherd of the people who are under our care for eight or nine months out of the year… even during the “off months.” Sure, they might have a college minister back at their home church (though that’s pretty rare). But even so, we are more likely to have an ongoing relationship with that student, to know the impact they’ve been exposed to recently, and to know how we hope to continue impacting them in the Fall Semester.
So why wouldn’t we make some effort to help them grow over the summer? How would you honestly answer this question?:
Will the students who attend your college ministry this week receive enough discipleship over the summer? Whose responsibility should that be?
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Chances are, some of your students are in – or will soon be in – that “seriously dating” stage of their romantic relationships. Even with the movement of the average marriage age, plenty of collegians are still there well before they hit graduation.
While I know that the Dating & Relationships topic is often one of the most-used arrows within a college ministry’s quiver, those messages (at least in Large Group Meetings) are usually presented to help a diverse audience, including
- those who have dated very little (or none)
- those not presently dating,
- those presently dating,
- and/or those seriously dating or engaged.
But it’s that last group I’ve been wondering about this week: Are you facilitating their deeper training?
Are you providing (or pointing them to) training on conflict and communication, household finances, purity and (eventually) sexual intimacy, handling each others’ families, and so on? Are they hearing marriage theology and not only dating theology?
If this sounds like the classic “Pre-marital Class,” then you’re right – except that it’s vital that we recognize that much of this discussion happens best before engagement. (And some would argue that such topics should be shared with singles and the newly dating, too!)
So how are students in your ministry finding training beyond the three-week series you offered last semester?
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While I’m on the subject of building conviction in our students that will last past the collegiate bubble, I had one more thought.
I had noted in the past couple of posts (here and here) that our students won’t have as easy a time once the opportunities for “good works” and spiritual disciplines are less available and less encouraged. So, I said, it’s important that we build the type of conviction that will push them to seek out those activities, whatever it takes.
But that’s not the only problem our students will face. We can’t just build conviction; we must build hearty, lasting conviction – because even that conviction will face subtle attacks in the post-college years:
- When they’re making a lot more money, giving sacrificially seems all the more… sacrificial.
- When they get busier than they’ve ever been, things like church and daily time with the Lord become very easy to skip.
- The barrage of materialistic temptations, the “quarter-life crisis” issues, new jobs, new relationships, and plenty more can lead to self-centeredness… so an entire world in need starts seeming awfully irrelevant.
- In the mid-twenties, the beauty of chastity can start seeming awfully… idealistic (and very lonely).
- What was zealous, intimate, and healthy community three years ago can be remembered as conformist and passe after a few years without it.
It’s not just lack of opportunity that will cause zeal to wane, there will also be a barrage of assaults on students’ conviction itself. So the question is, Are we building in our students rock-solid convictions about the actions that are right and best? Are we teaching them why chastity really does matter and why zeal for justice should last a lifetime? Are we giving them arguments for the importance of giving or the value of prayer that will stand up even against their own doubts and ditherings?
This is no easy pursuit. But behavior modification that lasts a few years isn’t enough fruit, is it?
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As I was writing yesterday’s blog about the the post-bubble bewilderment, I was kinda struck by how important all of that really is. And my first example has stuck with me:
- How do I practice social justice now that there isn’t an opportunity thrown at me every other week?
The same could be asked about accountability with other Christians, participating in solid Bible study, seeking and offering counsel, praying for the nations, giving to big causes, starting big causes, donating time and effort to ministry activity, leading others closer to Christ, and so on.
Are we “creating” students who, after their college years, will seek out chances to do the good things they’re now doing? Or will our students – like so many, I’m afraid – have left these activities behind five years later?
I’m not sure that exposure alone produces the kind of conviction that lasts. For a few students, simple exposure – to discipling others, for instance – will prove addictive enough to participate for a lifetime. But for many, it simply won’t be as easy after college to find those opportunities (and they won’t have the same push from their leaders and peers). So if we haven’t built in them a conviction (not simply an appreciation), then we haven’t built them into lifelong followers any more than they were before they came to college.
Willing to evaluate your ministry? How “zealous for good works” are the men and women who graduated from your ministry two years ago?
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I remember being bewildered – for years – about what it meant to date “Christianly,” once I was outside of the collegiate bubble. Inside those college years, it was quite easy to find, serve alongside, and get to know awesome girls before I ever had to decide if I wanted to take another step toward more-than-friendship.
But while I’m sure I heard several Dating & Relationships talks during those years, I don’t remember being well prepared for after those years. Suddenly it wasn’t nearly as easy to navigate.
I bet that collegiate bubble shows up in other ways, too:
- How do I practice social justice now that there isn’t an opportunity thrown at me every other week?
- How do I find intimate community when there aren’t “small group signups” each semester?
- How do I pick a church in a new city, when I’m not around dozens of others who are trying to figure out the same thing?
- I think I understand “using my mind to God’s glory” when I’ve got a full docket of classes… what does that look like after my formal schooling has ended, though?
- How do I evangelize when people seem a lot less open in the “real world,” and when I don’t have buddies who are witnessing alongside me?
- What am I supposed to do with money once I have a lot more of it? (Giving “sacrificially” and tithing seemed a little easier when it was just $5 a month…)
These are six scenarios that seem pretty probable, and they’re just the first six I thought of. The question is: In these and other areas, are you preparing students to succeed during their years in college… or to succeed both now and later?
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After watching the Academy Awards last night, here are two Oscar-worthy opportunities available to us who serve in college ministry:
1. Our students can participate in great works. Our college ministries should regularly be producing students who are part of great works for years to come – both creating masterpieces in their chosen fields and doing “good works” that impact many. How many of your campus ministry’s graduates have achieved that sort of greatness?
2. We can be part of their acceptance speeches. One day, years from now, what’s the likelihood that you (or others in your college ministry) will be a part of students’ testimonies? When they share with their kids about notable spiritual impacts, when they describe to a room full of listeners how God grew them, when they write their memoirs… will they be talking about these few years in this college ministry? Is itreally having that kind of impact?
This is evaluation but also motivation. As college ministers, we’re serving at the hinge of many people’s lives… and if we’re impacting personally and purposefully, our impact can be enormous and forever!
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