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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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I first posted this thought after my sister got married two years ago, but it’s a great Valentine’s reminder, too. After posting the Campus Change Assessment yesterday, I figured I’d follow with the Great Couples Assessment for V-Day.
One interesting way to assess your ministry may be along this unique line: the kinds of romantic couples it’s producing. Here are a few questions that are worth asking – even if ministries’ diversities will lead to different “right” answers.
1. When couples emerge within your college ministry, are they awesome? A healthy college ministry will likely produce not only healthy couples, but couples that exemplify the very things the ministry celebrates.
2. Is your campus ministry really good about celebrating romance, relationships, marriage, etc.?
3. Do solid Christians within your college ministry regularly enter into relationships? This isn’t a question that produces a clear indication of a college ministry’s strength by a simple Yes or No. But if you’re not seeing couples emerge from within your ministry (and especially if you are seeing students enter into relationships regularly with those outside your ministry), it’s worth asking Why, right?
Are you providing opportunities for awesome men of God to meet awesome women of God? Is your ministry the kind of ministry that even attracts those awesome men and women? Is there room – even alongside the accompanying awkwardness – for students to enter into relationships with others in your ministry?
[More on the single gender / co-ed ministry axis here - with some great comments from you guys!]
4. Do people get married? Some might presume that a strong college ministry will indeed produce lots and lots of marriages, while others would recognize that the marriage-immediately-after-graduating norm… is the norm no more!
But I think we have to imagine that within a college ministry with more than a dozen or two dozen students, we would likely be seeing the occasional marriage produced (at least). If not, it’s probably worth asking Why – even if in the end, we decide we’re right where we need to be.
So there you have it. Four questions. As you answer them, simply consider what the answers in your ministry should be… and then what they actually are. Ministries will be different, but I think these things are worth examining!
But what do you think?
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ChurchLeaders.com posted an article the other day by Catalyst’s head, Brad Lomenick, entitled “20 Points on Leading Millennials.” Obviously, this is our audience – and will continue to be for awhile – so being good college ministers requires learning the Millennials.
What I particularly like about this article, though, is that it’s pretty informal – clearly just Lomenick’s quick-take on what he’s learned in his various ministry roles – as well as from picking the brains of some of his staff members. (Below is the start of the article and some of the most interesting ones, but click here to read the whole thing – as well as people’s comments.)
A good friend asked me the other day my thoughts on how to lead the millennial generation, basically those born after 1980. We gather thousands of leaders who fit this category on an annual basis, and most of our Catalyst staff are under the age of 30.
I have to admit- I don’t always get this right. As a 100% Gen X’er, my tendency is to lean away from several of these points, and lead how I’ve been led over the years by Boomer and Busters. But I’m working on it….
So with that said, here you go, thoughts on leading millenials:
1. Give them freedom with their schedule. I’ll admit, this one is tough for me.
7. Lead each person uniquely. Don’t create standards or rules that apply to everyone. Customize your approach. (I’ll admit, this one is difficult too!)
8. Make authenticity and honesty the standard for your corporate culture. Millenials are cynical at their core, and don’t trust someone just because they are in charge.
13. Not about working for a personality. Not interested in laboring long hours to build a temporal kingdom for one person. But will work their guts out for a cause and vision bigger than themselves.
14. Deeply desire mentoring, learning and discipleship. Many older leaders think millenials aren’t interested in generational wisdom transfer. Not true at all. Younger leaders are hungry for mentoring and discipleship, so build it into your organizational environment.
18. They’ve been exposed to just about everything, so the sky is the limit in their minds. Older leaders have to understand younger leaders have a much broader and global perspective, which makes wowing Millenials much more difficult.
And again, I’d encourage you to click here to read the whole thing – along with people’s comments!
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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’s probably right and good for most of us to rise to the occasion of a new semester, rallying students with vigor and reminding them why they’re a part of our group. But it’s also a shame if man-made timelines (like the end of a semester and beginning of a new one) cause students to move too quickly past everything God wanted to teach them in Fall 2011.
So the Fridea is along those lines: Remind students of what God did and what He showed them last semester (or quarter).
Whether you push students to ponder this on their own OR actually recap the teaching and other impact of Fall 2011 (or, preferably, BOTH), this is a good chance to add continuity within the year… and to “give God space” to finish the good things He began only a few months ago.
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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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I don’t know what your plans are for teaching and other discipleship activities this semester, but I wanted to encourage you with a principle that college ministers need to remember (but we’re always going to be tempted to forget):
Some of the best things we can offer today’s students are the things we offered yesterday’s students.
Surprised?
I know it might seem more normal to encourage us not to take the easy, lazy route of relying on past efforts for present students. And in some cases, that really is the lazy route. Innovation is important. Constant tweaking of our ministries for better impact is important. Keeping current with our students and their needs is important.
But the point of today’s principle is to remind us that there are some “tried and true” methods – whether it’s teaching topics, discipleship tools, small group materials, or even conferences – that we personally may be worn out on… but that this year’s students haven’t benefited from yet.
The nature of college ministry is in some sense cyclical. If we’re focused on always trying to be “fresh” and “new” simply because we don’t want to repeat ourselves, we might be discounting some of the very methods God wants to use. Just because you’ve personally been to Passion conferences a zillion times or taught freshmen how to have a Quiet Time each year for the past ten doesn’t mean that the students in front of you won’t be just as impacted.
Don’t grow weary with the best stuff you teach or the best stuff you do. This year’s students might need the exact same things!
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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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There’s a church in town known for teaching its people what it calls “Conflict Resolution”; in fact, it’s had the opportunity to teach those principles elsewhere around the world. As I was thinking about that this morning, I realized how important it is for us college ministers to help our students get really good at this, too.
I don’t remember ever hearing how to handle things when a relationship went sour – and now that I’m well out of college, I recognize there have been times where I could have used the training.
How well do your students “fight”? Have conflicts arisen within your ministry, and then been resolved well?
And how well have students worked through past conflicts – like with parents or siblings (who they’ll probably see this week and may spend a whole MONTH with over Christmas)?
This is an area of training that college students likely need NOW – and will certainly need in their decade to come. How much different might their relationships be when they’re thirty years old… if they’ve learned “Conflict Resolution” when they’re twenty? And how much better might their spring semester be if they handle those things well over Winter Break?
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