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I honestly do believe that emphasizing college students’ Latter Transition could transform lots of college ministries. And like I wrote yesterday, that mindset can start very early, as we recognize that all college ministry really does have a huge preparation component – from the time freshmen enter until the time they graduate.

But of course, an overarching focus like that isn’t the only way we might work to help students transition. Good ol’ targeted discipleship for nearly-grads can provide key impact at a key time, too.

This can come in at least a few forms:

• A multi-week group study for your nearly-grads, probably in the spring semester. Maybe one teacher, or perhaps several different adults / DVD messages / etc. (But don’t forget to include those who might graduate in August or December! Or if your ministry is big enough, this could happen every semester.)
• Small group or one-on-one discipleship of nearly-grads. The discipler could be you or another leader who is out of school – or an adult community member could be even better!
• A Nearly-Grad Survival Guide. This can be something written in-house, it could be a collection of articles or books for “suggested reading,” one key book, audio messages, or something else. Hopefully one of these days we’ll have several books targeting this super-important period in people’s lives.
• Organizing “cohorts” of nearly-grads to connect with each other now and stay connected for some period after college ends. Even if these people “go their separate ways,” they can hold each other accountable, help each other think through the transition, and just be a familiar face or voice for awhile. Of course, those who plan to live in proximity, are going into similar fields, or have other similarities could be connected on purpose. Whatever.

What else you got?

As for possible teaching topics for these sorts of things, I’ll post my own “priority list” soon [here's that list].