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This Fridea is both early in the week (because tomorrow is Good Friday) and early enough that you could plan for summer.
I’m sure I’ve blogged along these lines in the past, but there’s a simple focus I want to give today: What if your whole ministry went through the same book/devotional/something over the summer?
Whether it’s something your ministry produces or just a great Christian book or sermon series or video series… what if everyone (who opted in, obviously) was doing the same thing? Heck, you could even attack something off the fiction shelf (Chronicles of Narnia comes to mind, but there are plenty of options). Or a handful of books, like one per month.
There are plenty of ways to springboard off this idea, as well as plenty of ways to maximize it (a weekly discussion maybe?). You know your ministry. But whatever you do, knowing that everyone’s doing this at the very least brings your students back more unified than they were before summer break. How often can you say that?
With students leaving town and campuses often closed on some day or another, can campus ministries even celebrate Easter, or use Easter time strategically?
Of course they can.
Here are some thoughts from past posts about this week. If you’ve missed some opportunities this year, put them on the calendar for next year…
Easter and Christmas, THE two biggest “liturgies” among us Protestants, are both widely ignored in the context of college ministry. Students are often home at Easter and pretty much always home at Christmas. Students who happen to stay in town (or live locally) aren’t going to celebrate these holidays with us.
But that’s kind of a shame, isn’t it? Because not only should we help our Jesus-following students better comprehend and celebrate the magnitude of the Christmas and Easter stories, but the non-Christian and “de-churched” students around us might be more likely to reflect in these moments than any others.
So first, here are six straightforward ways to impact your students and/or your campus at Easter:
- Round up your students who stay local, and participate in something a local church (or other college ministry!) is doing (like a special worship service, a seminar, a family Easter event, etc.).
- Connect with a local church who could use some extra hands during Easter week, preparing or running their big service or other event. Recruit students to help.
- Before they go home, give students tips and exhortation about sharing Jesus with family over the long weekend.
- Encourage students with tips and exhortation about witnessing to friends around Easter week.
- Prepare to do something with your students after the Easter weekend to debrief about the weekend, or about opportunities students had during Easter week.
- Prepare to do something after Easter to impact your campus.
When it comes to those last two notes – stuff to do after Easter – here are a handful of great ways to carry that out:
1. Debrief . How often do we ask students to share the growth they gained away from our ministries? Yet some of your students probably did reflect on Easter, celebrate Easter, and grow in the context of Easter in awesome ways. Shouldn’t they share that with you, their college minister? Couldn’t they share that with the whole group? This also includes asking about their time with family or “back home friends,” and what that showed them about preparing for this summer.
2. Don’t let Easter season pass by ’til you’ve fulfilled your ministry. Sometimes we’re so interested in putting on a good “show” that we wouldn’t dare do something silly like talk about the Easter story after Easter! But if there’s something God wants you to teach about Easter… you need to do that. Even after Easter. (Your students won’t care that you’re reflecting on the Easter story after Easter; in fact, it might make it “stick” better.)
3. What are you going to do for Christmas? The seasons aren’t exactly the same in college ministry, but they have some similarities. Start pondering now.
4. Ponder what next year’s Easter will look like. It makes sense to consider your Easter and “Resurrection Week” activities for 2018 now. You don’t have to decide everything, but you should
- analyze how well this year’s activities (if you had some) accomplished your purposes
- contemplate what you might want to do next year (while you’re still “in the moment”)
- write down any worthy thoughts – and maybe set a reminder to make sure you look at ’em in 11 months.
By the way, Easter 2018 is much later – April 21st. Even closer to summer; even further from Spring Break. Not sure if those things matter, but they might.
Two ways to build community and culture are so simple (and so effective) they almost feel cliche:
- honoring examples of the culture you’re trying to build
- self-deprecation
While these two avenues seem worlds apart, they can share a common mode, one method that can accomplish either (or even both): a “best of” ceremony. Whether you’re awarding people humorously (offering “awards” for funny mistakes and goofball moments) or seriously (awarding people for greatness), each avenue presents an opportunity. Either you’re doubling down on what you want… or you’re building community by helping everyone not take your ministry (and each other) too seriously.
Examples of the humorous route: Each year at our staff-wide retreat, a few staff members present an “Oscars”-style awards show… which is basically a “roast” of various staff members. No one’s exempt; top leaders are just as likely (or probably more likely) to “win” as admins or new staffers are. Another example is the weekly wrap-up on a sports radio station I listen to, when three “bloopers” from the week are presented and then voted on by listeners.
Examples of the straightforward route: On the other hand, awards for things like “Volunteer of the Year” can go a long way toward highlighting what you want to see more of. You might not have to chain yourself to a particular category, either – instead offering something vague like the “Ministry Innovation” award once in awhile. (I used to have a team member who would hand out little “Great Job” tickets for various successes she noticed. It meant a lot!)
Whichever route you go, the point is to think about publicly building culture. Could an award ceremony (or an “award” ceremony) be just what you need?
For Valentine’s Day, a past post assessing the relationships and romances that develop within your college ministry…
We college ministers need to talk plenty about “love and relationships” – those things are on our students’ minds, they trip up plenty of Christian students, they provide a chance to run counter-cultural to the campus, and they’ll lead to the life-changing choice of a spouse either in college or afterwards. So I figured I’d spend some posts talking about college students and romance. (Find the whole series here.)
Here’s the first post in the series: evaluating your ministry through the Great Couples Assessment.
One interesting way to assess your ministry is along this unique line: the kinds of romantic couples it’s producing. These questions are worth asking – even if there are different “right” answers (because campus ministries are different from each other).
1. When romantic couples emerge within your college ministry, are they awesome? A healthy college ministry will tend to produce healthy couples, and couples that exemplify the very things the ministry celebrates. Do you and other students enjoy being around the couples your ministry produces? Are those couples healthy, or are they full of red flags?
2. Is your campus ministry really good about celebrating romance, relationships, marriage, etc.? Sometimes campus ministries aren’t even good at supporting couples, let alone celebrating God’s work in bringing people together!
3. Do solid Christians within your college ministry regularly build romances with each other? How this one relates to healthy college ministry is a bit more complicated. But if you’re not seeing couples emerge from within your ministry (and especially if you are seeing students enter into relationships regularly with Christian students outside your ministry), it’s at least worth asking Why that’s the case.
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 people – both men and women? Is there room – even alongside the accompanying awkwardness – for students to build friendships, and eventually more, with others in your ministry?
Related to this is the issue of offering gender-specific vs. co-ed opportunities. Read where I wrote about that – including 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 marriage-immediately-after-graduating really isn’t the norm anymore. But I think we have to imagine that within a college ministry with a good number of students, we would likely be seeing the occasional marriage produced. If not, it’s probably worth asking Why – even if in the end, we decide we’re right where we need to be.
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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?
When first-timers show up to your Large Group Meeting (assuming you have a Large Group Meeting, and assuming you have first-timers…), what do they experience?
Is it any different than what the regulars experience?
While visitors should certainly feel at home, get a taste of what the ministry is like, and not feel singled out, it’s worth considering an opportunity to meet them, greet them, or give them an idea of what your ministry offers. A “five-minute party” (like I’ve seen some churches do)? A separate orientation from the small groups that meet afterward (if you’re a ministry that combines those into one night)? A great conversation with the college minister?
It doesn’t have to be big. It just needs to be different. And it might just be a win.
A radio station that only recently has become part of my regular rotation celebrated its 24th anniversary this week. Like watching Shark Tank or any other discussion of entrepreneurial endeavors, hearing the hosts reminisce about the early risk, choices, and audience response was fascinating.
And it drew me in all the more. (Like I said, I’m pretty new to this station.)
It reminded me of the power of this sort of “history lesson,” and I wonder how often those in college ministries call attention to their campus mission’s own history. Churches are much better at this, at least at celebrating the “bigger” anniversaries. Of course, college ministries can (and should) think about doing this more often than every five or twenty years.
Have you ever connected the dots, for your students, between the current college ministry and its long (or short) and storied history? The community feel that would develop, the authenticity this would reflect, and the encouragement for the future it could very well inspire… are worth the history lesson, for sure.
Want something new for the New Year? Here’s a post from way back about using adults…
I would argue that any college ministry should consider getting adults involved. This is a common effort by church-based ministries, but providing intergenerational connections and using adult volunteers is a fantastic option for many ministries besides those housed in churches. And it provides impact that you’re simply not going to get from mono-generational discipleship.
What are some ways you can get this done?
- Adopt-a-Student with local Christian adults
- Recruit adults/churches to serve meals (or snacks) to students on-campus, at a church, etc.
- Use families’ homes (for small groups, parties, etc.)
- Get adults to teach (including doing “panel discussions” with multiple adults and on-stage “interviews” of local adults)
- Help build “Campus Missions Teams” within each church that has shown an interest (call them “Tiger Mission Team,” “Longhorn Mission Team,” etc., based on the name of your own campus tribe).
- Encourage churches to welcome students into adult small groups/classes, if there’s no (well done) collegiate option – and show them how
- Bring adults into student gatherings as “hosts”
- Highlight the other opportunities at your church or at various churches (women’s Bible study, special speakers, service projects, Christmas events, etc.)
- Initiate disciplemaking relationships between adults and students
- Initiate mentoring (i.e., between students in certain majors with adults in those fields)
- Life “mentoring groups” (i.e., learning to cook)
- Getting local adults to eat on campus, spend time on campus, and otherwise begin having a “ministry of presence”
- Find opportunities to serve local adults (in ways that build relationships with them)
What happens when your students face an “underwater week”?
The difficult mid-semester week, when it seems like all projects are due and mid-terms come calling and a paper or two still need to be written, is a universal facet of collegiate existence.
My question is this: How do you use these moments to shepherd students?
“Underwater Weeks” are phenomenal opportunities for (1) pastoral care, and (2) mentoring… even if the latter is done after the fact. Whether it’s you as college minister or students’ small group leaders, somebody has a great chance to care for students in the midst of the mini-crisis of a very long, very hard week. Just think of the possibilities for action steps…
As such a week looms ahead: Talk with students about their particular temptations in the middle of these weeks. Do they get angry? Get anxious? Slip into looking at porn? Become a bad roommate? And then ask how you – or others – can help. Are these students asking for help when they need to?
In the middle of the Underwater Week: Let students know you’re praying for them (and actually pray for them!). Hold them accountable on stuff discussed earlier. Offer them space to study, encouragement to sleep, and whatever other resources they need. Round up encouragers and encouragements.
After the week: Sit down to discuss how it could have gone better. Was the craziness pretty unavoidable… or could they organize better in the aftermath? Did sin “get ’em” during this stressful time? How should next time look different? And in the midst of the trial, how was God big and real and close? What did He teach them? In other words, debrief.
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