This week’s review of online college ministry is chock-full but very skim-able (hopefully). Find what you need, and enjoy learning more about our field! (Be sure to notice that a new Missional Campus Ministry post came out this week at Jesus Creed – it’s linked toward the bottom of this post!)
SUPER SELECTIONS, TO START
The newest Ivy Jungle Campus Ministry Update came out this week. If you’re not getting it already, you can read it here. As always, it’s a really good collation of this month’s major collegiate stories of interest to us.
Anderson Analytics reveals a study that indicates Facebook might just be the only social networking site that matters to college students. Hat tip to Keith Davy for the link, and he provides some quick, helpful commentary, too.
Michael Mears shares a great method for thanking our volunteers, describing the gratitude banquet FSU CCF just held. And if you want to see the thank-you / “roast” videos they showed, there are six you can view here.
Brian Barela was especially on his game this week with some provocative thoughts, so as I’ve done before, I’m just linking his main blog.
For those of us who fundraise, the New York Times posts some great reasons to push for funds by December 31st (HT: Steve Lutz).
Guy Chmieleski urged us to spend time actually evaluating our ministries as the semester / quarter ends – and gives tips on doing it – in two posts (here and here).
Here at Exploring College Ministry, I wrote a three-part series addressing how we should shepherd our students’ work in service / social justice. That series starts here. And I encouraged us to “mind the spectrum” within national campus ministry groups and denominations.
CONFERENCES!
If you’re headed to Passion in a couple of weeks, the Prayer Journey began at the Passion blog Thursday!
And Tom Greentree on why it’s not too late to consider attending the Urbana Conference.
BOOKS WORTH YOUR LOOKS
Micheal Hickerson asked the Emerging Scholars Network for some “best books” recommendations for undergrads and got lots of great suggestions in the comments.
College ministers Tim Hudson and Brandon Smith both review Mark Batterson’s new book, Primal, quite favorably. (You might remember he gave copies away to 100 college ministers.)
And Byron Borger provides really helpful descriptions / recommendations of newer Study Bibles. Not only might one or more of these be worth our own consumption, a Study Bible can also make a great gift for graduating Seniors…
MISSIONAL CAMPUS MINISTRY, CONTINUED
Happily, Professor RJS added another entry to her discussion of “missional campus ministry” at the Jesus Creed blog. Missional Campus Ministry … Integration discusses integration of ministry with the campus and helping students integrate spirituality with their vocations. Interestingly enough, she follows up with a pretty negative (but helpful!) review of the book referenced in the Campus Ministry post. Meanwhile, here’s a list of the first 5 in the occasional “Missional Campus Ministry” series. If you haven’t read them (and the many great comments), there’s probably nothing I’d recommend more.
- Missional Campus Ministry 1 (discussing Steve Lutz’s work on the subject)
- Missional Campus Ministry 2 (discussing my book, Reaching the Campus Tribes)
- Missional Campus Ministry 3 (discussing Chuck Bomar’s book, College Ministry 101, and church-based ministry)
- Missional Campus Ministry 4 (discussing the role of Christian colleges)
- Missional Campus Ministry 5 (discussing John Stackhouse’s work on impacting intellectual students)
MEASURING COLLEGE MINISTRY SUCCESS, CONCLUDED?
Wrapping up the great multi-week discussion of models for measuring college ministry success, Tim Hawkins discusses multiple forms of accountability that can help measure whether we’re really achieving success – and whether we’re taking the right paths to get there.
Otherwise, here are the major posts that have aimed to discuss this important issue, roughly chronologically:
- Dean Thune on the danger of “success” without connectedness
- Me on why numbers aren’t a great solo measure of success
- Aaron Klinefelter on an “ecological” definition of success
- Jim Musser on measuring success by the future
- Chris Bean on why we need better measures for success
- Tim Hawkins on a “missional mapping” evaluation tool
- Joe Blanchard with his own attempt at “missional mapping”
- Alice Connor on what real-world success might actually look like
- Me on measuring success by achieving pre-determined aims
- Ian Clark with a solid 10-question assessment for college ministries
I don’t know how you do it but I’m glad you do!
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