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If you didn’t join in yesterday’s great discussion of co-ed vs. single-gender in college ministry, there’s still time! Great comments yesterday, friends!
I’ve got a few updates as I prepare for Road Trip 13. (Click here for Tuesday’s intro to the trip.) And as you’ll see, these updates collectively fit the heading, “This road trip is odd because…”
1. The NoCal / SoCal switcheroo. I hinted in Tuesday’s post that I might have to switch my explorations of Northern California and Southern Cal, and it looks like that’s the plan.
SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY
I’ll be leaving this Sunday, October 4th, on my 13th major, college ministry-exploring Road Trip!
The springboard for this trip is actually pretty exciting: A major national college ministry has contracted me to spend time with several of its chapters around the U.S.! I’ll be writing articles highlighting those local ministries’ work and impact, as a way to help the national group tell its story to supporters, potential supporters, and fans.
It’s a good day for an update, in part because it gives me the chance to encourage you to check out yesterday’s post, the first in my new “College Ministry Poles” series. That post received some of the most helpful comments I’ve ever gotten, especially for helping us all understand each other better! If there’s more to be said, keep commenting!
Meanwhile, a couple of important updates and prayer requests:
Corpus Christi
I’m headed down south to Texas A&M Corpus Christi today, and I’ll be visiting a college ministry or two while I’m there. For those who aren’t Texans, it might surprise you that I’ll be taking this 7-hour trip (one way) and still won’t leave the state.
But though every trip is important (and I’m excited about this one), it’s not an “official” Major Multi-state Road Trip along the lines of the 12 trips I’ve taken since 2004. So I’m still waiting for Road Trip #13…
…and yet this trip could shed much light on Road Trip 13, which may be coming up really soon. I’ll keep you posted.
Please pray for a good trip and for wisdom about how I spend the rest of the semester! Also, if there’s anybody in Corpus Christi I should try to connect with, let me know!
Service Team
Even while I’m focused on helping the field of college ministry as a whole, I hope I’ll always have opportunities to keep right on serving some students directly – whether it’s through my church, through some other local ministry, or even simply through one-on-one disciplemaking.
These days, it’s through my church. And I now have the fantastic opportunity to help increase our efforts in the service / social justice / campus connections realm, since I’ll be heading up our student Service Team!
I have the feeling this will lend itself to some blogging, as I have the opportunity to use everything I’ve learned in this very specific way. I look forward to treating this aspect of our ministry as missiologically as I can, and I get the chance to work with a cool group of students. We met together for the first time yesterday!
I’d like to ask for your prayers on this thing, that I might serve wisely and well. It’s a little awkward to be jumping back in to leadership like this after a couple of years serving in other ways!
I’ll also want to collaborate with you guys as I go along – just as I encourage all of us to do! In fact, right now I could really use some suggestions on a good primer (for students to use) in this area of Christian ministry. Any solid, basic books that discuss why (and how) Christians are called to serve others? All suggestions would be appreciated…
That’s it for today’s updates. Don’t forget to check out yesterday’s post if you haven’t seen the newest comments!
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Like many of you, I’m gonna take a Labor Day break, but I’ll be back posting on Tuesday!
Meanwhile…
If you haven’t gotten the chance to read it, you could easily read my entire ebook, Reaching the Campus Tribes, this weekend. It’s just the ticket for getting invigorated – and challenged – for the school year ahead. (And if you still need convincing, you can see all the sites that discuss the book, on the sidebar at reachingthecampustribes.com.)
And if you feel like reading the blog (or catching up on what you’ve missed), here’s the best stuff from the past couple of weeks:
Leadership nuggets from year one: Most of the past two weeks, I’ve been posting a series especially for the start of a new school year! It covers the lasting ideas I learned in my first year of college ministry (one decade ago) and can be found here.
40 Days of Prayer: I reported that some United Methodist campus ministries began an awesome “40 Days of Prayer” emphasis – be sure to check that out if you haven’t!
Missional campus ministry on the national scene: Professor “RJS” has been posting a series on missional campus ministry for four weeks now at Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog (hosted by BeliefNet). My book was used as the springboard the second week, and there have been some great comments each week! (The prof seems to be posting those each Tuesday.)
Church-based ministry on the national scene: Building Church Leaders put out a resource for church-based college ministry, and they blogged a little about my book, too.
All the best stuff: And for earlier cool reading, check out the Summer Wrap-up, with the biggest posts and events from the summer!
And the rest: Of course, you can also just click back through the last few weeks if you wanna catch up on everything. Or, take a tour through the Blog Topics over there on the side. With nearly 600 posts over the last couple of years, there are bound to be some things you’ll enjoy!
If you’re new to this blog – or even if you aren’t – you might have missed some of the highlights from a very busy summer! So before the approaching school year begins, here are some of the top blogs, biggest adventures, and most important milestones from the summer of 2009.
Road Trip #11: the biggest since the biggest: The summer kicked off with a 6-week excursion to and through the Northeast, my longest road trip since the yearlong trip! With speaking engagements at two conferences a month apart, it just seemed natural to take time in between to explore New England. So I’ve now been on college campuses in 45 states in the past 2 years! See the recap, the big itinerary, or all the related posts from Road Trip 11. (I also began Twittering as this trip began, which has turned out to be a really good tool.)
Jimmy Fallon’s Millennial methods: Since before the show even began, I had noticed Late Night with Jimmy Fallon was clearly wooing – and reflecting – members of Generation Y. So I decided to write about it, to reflect on some ways we can adapt those same ideas in our ministries. Not only have those posts drawn hits by the hundreds, but they received an early stamp of approval from Gavin Purcell, one of the creators and co-producers of Late Night. See the series so far.
The Church Plan Project… still waiting: In June, I introduced what I hoped would be my next big project – helping churches develop their best possible College Student Plan. But I’m still looking for churches willing to participate. It’s not an easy sell to try something new – especially in a field that doesn’t receive a lot of attention as it is. The sad thing is, we desperately need to change how we begin college ministry work in churches… because our “usual” has a pretty bad track record.
Great days for the blog: Several weeks ago, this blog passed 50,000 hits… and it seems to be picking up steam, too, with increasingly more hits and comments. Last week was actually the best week on the blog ever, even though it’s still summertime!
The hottest topics: These were some of the most discussed, most read, or simply most important posts of the summer:
- The Surprisingly Unmissional Approach to College Ministry – discussing how some very missional churches end up anti-missional in this one area. Lots of great comments on this one.
- Why I Call It “College Ministry” – instead of “campus ministry,” “collegiate ministry,” “student ministry,” or something else. Great comments here, too.
- The Biggest Help to College Ministry – discussing what I believe the field of college ministry needs most, first.
- Strong College Ministry Books (What It Takes) – my thoughts on what we need from those writing books (or speaking or blogging) about college ministry
- College Ministry Name Difficulties – readers were particularly interested by the branding plights of Campus Crusade and Baptist Collegiate Ministries, as discussed in these posts
- Recruitment Posts – ever-mindful of the college ministry calendar, several recent posts have discussed college ministry recruitment, just in time for the new school year. (Click here for all posts in the Recruitment category, including those recent ones.)
- Frideas – whether through innovative advances or simply valuable tweaks, the summer’s Frideas have offered weekly doses of interesting collegiate ministry methods.
- Every Reason I Needed to Know for College Ministry I Learned from Transformers 2 – not actually important. Just kinda fun.
Reaching is reaching people: My book, Reaching the Campus Tribes, appears to be making its way quite well through many circles and communities! (You can see a list of the sites I’ve found discussing the book here, on the right side.)
Even though it’s only been public for four months, the download site has received well over 4,000 hits – and that doesn’t count people who have shared the book via email, blog, flash drive, CD copies, or any other means… TODAY the book was highlighted and discussed at the major Jesus Creed blog, and earlier this summer, Derek Melleby of the CPYU interviewed me about the book (Part 1, Part 2). In late June, I also added an abridged version to the site for helping any of us understand or explain why college ministry matters!
An exciting summer for our field: It’s been awesome watching our field advance this summer – including through the publication of a college ministry book by Zondervan, one denomination’s major 40-day campus ministry emphasis, solid back-and-forth discussions at two collegiate ministry blogs, the introduction of a college-ministry-related doctorate at Gordon-Conwell, and three other great pieces of news I discussed last week.
Road Trip #12 (the surprise excursion): As August began, I left for Southern Indiana – only 2 days after I figured out I’d be taking this trip. (Surprise!) I visited a conference for a college ministry group I’m not a part of… and had a wonderful time there and in explorations on the return trip. Read the wrap-up, the itinerary, or the posts describing that trip.
All that in less than four months? I can’t wait to see what’s coming this fall!
Meanwhile, I’ll be speaking on Thursday at a college student leadership retreat. If you think about it, I’d appreciate your prayers!
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It’s a testimony to the craziness of my recent road-tripping history that Road Trip 12 could be deemed “short,” but this recent 10-day trip was possibly the shortest of the twelve multi-state, college-exploring road trips I’ve taken since 2004.
Yet it’s a happy fact that this trip was still really, really good. It’s amazing to watch God use both planning and surprises to continue to use these road trips to enhance my understanding of the national college ministry scene and allow opportunities to encourage, teach, and otherwise push in our field.
As I look back, here are some highlights from this short-but-sweet excursion:
a surprise start
One of the really unique characteristics of Road Trip 12 was that it completely caught me by surprise. It wasn’t until Thursday the 30th that I planned to go, with a launch date only two days later. (Read the post I wrote at the time.)
two national college ministry groups
One major aspect of this trip was exploring the “national scene” of college ministries from two major church-fellowships (neither of which consider themselves “denominations”).
First I attended the National Student Conference of the National Association of Christian Campus Ministries. Not only did a get a great feel for their national work, but my time with those leaders from the minstries of the Independent Christian Churches provided one of the coolest opportunities to experience “college minister community” I’ve had. (For my intro to this national college ministry, click here.)
Then in Nashville, I got to sit down with Morgan Stephens, National Director of the college ministries of the Every Nation movement (a group of churches formerly known as Morning Star). He provided a fantastic introduction to their college ministry, which has about 50 chapters around the country.
two phenomenal mascots
If you watched my Twitter updates, you know that I got especially excited about two campus visits because of those schools’ phenomenally unique mascots.
First came the University of Evansville Purple Aces. Then came the Arkansas Tech Wonder Boys (the girls, incidentally, are known as the Golden Suns). Yes, I picked up T-shirts from both campuses.
and more highlights
The trip began with a straight 12-hour drive to Southern Indiana – after only 4 hours of sleep, and with enough rain that I had to stop twice to wait for it to slow down. Even for a pro-road-tripper, that was a memorable drive.
Getting “drafted” for an hour-and-a-half Q&A with the Christian Church guys was awesome, as was connecting with so many great people: ministers I’d met before, ministers I’d only met via Twitter, and brand-new friends.
While I loved meeting with every minister who gave of their time to connect, two particularly cool memories include connecting with the founder of Indelible Grace Music (which has impacted RUF nationally) and chatting (productively, it turned out) with Guy Chmieleski about the need for college ministry bloggers. (I blogged about Indelible Grace here, and Guy’s brand new campus ministry blog can be found here – I’ll be posting more on that soon.)
Across those 10 days I saw 8 states, drove 1960 miles, attended 5 weekend church services, interviewed 11 ministers from all three branches of college ministry (and connected with dozens more at the conference), visited 6 college campuses, and slept in 1 University of Southern Indiana dorm room and 4 motel rooms.
You can also see a detailed list of the 20-or-so explorations from Road Trip 12.
what’s next?
My next scheduled major trip is an October trip to Southern California to speak at the College Leader Conference. But who knows what other trips might pop up? October is a long way off!
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So… it looks like my next multi-state collegiate road trip is coming a little sooner than I expected. Tomorrow, in fact. (And if you want the chance to help “choose my own adventure,” keep reading.)
Surprise!
There are multiple reasons I didn’t see this one coming. But as of last night, I decided to attend the annual conference of the National Association of Christian Campus Ministries. Held at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, the National Student Conference lasts from Saturday afternoon through Wednesday morning.
I can’t wait! These NACCM guys and gals have been über-friendly to me during my various explorations of the last two years (and most recently, by letting me sign up for the conference two days before it starts!). I’ve appreciated the chance to learn from them, as well as opportunities to share what I’ve learned.
If you’ve never heard of NACCM, you’re certainly not alone; I look forward to introducing them to you (as they’ve been introduced to me over the last couple of years). And this is a group you should get to know if you’re interested in what God’s doing in college ministry around the country; among other things, they reportedly have enormous ministries on certain campuses, like the Purdue Christian Campus House and Georgia Tech’s Christian Campus Fellowship.
Here’s the particularly unique aspect of this trip: Right now, my only “agenda item” is to go to this conference. So I may end up heading right back, or I may end up taking the chance to explore other campuses, college ministries, churches, etc., whether they’re on my direct route or lead to a new route altogether! Other Indiana adventures? Kentucky? Tennessee? Missouri? Arkansas? Elsewhere?
A trip to IN is smack in the middle of a lot of good country, and I look forward to seeing what happens.
As always, I’m open to what God wants to do. But usually I have things a little more planned before heading out… like I said, this one sneaked up on me. So during the crazy all-day drive Saturday, I’ll be praying, thinking, planning – and I’ll keep right on doing that in the days (and weeks?) until I get back home.
So could this be a 5-day trip? Sure. Could it take two weeks? Sure. Got any ideas? Awesome.
I’m open as always to suggestions for informal ministry visits, as I continue to explore what God’s doing! So fill me in if there’s something I should check out.
But beyond that, if any college ministries or churches are interested in paying for a more in-depth “consultation” (either now or later on), let me know. I’ve had some ministries ask about this, and I’m pondering that as a possibility for supporting my efforts to serve college ministry and college ministers!
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Two years ago today, I announced on my brand new Exploring College Ministry blog that I would soon embark on a pretty ridiculous adventure. I wrote that first post on the very day that God confirmed the idea I’d been praying about: taking a massive, nationwide road trip to research college ministry.
(How I came to that decision – and ended up in that position in the first place – comes up in Chapter 2 of the book.)
I started my blog with,
In three weeks, I’ll be a hobo.
Kinda.
In a few weeks, I’ll hop in my car, say goodbye to Dallas, and begin a year-long road trip to research college ministry throughout the country. As an “embedded reporter,” I’ll let you know through blog, video, and more what God’s up to out there, on college campuses throughout our nation – starting with the many schools and churches of Chicago.
Whether you’re headed to college soon, in college now, or well past “college age,” wouldn’t it be neat to spend a year seeing the “God side” of college campuses? That’s what this blog is about.
And, for those doing ministry right now: aren’t you a little bit intrigued about how college ministry takes place in Chicago, or at John Piper’s church, or when tragedy strikes, or in a non-college-town, or with a “Simple Church” model? And those are just random examples of the things we’ll be exploring this year.
And so it began!
Of course, the trip very quickly evolved from my starting plans:
- I ditched that hope for recording lots of video, for one thing. It would have been awesome, but it was logistically tricky. I did blog quite a bit, and my regularity in that rather surprised me!
- At the time, I wasn’t certain about the trip’s length; ultimately I decided to take a full year.
- My original plan to focus on church-based college ministry was quickly expanded to include a massive dose of Christian-college and campus-based ministries.
- And I ended up leaving a few days earlier than I was planning that night. So that meant only 19 days to move out of my apartment and prepare for months of road tripping… and a week of that was spent at a college ministry conference in New Mexico…
Little did I know that this year would turn out simply to be Year 2 of this particular sojourn. Though I did take 12 more weeks of road trips, I’ve been much more stationary than Year 1. But I’m far from “settled.” I continue to push and prod and poke and pray and pitch my tents wherever I need to, as I strive to serve the field of college ministry and watch for what’s next.
Since this recent “sojourn” is now two years old, it’s good to be reminded that God has provided an amazing and productive and grace-filled adventure.
Thanks for being a part of it – in praying, in reading, in meeting, in helping. Please be praying with me about next steps – whether it’s the Church Plan Project or something else. Whatever it is, I’ll keep you posted.
-ben
To see that original post from July 28th, 2007, click here.
To see the blog posts about the big road trip, head to the bottom of the Blog Topics drop-down list in the sidebar. Those posts are categorized by “chapter” under “Yearlong Road Trip.”
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I haven’t written about this in a long time, but some of you may remember that one significant activity on my yearlong road trip was visiting lots and lots of church worship services.
I visited 165 weekend church services during that year, in fact. (That’s an awful lot.) I got to attend dozens of the country’s most influential or most historic churches, hear lots of famous pastors in their home pulpits, and visit all sorts of interesting church forms (multi-site, multi-venue, Emerging, Emergent, internet church, speedy church, house church, collegiate church, many denominations / fellowships, etc., etc., etc.). It was pretty exciting. And occasionally exhausting!
The church visits from August 2007 through December 2008 can be seen here. (I still need to update it for 2009.)
Some of that was more or less “extracurricular,” since the purpose of the trip was investigating college ministry work around the country. Still, those visits often coincided with exploring a church’s college ministry; other times I was examining a “contemporary” or “edgy” service specifically targeting college students and young adults.
In any case, I guess I got hooked, because I’ve continued that practice over the last year, during my four additional road trips and even here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I haven’t quite kept up the insane pace of last year, and no weekend has approached the 9-service weekend of last summer. Yet I continue to add to my total.
(And don’t worry, I’ve also found a church of my own to get plugged in to; I attend every weekend I’m home and visit the others around its schedule.)
My ultimate hope is to share what I’ve seen and learned as a visitor in well over 200 different churches… maybe a book and/or articles? I’m optimistic about American Christianity and have thoroughly enjoyed seeing “living church history” in action… and yet I’ve also had the chance to think about ways we can improve, too. You start noticing weird stuff when you’ve been in hundreds of churches in less than two years!
For now, if you’re interested in all this, I encourage you to check out my Twitter feed each weekend (whether you personally Twitter or not). I generally note the places I visit and an occasional comment on aspects I find interesting. It’s nothing much, but I thought you might wanna know.
And if you’ve got ideas on how I can help others with this info or spread what I’ve learned from all these experiences, let me know! I’ll be weighing that opportunity in the coming days.
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I’m kinda taking today off after some really long days.
But though the last few days have been long, they’ve been SO GOOD. Can you handle a quick update? There are some interesting links…
One superb part of the last few days has been four discussions with eight local church people about my Project. Even if they don’t join the Project, it’s been phenomenal chatting hard-core about college ministry. Hopefully there will be plenty of connections with those ministers in the future!
Meanwhile, I got the wonderful chance to hang out with my semi-new buddy and fellow college ministry blogger Steve Lutz. He was in town for Leadership Network’s Ideation Experience conference, an invitation-only conference working on new idea-projects for Christianity. I first got to hang out with Steve in State College, PA, on my recent road trip; now he got to hang with me on my home turf in Big D. Good times.
BUT our time also resulted in me getting an incredible speed-intro to Dallas’s own Leadership Network. That came through all sorts of neat connections across about 18 hours – as I not only got to crash the conference’s informal hang-out time Tuesday night, but then D.J. Chuang invited me to join the conference’s final morning. (And that followed a sweet Dream Cafe breakfast with him and former longtime college minister Don Wilcox.)
From what I can tell, there’s a good shot of Leadership Network having some cool impact on the field of college ministry. There’s a lot of former-college-minister blood running through people’s veins up there! I’ll keep you posted on anything I learn.
Oh – and Steve’s idea was recognized as one of the Top 12 ideas coming out of that conference – check out his project at www.Commontary.com. I’m really excited for him – it’s a big honor.
Thanks for letting me update ya’.
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