Towards a Christian Theology of Innovation

[The following is excerpted from a talk I gave at the Faith for Thought conference in State College, PA, on 10/31/09]

What is Christian Innovation?

At first “Christian innovation” may seem like an oxymoron. Because as Ecclesiastes says,

“All things are wearisome,

more than one can say.

The eye never has enough of saying,

Nor the ear its fill of hearing.

What has been will be again,

What has been done will be done again;

There is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say,

‘Look! This is something new’?

It was here already, long ago;

It was here before our time.” Ecclesiastes 1:8-10

 

So if the Bible teaches that there is nothing new, is it even accurate to talk about innovation?

The answer is Yes. We find this to be loud and clear as we seek to build a theology of innovation. And as with most everything, we begin with Genesis 1-2.

 

Creation: As we see in Genesis 1-2, God is a creative God. He IS the Creator. He takes great delight in it. He calls it “good.” It’s part of being created in the Imago Dei, the image of God, to be creative. It is part of how we reflect him. Our ability to create was created. Everyone has the capacity to be creative, though many do not tap into that.

 

The way to reconcile Ecclesiastes 1 with christian innovation is to recognize that God is the Creator. He is the only one who has created everything ex nihilo, from nothing. All our other creative work is inherently derivative, because it derives from the Creator. So nothing is completely novel, though it may be a new expression. While cars, TVs, and the Internet are relatively new inventions, people have always had ways of getting around, things to look at for amusement, and methods for communicating with one another.

 

Fall: However, the world is broken and fallen. Sin infects and works itself into everything, including our intellect and our creative impulses. All innovation is NOT good.

We only have to go a few chapters in Genesis to see the creative impulse gone awry. In Genesis 6, before the Flood, it says “The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” (Genesis 6:5). The were inventing ways to do evil.

 

Moving on to Genesis 11, we see the Tower of Babel. What’s their stated purpose in building this tower? “Let’s make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4). This innovation was in direct defiance of God. God dispersed them—not because he’s petty and insecure, but because he knew the self-aggrandizing impulse can do great damage. Making a name for ourselves has been used to justify all kinds of terrible evil and injustice, like the Holocaust. Humanity has proven that we are most innovative when we’re inventing new ways of killing each other. Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done.

 

Redemption: In response to evil innovation, God does something surprising. He doesn’t squash all innovation/imagination altogether. In fact, he does something new to deal with the problem. His innovation is to bring redemption through a man, working within the system instead of outside of it. Think about how innovative God’s plan is: Jesus Christ, the God-man. Born of a virgin. Countless miracles. And the most outside-the-box idea of all: vicarious, atoning death on a cross. We couldn’t have thought of it if God didn’t think of it first!

 

Jesus talks about his work using innovation language. He says in Revelation 21:5 that “I am making everything new!” We believe that Jesus is making all things new. What does he mean by “new”?  The “new” that Jesus is speaking of is not so much “novel,” but new in the sense of renewal. Restoring things to the way God intended, to conform with God’s design. Redemption.

 

In that sense, then, innovation is the art of joining Jesus in his redemptive work of making all things new. Instead of squashing our creative impulses, God wants to renew them, and equip us in doing new things that lead to redemption. Therefore, we can say that all good and true innovation is redemptive.

 

Christians believe that we are caught up in the “Big Story,” the story of God doing new things to make all things new. This story, this life, is going somewhere—the redemption of all things! Now that’s a “bottom line” worth striving for!

 

With this bottom line, with this metanarrative in view, we have a new perspective on our purpose and work. Doing things the same old, same old way is not redemptive. This has always been true; it is more true than ever. So we need a holy imagination. We need innovative, redemptive solutions to the problems we see. How do we recognize redemptive innovation when we see it? I’ve listed six marks.

 

Marks of Redemptive Innovation:

1. It makes us more human, not less

Much innovation dehumanizes us. At its worst, methods of war and extermination.

2. It’s useful, not useless

Do you really need all the crap they sell? Do we really need the “Egg Genie” and the “Magic Bullet” and the combination hot dog cooker/bun warmer? (This is why all those personal storage places exist)

3. It’s the product of a sanctified imagination & creative impulse, not a depraved one

4. It doesn’t exploit—it edifies

5. It meets a real and pressing need, instead of creating a false one

How about all the constant ads for penis and breast enlargement? Creates a sense of inferiority.

6. It’s not about making a name for ourselves—even better, it’s about making God’s name great!

 

Take technology for example. It’s a powerful tool, period. It can connect us in amazing ways, but like anything else, it will have fallen, sinful applications. The internet allows us to share information and resources like never before, but it is also connecting more people to more porn than ever.

 

Because technology has sinful applications, some Christians will say what we need to do is unplug and retreat to simpler times. Dismiss all tech as sinful. This would be a mistake.

 

Technology, like anything else, can and must be redeemed. And it has powerful redemptive potential/capability. It’s our job to discover what that is. Technology part of the problem, but in Christ, it can be redeemed to be part of the solution. We won’t find those solutions by sitting out, but by engaging and innovating from within.

 

 

Innovation for Redemption through Churches and Ministry

It may be hard for us to grasp, but the Church throughout history and in many parts of the world today has been extremely innovative.

 

We see this in the Early church.  The church adapts to rapid growth, change, and persecution by innovating new ways to spread the Kingdom: They create deacons. They bring in Gentiles. They figure out how they church should be expressed in new places in the diaspora. Paul constantly adapts his missionary methods for his different contexts.

 

Through the centuries, the Church continued to innovate, nearly always on the cutting edge of mission to new, unreached lands. The modern era of foreign missions in the 17^th-18^th century saw an explosion of new strategies to reach new people in new places. Even denominations, which to many people are the epitome of stodgy, institutional Christianity, were originally an innovative strategy for figuring out how state churches should organize and work together in the “New Land.”

 

Campus ministry, especially in the 1950s-1970s, was a hotbed of innovation in ministry. Campus Crusade, Intervarsity, and others paved the way not just for engaging college students, but engaging society as a whole. Bill Bright of Crusade was a legendary leader and pacesetter for an entire generation of Christians.

 

And finally, the American church has awoken again to the importance of starting new churches through church planting. It’s widely known that church planting is a high risk endeavor (but that’s what entrepreneurship is all about). It’s high risk, but also high reward.  The vast majority of church plants fail. But one study found that 80% of new converts came from churches less than 2 years old!

 

Jesus is into making all things new by starting new things. We should be too.

Thoughts on using “Gospel Centered Life”

A friend and campus ministry colleague recently wrote me about a concern she had with Gospel Centered Life, a 9 week study distributed by World Harvest Mission that I’ve used pretty extensively with students, and which I’m a big fan of.  I was thankful for the question, and suspect more people have this experience. There’s nothing very original in my response, but I hope it’s helpful to the person working through this material. I’m interested in your thoughts on the Q&A, particularly if you’ve used GCL or something like it.

Here’s our exchange:

 

Hey Steve!
…Quick question for you. When you did “GCL” did you feel that it was a little sin and guilt heavy? I didn’t really recognize it when I read through it and was thinking about teaching it, but now that we are actually using it I have noticed. And my students have as well. We do have a lot of discussion, and usually that is pretty encouraging, but sometimes I think they leave a little more discouraged than encouraged in their walk. Thoughts? How did it end up turning out for you?

Hey ______

–great question.
I don’t think you’re alone in experiencing this, but I wouldn’t say the material necessarily causes people to leave–and stay–discouraged.
I often say that the Gospel is “two handed,” that is, there’s a lot of “On the one hand/on the other hand.”

On the one hand, we are more sinful, broken, and messed up than we would ever admit.
But on the other hand, we are more loved, forgiven, and accepted than we could ever imagine.

If your students are leaving discouraged, it sounds to me like they are getting “halfway there.” And while you don’t want them to stay there, this isn’t entirely bad.

Seeing the depth of our sin is necessary to grasp the Gospel. If the Gospel has ceased to be good news for us, it is likely because we don’t see the height, depth, and length of it. If we don’t see just how great our sin is, we don’t see the extent to which God has reached out to us through Christ. If we don’t think we’re all that bad, than the Gospel just isn’t that great.

Without the “bad news,” the “Good News” isn’t really good. When it comes to the Gospel, the way up is down. The Bible says that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God. Going through a season in which we become discouraged because we are worse off than we thought we were is good and necessary.

That said, you must help your students take hold of Christ! If they’re walking away discouraged, let them despair of themselves, but help them to find hope in Christ! One old preacher wisely said, “For every one look at yourself, take 10 looks at Christ!” We don’t want people to be filled with morbid introspection–we want them to be filled with the life and love of Christ. Remind them that the Gospel is two-handed. Help them see that God’s grace is greater than ALL their sin and failures. Help them see that humility, confession, repentance, and forsaking self is the “upside-down” way to experiencing the Good News of Jesus for all its worth!

I hope this is helpful–if I can be of further help as you lead your students through this, let me know.

 

 

What do you do to stay “in the loop”?

As a minister, and perhaps even more particularly, as a campus minister, it’s important to stay in the loop.

Theologian Karl Barth famously stated that it was wise to begin the day with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.  Nowadays, we may integrate all our Scriptural and news resources into our laptop or smartphone.

I can think of 3 reasons why it’s important for campus ministers to work at staying in the loop, every day:

1. For personal reasons

We need new ideas. We need to be challenged. We don’t want to become static entities, just doing the same old stale things we did 5-10 years ago. This is what Stephen Covey calls “sharpening the saw.” One of the best ways to stay active, alert, vital, and fresh is to know where to go to sharpen your saw.

2. For professional development.

These first two overlap, but are important enough to be distinct. Campus ministers, like anyone else who believes their field is important, need to be active learners. Some of the best lessons to be learned are across disciplines. For example, it was through faithfully reading the Harvard Business Review email that I read an article on “How Innovators Think.” The first characteristic of an innovator is “Associating,” that is, making connections across disciplines. Quite a few good ideas have come to me through the seemingly incongruous reading of the HBR.

3. For missional reasons.

We work in places that highly value knowledge. A fully incarnational and faithful ministry should be constantly building our own knowledge-base. When we’re constantly reading, associating, and connecting the dots, it builds credibility with those we’re serving. I’ve had more than one professor smile with surprise and recognition when I cite something I’ve read in the Chronicle of Higher Ed or the New York Times related to their field.

Being active learners can open doors to new opportunities. It helps us learn and listen. It helps us remember what our students are (supposed to be) doing much of the time they’re not meeting with us. It helps us feel that we too are part of this learning community called a university.

So what do I do to stay in the loop?

It starts with my daily emails. Every morning, I get emails with headlines from the following sources:

The New York Times

I always read David Brooks on Tuesdays and Fridays. I also like Thomas Friedman. I read a lot of the Tech articles, including David Pogue’s posts. I’ve set up an “Alert” for special emails on anything related to Higher Ed. This saves me some search time. I also get special emails for movie and books reviews.

The Chronicle of Higher Ed

Much of the content they distribute is “premium,” which I don’t subscribe to, but a good bit of it is free. Plus, just glancing at the headlines gives me a feel for what people are thinking about and discussing.

Inside Higher Ed

Not as polished as the Chronicle, but with more free content. Also very valuable as a gauge of what’s “hot” in Higher Ed.

Harvard Business Review

Tons of great, readable articles on leadership, innovation, entrepreneurship, and other areas that are very relevant to what I’m doing.

I typically scan all these emails, clicking on articles that pique my interest, and I typically end up with anywhere from 5-10 that I’d like to read.

The only actual newspaper I read is Penn State’s Daily Collegian, one of the best student newspapers in the country.

Now, call me old-school, but I still like magazines: There should be a place for long-form journalism. I subscribe to several mags:

Rolling Stone

Fast Company

Inc.

The Atlantic

Christianity Today

Books & Culture

Also: Time, Wired, Comment, Entrepreneur

Add to these a host of blogs, many of which are listed at the right. My blog reading ebbs and flows though.

How about you? What do you read to stay in the loop?

The Conversion of General Andrew Jackson

Not too long ago, I read the one volume biography of Andrew Jackson by Robert Remini. (Part of my ongoing goal to read at least one bio of every U.S. President).

I enjoyed the book, and the man, more than I expected to. I had come in with a negative disposition towards Jackson, shaped in part by what I learned in high school. (I guess I was more of a Federalist back then). I can still hear my 11th grade American Studies teacher, Ms. Gallagher, vividly recalling Jackson’s words: “The Bank is trying to kill me, Mr. Van Buren, BUT I WILL KILL IT!”

Jackson’s wife Rachel was well-known as a very pious woman. Remini makes the case that her piety was at least in part due to the shady circumstances of their marriage, perhaps as penitential overcompensation. It seems likely that the General and Rachel were married before her first marriage was legally ended.

This charge, and the nasty aspersions that accompanied it, would follow the Jacksons for the rest of their lives. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Moore, Bill Maher–these guys have nothing on the mudslingers of the 1820s-1830s. Political discourse is NOT at an all-time low. Many believe that stress and grief from all the personal attacks ultimately killed Rachel.

For much of his life, Jackson was not pious in the least. But he loved Rachel, and so arranged for a Presbyterian church to be built for her at the Hermitage, their estate in Tennessee, in 1823. However, he did not join the church.

Remini then recounts his change of heart, in 1838, and late in life (70 years old, and after Rachel had passed away):

One happy event of 1838 occurred on July 15. It was a Sunday, and on that day General Andrew Jackson joined the Presbyterian Church. The act of joining had been in his mind for many years since both his wife and mother were members of the Presbyterian church. Also, he had promised his wife to join but had postponed it because he felt that a public display of his religion would be regarded as hypocritical. He would be accused of joining the church ‘for political effect.’ So he put off this ‘public act’ until he had retired ‘when no false imputations could be made that might be injurious to religion’…

Then one Sunday… [Rev. Dr. John Todd Edgar] preached on the interposition of Providence in human affairs–a matter of irrefutable truth in Jackson’s private canon–and seeing the old gentleman come alive to his words, Edgar began sketching the career of a ‘hypothetical’ man who had escaped the hazards of the wilderness, war, the attack of Indians, the invasion of his country, the vicissitudes of political strife, and the determination of an assassin. How can such a man pass through all these scenes unharmed, said the clergyman, and not see the protecting hand of Providence in his deliverance?

Jackson stirred in his pew. When the service ended he was deep in thought. He brooded all the way home and spent the greater part of the day and evening in meditation and prayer. Part of the time he conversed with Sarah, his daughter-in-law, about joining the church and together they knelt and prayed.

Dr. Edgar visited him shortly thereafter. Jackson told him of his experience and how he had undergone what might be called a ‘conversion.’ Thereupon he asked to be admitted to the church along with his daughter-in-law.

Edgar questioned him about his conversion. Most of the answers met an approving nod of the head. Finally Edgar asked the  most important question of all.

‘General, there is one more question which it is my duty to ask you. Can you forgive all your enemies?’

The question came as a shock. For a moment  the General stood silent. The two men stared at each other.

Jackson breathed deeply. His eyes glittered. ‘My political enemies,’ he said at last, ‘I can freely forgive ; but as for those  who abused me when I was serving my country in the field, and those who attacked me for serving my country–Doctor, that is a different case.’

Edgar rejected the argument. There was no difference, he replied. Christians must forgive all. This was absolute. Without a general amnesty for all his enemies, Andrew Jackson could not join the church. [Remini does not state it, but this requirement was not a particular hangup of Dr. Edgar's, the church, or Presbyterianism. Rather, forgiveness of others is a mark of genuine conversion. More on this below.]

The stricken man sighed. There was a ‘considerable pause.’ Then Jackson spoke again. Upon reflection, he began, he thought he could forgive all who had injured him, even those who reviled him for his services to his country on the battlefield. He was at long last prepared to grant amnesty to all the scoundrels  and poltroons who had ever crossed his path.

Edgar smiled his approval. He left the room to inform Sarah. A moment later the woman rushed into the room and embraced the old man. There was a flood of tears…

[The following Sunday] the regular Sabbath services commenced, and at their conclusion General Andrew Jackson rose in his place to announce that he desired to join the church. He further declared his belief in its doctrines, and he resolved to obey its precepts…And so Andrew Jackson was formally admitted into the Presbyterian Church and received communion. ‘To see this aged veteran, whose head had stood erect in battle, and through scenes of fearful bearing, bending that head in humble and adoring reverence at the table of his divine Master, while tears of penitence and joy, trickled down his careworn cheeks, was indeed a spectacle of most intense moral interest.’

For the remainder of his life General Jackson conducted himself as a true believer. It was a faith more uniquely his own than anyone might recognize in the Presbyterian Church–he could never accept the notion of an ‘elect’ chosen by God, for example, because it offended his democratic soul–but it would have been most uncharacteristic of him had he submitted totally to all the precise teachings of his church. Still he attended services regularly…and he read a portion of the Bible each day, along with biblical commentaries and the hymn book…Each night he read prayers in the presence of his family and servants, and sometimes he offered short homilies of his own. The Life of Andrew Jackson, Robert Remini, p. 340-341.

It’s a great story, one which Remini notes may have been embellished in subsequently tellings by Edgar. But it has all the marks of genuine conversion.

The most notable aspect of the story is Edgar’s pushing Jackson so hard on forgiving his enemies. Why did he do this? Was it a quirk or particular requirement of his? Not so. The first reason is that it is a biblical command, and one of the recurring themes of Jesus’ teaching.  It’s likely that Dr. Edgar cited numerous passages, such as those in the Sermon on the Mount:

⁴³“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (Matthew 5:43-45)

¹²Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
¹³And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’ ¹⁴For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. ¹⁵But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6:12-15)

But there’s more to Dr. Edgar’s method than merely following Sciptural precept and procedure. Dr. Edgar, I believe, was showing some real pastoral sensitivity–and courage–here. To be sure, landing a “catch” like General Jackson would be significant. If that had been his motive, he surely would have smiled and gladly received Jackson into the church. But he risks it all by pushing Jackson on this point of forgiveness. Knowing how acrimonious and vindictive Jackson’s life had been, and how he had made more enemies than anyone else alive, Edgar pushed him on the one point that would be impossible for Jackson to budge on, if the Gospel had not taken root.

With the “Rich Young Ruler” (Matthew 19; Mark 10), Jesus challenged the man to leave his riches behind. The man could not, because they were too precious to him.  With Jackson, Edgar essentially does the same thing. Edgar knew that Jackson’s enemies could be too “precious” to him. They had been part of his life and identity for too long. His whole identity, as “Old Hickory,” was based on standing up to anyone and everyone. His enemies had formed him. Like Bono says in “Cedars of Lebanon,”

Choose your enemies carefully ‘cause they will define you
Make them interesting ‘cause in some ways they will mind you
They’re not there in the beginning but when your story ends
Gonna last with you longer than your friends

Yes, even our enemies can become “Counterfeit Gods,” which ultimately keep us from the real thing. Dr. Edgar knew this was there the crux of gospel transformation lay for Jackson. He knew that when Jackson was willing to lay these down, he had experienced genuine, transforming grace.

Three lessons I’m taking from this story, as a minister:

1. The Power of Patience. What must it have been like to pastor this church where–for 15 years!–the man who built it sat in the first pew, but  did not join, did not receive communion, indeed, did not make any profession of faith? How easy it would have been to either write him off, or to rush God’s timetable and bring things to a crisis before Jackson’s heart was softened. God is not slow, as we think of slowness. His timing is perfect and we are wise to wait on him.

2. The Power of Pastoral Sensitivity. Dr. Edgar clearly knew this sheep of his. He had likely prayerfully imagined this conversation many times. He knew enough about the inner workings of Jackson to raise the issue of Providence and the “hypothetical man,” as a point of contact. He knew to ask the necessary questions, and to push him where he needed to be pushed. It raises an interesting question: when confronted with someone who wants to make a profession of faith, could I be so eager to help them cross the line that I fail to ask the necessary questions, or will I act with sensitivity and discernment?

3. The Power of Courage. This point is best appreciated if you know about the life and character of “Old Hickory,” but Jackson was a man who bent for NO ONE. For Edgar to not simply accept Jackson’s profession of faith, but to challenge him–even shock him–in a way he would surely feel, demonstrated tremendous courage. It showed that Edgar did not fear man–even a man as fearsome and formidable as Jackson–but feared God. The fear of God will make us courageous against any man.

This is why I love reading history. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Resources for Coaching Campus Church Planters

As you may already know, I’m devoting a couple hours/week this year to coaching Pete & Jackie Horning, ACF’s first campus church planting couple. We’ve been meeting regularly over the past month, and it’s been going well.

We generally meet for about 1.5 hours; my goal is to give them an average of 2 hours homework (some weeks may be more or less). I’m also trying to take into account the rhythms of the semester, as well as the fact that they’re both working full-time, and Pete’s also taking some seminary classes.

My role is simply that of “coach,” that is, nuts-and-bolts, Xs and Os, all that stuff. Since Pete and Jackie don’t know exactly which campus (or even city) they’re going to yet, it’s too early to do much of the particular missiological work that will be needed. So in the early going, we’ve been focusing mostly on calling & qualifications, Gospel, missional theology, Gospel, leadership, and Gospel.

As promised, here’s the “syllabus” of what I’m having them read/watch before our discussions for this semester. You’ll see it’s pretty obvious who some of my influences are. So far, our biggest problem is not having enough time to discuss it all. What do you think? Anything you would add? (I have a lot more in the hopper–we’ll have winter break and spring semester as well).

Week 1: CALLING: Articles: “10 Characteristics of a Church Planter,” and “20 Characteristics, annotated”

http://www.acts29network.org/mediafiles/60microskills.pdf

http://www.acts29network.org/acts-29-blog/am-i-a-church-planter/ —Scott Thomas

Week 2: CALLING: Video: The Ox: Qualifications of a Church Planter—Mark Driscoll

http://theresurgence.com/mark_driscoll_2008-02-26_video_tnc_the_ox–qualifications_of_a_church_planter

Week 3: CAMPUS MINISTRY: Articles: “The Need for Missional Campus Ministry,”  “Church, Parachurch, and the Third Way,” and “The 5 Big Issues in Campus Ministry Today” by Steve Lutz http://stevelutz.wordpress.com/resources, plus start The Prodigal God

Week 4: GOSPEL: Book: The Prodigal God, by Tim Keller (book)

Week 5: MISSIOLOGY: Video: Biblical Missiology—Jeff Vanderstelt

http://theresurgence.com/jeff_vanderstelt_2008-02-27_video_tnc_biblical_missiology

Article: The Missional Church, Tim Keller

http://setsnservice.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/missional-church-keller-2-0-tony-stiff.pdf

Week 6: CHRISTOLOGY: Book: Vintage Jesus, by Mark Driscoll

Week 7: MISSIOLOGY: Video: Our Mission—Daniel Montgomery

http://theresurgence.com/Montgomery_Our-Mission-video

Article: Reading the Bible Missionally, Tony Stiff

http://setsnservice.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/reading-the-bible-missionally-beta-version2.pdf

Week 8: Conference: Acts29 Boot Camp in Louisville, KY 11/10-11

http://www.acts29network.org/event/2009-11-10-louisville-boot-camp–louisville-ky/

Week 9: DISCIPLESHIP: Book: The Master Plan of Evangelism, Robert Coleman

Week 10: LEADERSHIP: Video: Leading the Mission, Darrin Patrick

http://theresurgence.com/darrin_patrick_2008-02-27_video_tnc_leading_the_mission

Article: Missional Communities at the Austin Stone Church

http://www.austinstone.org/what/group_faq

Week 11: BIBLE: Book: The Drama of Scripture, Bartholemew & Goheen

Week 12: GOSPEL: Video: How Do I Distinguish Between the Gospel and False Gospels—John Piper http://theresurgence.com/john_piper_2008-02-26_video_tnc_how_do_i_distinguish_between_the_gospel_and_false_gospels

Article: Religion-less Spirituality http://www.theresurgence.com/tim_keller_1996_religionless_spirituality

Week 13: SPIRITUAL VITALITY: Book: The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer

JoePa’s Campus Ministry Philosophy

Joe Paterno is the winningest college football coach of all time, and also a man of integrity and deeply held convictions. From the beginning of his tenure at Penn State, he’s sought to cultivate not just football players, but men. He’s made it clear that Penn State Football would do things the right way, would strive for “success with honor.” It’s part of the “secret” to his success and tenure.

This quote from Sports Illustrated says a lot about JoePa the man, and the coach. And it’s a good piece of advice for campus ministers. (Speaking to his son Jay, also an assistant coach):

“You’ll understand, once you have kids, that life changes. You’ll find that your happiness is defined by your least happy child. You’ll understand. Every player we have, someone—maybe a parent, a grandparent, someone—poured their life and soul into that young man. They are handing that young man off to us. They are giving us their treasure, and it’s our job to make sure we give them back that young man intact and ready to face the world…If all my life has been about is winning football games,” Joe says, “then my father is rolling around in his grave.”

In campus ministry, relationships are paramount. I’ll confess that I’m very much a vision/mission/strategy guy. The “Xs and Os,” if you will. So little reminders of being entrusted with someone’s treasure are helpful. It’s an important perspective to maintain. I value interaction with parents because, while the kids may try to treat our interactions as coolly and casually as possible, I know many prayers have gone ahead of our meetings.

And while we’re talking about JoePa–You can have your Nick Sabans, your Jimmy Johnsons, your Rich Rodriguezes, your Barry Switzers, your Jackie Sherrills, your Beano Cooks, your John Coopers, and every other coach he’s outclassed and outlasted. In 12 years, I’m sending Sam to play for that man. (And Joe will only be 94 years old!)

Thanks to Kirby Oaks for drawing my attention to this quote!

On Coaching Campus-Church Planters

One of the hats I’m wearing here at Penn State is “Church Planting Coach.” I’m partnering with my good friends Aaron & Amy Henning and Alliance Christian Fellowship (ACF) in coaching/training their first church planters, Pete and Jackie Horning. ACF is looking to replicate it’s unique church-on-campus model on other campuses. There are a couple really promising options which we hope to get nailed down in the next month or so, and they’ll hope to launch next academic year, August 2010.

Since I have experience in both campus ministry and church planting, I’m excited to be able to contribute to this work. I hope to do more coaching/consulting on this kind of thing in the future.  I’ll be meeting weekly with Pete and Jackie this year to help prepare them for their new work. I’m excited and sobered to do so.

I’m putting together a syllabus/reading/media list for our discussions throughout the year. When I finish compiling it, I’ll post that here. I’m going to make it as comprehensive as possible.

Pete and Jackie don’t know exactly where they will be going yet. But that doesn’t mean there’s no church planting preparation to be done. We have much to cover in terms of calling, qualifications, and character.

One of the first things I’m having Pete and Jackie do is take in content from Acts29 and the Resurgence. We’ve read and discussed Scott Thomas’ 10 Characteristics of a Church Planter plus 60 microskills.

We’ll also be viewing and discussing Mark Driscoll’s “The Ox: Qualifications of a Church Planter,” which is an excellent, sobering, challenging, and inspiring call to the unique role of a church planter. Definitely worth watching if you or someone you know is considering it.

As I put the coaching “playbook” together, what would you include?

Publishers Weekly Review of Keller’s “Counterfeit Gods”

Tim Keller’s latest book, Counterfeit Gods, comes out in less than a month, and the reviews are starting to come in. In reading the review from Publisher’s Weekly, it’s clear that some people still enjoy typecasting Reformed Christians as dour, pessimistic killjoys. Ever since Edwards preached “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” it’s been fashionable to do so. I was particularly struck by the line “Shadowed by the pastor’s austere Reformed vision of the depth and shape-shifting forms of human depravity, this sometimes bleak series of linked meditations…”

I haven’t yet read the book, but I’ve heard and read quite a bit of Keller over the years. While I can see how an outsider might be sobered and even put off by Keller’s depiction of the depth of depravity, I’m quite confident that they’re only telling half the story. The other half is not austere or bleak at all, but the glorious, uplifting, hope-giving promise of redemption.

To be sure, this is not the message one will read in Joel Osteen, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, or Oprah. These Dr. Feelgoods take us directly to Happy Town by flooding us with pep talks and positive sentimentality divorced from reality. If Keller’s crime is guiding us to a harder path than these bestsellers to the itching-ear masses, then he’s guilty as charged.

But consider for a moment that you’re diagnosed with cancer. Would you be satisfied if your doctor simply smiled, told you everything would be ok, and gave you a lollipop? Would you not demand an in-depth explanation of the diagnosis, the prognosis, the possible treatments, and dozens of other questions? It would be hard to hear, but you know you need to hear it, and no doctor worth his license would sugarcoat it. On the other side of these harder conversations and the even harder treatments lies healing and life. Not so with the smile-and-candy doctor–your relatives would sue him for malpractice after you’re gone.

What makes the Gospel good news is that it is the comprehensive treatment for a real, and lethal, problem. Reformed people are not bleak and dour by temperament, or because they have a sin-fixation (Ok, not ALL of them are dour by temperament). We talk about original sin and total depravity, because the only way to redemption is along that road. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Doing away with the idols of the heart, those things that shackle and enslave us, through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is the only way to get to the hope and freedom that people long for. The diagnosis must match the solution. Otherwise it’s spiritual malpractice. The Gospel doesn’t feed us placebos. It’s strong stuff, but it’s effective.

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex and Power, and the Only Hope That MattersTimothy Keller. Dutton, $19.95 240p ISBN 978-0-525-95136-0 Author of The Reason for God and senior pastor of New York’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Keller asserts that the chaos of the global financial crisis offers a rare opportunity, as individuals and as a society, to discern the “glittering gods” that enslave us. “The only way to free ourselves from the destructive influence of counterfeit gods is to turn back to the true one,” writes Keller, mercilessly dissecting the things he believes keep men and women from acknowledging their sin and God’s love, grace and centrality. Shadowed by the pastor’s austere Reformed vision of the depth and shape-shifting forms of human depravity, this sometimes bleak series of linked meditations weaves the spiritual journeys of biblical figures like the Old Testament soldier Naaman with insights from more modern figures, including 19th-century industrialist Andrew Carnegie, contemporary author Malcolm Gladwell and retired tennis star Chris Evert. A work of recession spirituality and cultural criticism, this volume will appeal to those who share Keller’s conviction that the journey away from idolatry and toward God can sometimes take a lifetime. Oct. 20

Campus Ministry and the “Virtual Revolution” in Higher Ed

Are colleges like newspapers, destined for obsolescence because the “virtual revolution” wave that is killing news is about to crash on Higher Ed?

Some recent articles have revived the prospect of big university campuses–such as Penn State, where I serve–becoming “relics” in the not-too-distant future. It seems entirely plausible to me. With rapidly rising costs, Higher Ed may be precipitating its own demise as cheaper and more accessible competition springs up.

I’m not in a position to do anything more than speculate on the future of Higher Ed. But let’s assume for a moment that prognostications like Peter Drucker’s are correct (and I know enough to listen to Peter Drucker): large, residential institutions may become museums of the pre-virtual, pre-education-via-the-internet past. What would this mean for Campus Ministry?

Imagine that 40,000 students WEREN’T descending on a campus near you every August. What if there WEREN’T 10,000 freshman trying to navigate your campus? Or more pointedly, what if they were enrolled, but spread all over the world, taking classes on their laptop from their bedroom or cafe?What if the University no longer provided the “service” of gathering and centralizing the student body for our campus ministries? How would we connect with them? How would we serve them? How would we minister to them and equip them for ministry? And what does this mean for the sustainability of our field?

My first thought is that this yet another notable and not-to-be-missed strike against attractionally-oriented ministry. Attractional ministry can work if there are large masses of students to attract. As it is, the “market share” for churched kids is already shrinking–this will shrink it further. If traditional student feeder systems recede to only a trickle, not only will the vast majority of current ministry models not be sustainable, but they may cease to exist at all. If campus ministry is meant to serve as a bridge between campus and church, then we might have a bridge to nowhere.

This won’t be all bad, because it may put an end to artificial ministry ecosystems which keep Christian kids ghettoized in their parachurch groups, groups which unfortunately can suck all their time and energy and keep them from meaningful connection with a local church. This may speed the local church’s return to the missional forefront of campus ministry. When kids graduate high school, churches will have to place higher priority on retaining those kids (as more of them may be staying home for school), and connecting the kids who leave to a solid church near their campus.

These changes will also push our field even further in creative development of missional, outward-facing, externally-focused, going-out campus ministry. If the students don’t come to us, well then, we’ll just have to go to them, right? We’ll have to look harder to find them. And we’ll likely have to disabuse ourselves of the traditional nickels-and-noses metrics of “success,” as our ministry will have many more meetings with smaller groups of students–ministries that may be just as decentralized and fragmented as the student bodies they serve.

The future of ALL campus ministry may look like what’s happening at Community Colleges around the country. That’s the closest parallel I can think of–a large but disjointed student body, moving targets who can be darn near impossible to reach. When’s the last time you heard about an awesome, hitting-on-all-cylinders ministry at a Community College? (If you know of one, please let me know).

We’re beyond tweaking here, folks.  We have a lot of fundamental changes to make to our campus ministry models to be effective in the future, at least this version of it.

Your thoughts?

September 14, 2009, 02:35 PM ET

Colleges Will Be ‘Torn Apart’ by Internet, Law Professor Predicts

By Marc Parry

Thirty years from now, big university campuses will be “relics.”

That was the management guru Peter Drucker’s prediction in 1997. Over a decade later, notes the online-education consultant John Sener, the demise-of-the-university arguments keep piling up.

The latest, “A Virtual Revolution Is Brewing for Colleges,” was published on Sunday in The Washington Post. In it, Zephyr Teachout argued that kids heading off to college this year might be part of the last generation for which that means the traditional experience of dorm rooms and tenured professors.

“Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering,” wrote Ms. Teachout, an associate professor of law at Fordham University. “Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained private U.S. colleges cannot survive.”

Ms. Teachout describes the “real force for change” as the market, arguing that online classes cost less to produce and distance-education technology will continue to improve.

Her argument drew a quick rebuttal from Mr. Sener, director of special initiatives for the Sloan Consortium.

“Anybody who believes that universities are going to become relics in another 18 years needs to go next weekend and chill out at a tailgate party,” Mr. Sener told The Chronicle in a brief interview on Monday.

Mr. Sener’s take is that Ms. Teachout and similar commentators don’t grasp that education “is a complex system animated and sustained by a variety of important competing forces,” a system that “operates fundamentally differently from business.”

The consultant sent an e-mail message to a Sloan Consortium listserv tallying up the procession of similar brink-of-demise or radical-transformation predictions since Mr. Drucker’s 1989 book The New Realities. The pace seems to be accelerating this year, he pointed out, noting David Wiley’s remark that universities “will be irrelevant by 2020” and Kevin Carey’s earlier use of the newspaper analogy.

Laurie Fendrich weighed in with her take, “The Dystopia of Distance Learning,” on The Chronicle’s Brainstorm blog on Sunday. What’s your opinion? Are these arguments reality or hype?

via The Wired Campus – Colleges Will Be ‘Torn Apart’ by Internet, Law Professor Predicts – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The “Spiritual Openness Continuum” on Campus, and What to Do About It

Recently I was talking with Mark, one of the students I disciple, about spiritual openness on campus. As a recent convert–he became a Christian last Spring–Mark is in a unique position to gauge where the student population is at. I asked him how he would divide up the campus population on a continuum, and we sketched out the following 5 point scale:

———————————————————————————————–

+2 Actively looking, open people  (churched, professing Christian, or on the verge).  3% of the student population

+1 Have spiritual questions in the back of their mind; but open-minded, not closed. Willing to give it a shot. Nominal Christians, friendly non-Christians. 10%

0 Apathetic. Couldn’t care less, either way. Find both extremes to be shrill, obnoxious, and irrelevant. If you bring up Jesus, they shrug their shoulders and say “Meh.” 62%

-1 Suspicious, somewhat hostile, but might be willing to give you an audience. 20%

-2 Active, angry, antagonistic. For example, militant atheist.   5%

———————————————————————————————–

I’m not claiming this is scientific, but it’s a pretty fair representation of the state of openness towards Christianity at Penn State. Particularly when I see only about 1000 students out of 44,000 involved in weekly evangelical worship–that’s the bulk of our +2 category. I may be overestimating the number of militant atheists and the like, but will assume that they’re harder to see because they’re so committed to personal autonomy that they have a hard time gathering.

I believe our scale aligns pretty nicely with findings from Pew, Barna, UnChristian by Kinnaman & Lyons, and Lost & Found by Stetzer, if you’re willing to view them all in a broad, impressionist sort of way.  And as I’ve often said, PSU is a good sample (at least as far as 18-23 year olds go), because Pennsylvania is a pretty good microcosm of the country. We have a lot of blue on our “coasts,” with a lot of red in between. So take this as a non-scientific but decent approximation of the way things are.

Let me make some observations on this scale before moving to recommendations:

• While this scale is helpful in trying to understand where people are coming from, I want to caution against wielding it like a hammer and making snap judgments about people. You simply can’t tell what they think at first glance. Just because they’re part of an atheist group doesn’t mean they’re a -2. These are our perceptions, so when applying to individuals, proceed carefully.
• People are always moving. This continuum is pretty fluid. People, especially during the college years, are on rapidly changing trajectories. Mark himself said that for many years he was a -1. A friendship with a Christian student named Phil pushed the needle to +1, which led to an invite to the Bible study where Mark eventually came to faith. We should be careful to not typecast people, and to not assume they’re unmovable.
• Surprisingly, the ease with which we can share our faith does not correlate with perceived openness. -2’s are quite easy to talk to about Jesus. Discussing spiritual things is always right on the surface with them, whereas it’s very difficult to talk with zeroes.

How do we reach out to each of these populations?

+2 Just show up. If you build a fellowship group, these are the people who will come. You might get some of the +1 crowd, but seriously folks, the other 87% are not coming to your Sing ‘n Speak. In fact, they’re staying as far away as possible. Get used to it. Even worse, this “share” of the “market” is rapidly shrinking. It’s a crying shame that well over 90% of campus ministry effort, personnel, and resources is spent here, on this small, small slice of the pie.

+1 This is usually who we’re reaching through “friendship evangelism.” Community is usually the doorway here–provide the community; Engage the questions they have. Verbal witness, in all its forms, becomes more crucial here. Once they’re willing and interested in having the conversation, do you know what to say? This is NOT the time to just rely on your example, as so many are fond of doing (what a cop-out!). At some point you’ve got to verbalize it! Do you have good resources that help you do that, and have you coached people on how to use them?

+1s are the ones who may belong before they believe. They may want to “try it on” first before committing. Do you have a space for them to do that?

0 The hardest group, period. They’re not interested. They don’t want to talk about it; and the fact that you do weirds them out and probably offends them. Our job here is to “push the needle” towards +1.  It seems that hardly ANY of our evangelistic strategies engage this huge, silent majority. Ice cream socials, pizza parties, and root beer keggers may attract your +1s. High profile speakers and rigorous apologetics may engage your -1s and -2s. But what about this middle group?

The great disadvantage with Zeroes is that they’re the only group not interested in talking. We can talk, but they aren’t listening. This is where our nonverbal witness and example becomes paramount. Do things for the good of your school, your community, and world. Look for ways to partner in the things they care about. Win an audience for your message with your actions.

Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” 1 Peter 2:12

-1 and -2 These groups can be hard to distinguish in practice. I’ve found that some of the self-described militant atheists on my campus are among the friendliest and most willing to dialogue. Surprising, huh? We need to be the visiting team, and look for constructive ways to dialogue and partner. Bring in speakers together. Build houses together.

But actions & example are far from sufficient with these groups. Do you see how the farther we move towards the ends of the continuum, the MORE crucial verbal witness becomes? It’s like a reverse bell-curve. The more outspoken they are, the more possibility for fruitful conversation. Look for ways to demonstrate that all Christians are not ignorant, offensive jerks. Defuse controversy and arguments. Be a peacemaker. Befriend. I find that these groups are the easiest to talk to. They expect you to proselytize, in fact they don’t respect you if you don’t, so go ahead! Scratch beneath the surface, and you may even find some things you agree on!

Final Thought: If you’re a campus minister, what percentage of your ministry time, energy, and resources is spent on +2s compared to everyone else? What percentage of the content that you deliver to +2s is intended to help them reach out to everyone else?

Is it any wonder that ministries make up a rapidly shrinking, irrelevant minority on our campuses today? What would it look like to overhaul the way we do ministry, so that even the majority of what we did was designed to engage the other 80-90% of the campus who will never darken the doors of our fellowship meetings?

Thoughts, ideas, recommendations?

The Virtues of Being the “Visiting Team”

This is a post about campus ministry. But let me begin by noting that Penn State has 8 (eight!) home football games this year. Most colleges can’t schedule this way. Penn State is one of the few who can. Why is this?

Penn State has an insatiable demand for tickets, and possesses both the largest stadium and the largest alumni association in the country. Each home game is incredibly lucrative, and they have no problem lining up teams, such as Akron, Syracuse, and Temple (our first three opponents), who will accept a nice payout in return for being annihilated in front of 110,000+ adoring Nittany Lion fans. Penn State has everybody coming to them, because they can.

But is this a good idea? For the fans and for the coffers, it makes sense. Yet I’ve seen Penn State roundly criticized by ESPN and other prognosticators for having the “2nd weakest schedule” in college football. We’re compared unfavorably with Ohio State, who’s playing USC in a few weeks. In the politics of college football, voters seem inclined to forgive Ohio State for risking a non-conference loss in September. Just because you can schedule all home games doesn’t mean you should.

Why do I bring this up? Because most campus ministries today act like we’re Penn State–and our situation is more like Temple’s. (Sorry to pick on you, Owls. You know I luv ya). On the campus gridiron of ideas, we’re not competitive. We’re an afterthought. At best, we’re tolerated with a condescending pat on the head. At worst, we’re regarded as a threat to the institution and threatened with expulsion (as Temple was kicked out of the Big East). While we may have a few Appalachian State vs. Michigan moments here and there, in general we’re not competitive, not admired, and worst of all–not even on the radar. In many places, we are irrelevant. Forget the Top 25, forget BCS–we’re just looking for a winning season.

The absurdity of it all is that we keep scheduling home games, week after week after week. But the masses aren’t coming to see us, and the other teams aren’t interested in scheduling us. We end up running scrimmages for the faithful few to watch on our turf, but not a lot is getting done. The spring exhibition game is fun in April, but who wants to watch that in September, October, November, and New Year’s Day?

Campus ministries need to wake up. We are not Penn State. We can’t keep scheduling home games. Even if we can, we shouldn’t. We need to put on the white jerseys and become the visiting team. We need to go to the arenas that matter, and start matching up.

Case in point: The other night I went to the first meeting of the year of the Penn State Atheist-Agnostic Association. For the second year in a row, I was the only Christian present.  Like many Christians, atheists feel they are a persecuted minority. But atheists are more accustomed to marginalization and stigma, (if not less agitated by it). For example, several of them make it a practice to visit different churches on Sunday mornings. They may be there to mock and laugh among themselves, I don’t know, but the point is they go. They’re willing to be the away team. Consequently, they are much more adept at articulating their beliefs and engaging with those who disagree with them.

On the other hand, Christians are notorious for retreating to our bunkers. But if we were half as willing to venture out of our holy huddles, and onto someone else’s turf, we might find we’re making some actual progress. At that atheist meeting, I met a bunch of new people and had several great conversations with students who were intrigued that I was there. I invited several of them to Sojourn, my faith-and-doubt forum. Only one student seemed offended that I was there, and had some harsh words for me. But I’ll go into any arena if that’s all I have to deal with!

The point of missional, incarnational ministry is that we leave our comfort zones, and go to people. We meet them where they are. I can think of at least three reasons why it’s good to be the visiting team:

1. It’s disarming. No question of you pulling a power-play if you’re the only Christian in the room!

2. It shows you’re willing to listen. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s one of the most common complaints people have about Christians.

3. It’s what Jesus did, isn’t it?

Reports of Facebook’s Death … Exaggerated? – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Is Facebook dying? I’ve been asking this question for the last 6 months or so. Ultimately, I don’t think it is dying, but it is changing, and it’s not for the better. Two factors have robbed Facebook of its freshness and vitality: 1) Having the “old” people crash the party made 20somethings and college students less interested (and less interesting online). 2) Facebook’s decision to open up their to platform to all the outside apps (like FunWall, Are You Related, and a billion quizzes) robbed the site of its cleanness, as it became just as cluttered and bothersome as any other site out there. Somewhere between my umpteenth invitation to “Lil’ Green Patch” and “25 Random Things” I realized I wasn’t using facebook near as much as I used to. I didn’t want to anymore–it was only because I had to.

[Unlike most people my age--I'm 32--I've been on Facebook for a relatively long time, back to the college-only days when you needed a .edu email address to use it. Facebook was much more interesting and useful back then].

In terms of campus ministry, I’m finding facebook far LESS helpful than even a year ago. Sending someone a message on Facebook to contact them is no longer reliable. I know more than a few students who tell me they have hundreds of unread messages. In other words, Facebook is just like email. No better than that. That’s pretty sad, as Facebook was supposed to be the Web 2.0 innovation to take us into the post-email world.

I’m finding that the only reliable way to contact students is through texting. While the vast majority of college students still don’t Tweet, I’m using Twitter as a tool to text a whole bunch of people at once. (I’ll let you know if it works). But I’m not relying on Facebook at this point.

Reports of Facebook’s Death … Exaggerated?

By Jeff Young

Is the Facebook party breaking up? We still hear that plenty of students and professors are addicted to the social-networking site, but a New York Times Magazine article out today says that even though overall numbers on the site are up, a vocal group is heading for the exits.

“I have noticed the exodus, and I kind of feel like it’s kids getting tired of a new toy,” one writer told the Times in the very anecdotal account.

An article earlier this month in The Guardian took note of the trend as well, arguing that the “cool cyberkids” are starting to abandon Facebook because too many old fogies have showed up on the social network.

Some professors have been part of the recent group leaving Facebook. Dan Cohen, director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, left Facebook earlier this year and talked about it on his podcast, Digital Campus.

Will students’ interest in Facebook fade this year? Will professors lose interest? Or are reports of the site’s demise greatly exaggerted?

via The Wired Campus – Reports of Facebook’s Death … Exaggerated? – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

a college ministry resource from the Christianity Today family « Exploring College Ministry blog (daily notes about our field)

As a new campus ministry year begins, I’m encouraged to see what seems to be a “missional renaissance” (to borrow Reggie McNeal’s term) starting to take shape in the field of campus ministry. I’m hearing more buzz and substantive discussion seemingly everyday, as people in-and out-of the field (re)discover campus ministry-as-mission. This shouldn’t be a new concept, but it is!

Just this summer, we’ve had a major publisher (Zondervan) put out College Ministry 101, by Chuck Bomar. Then, a great series of posts over at JesusCreed interacting with missional campus ministry here and here. Now, Leadership Journal is putting out a resource packet related to campus ministry. Included are some articles by Bomar, Ben Hines, and others. (My next wish? Leadership Network sponsoring a Leadership Community based around campus ministry!).

I’m thrilled Building Church Leaders is putting out a resource like this. I hope they continue to build and supplement these resources for campus ministry. My only critique is that it could use a short article on campus ministry-as-mission, and something on support raising.

Below, from Benson Hines blog.

Yesterday a site called Building Church Leaders released its latest Practical Ministry Skills resource – a packet of articles and other resources on Ministry to College Students! BCL is connected with Leadership Journal, and those are both part of the Christianity Today International family of publications.

So in other words, yet another major, national publication is taking a look at the field of Collegiate Ministry!

Specifically, this resource is focused on church-based ministry, though there are a few articles which could apply to any college ministry. (You can see the Table of Contents at the download page.) The packet contains eight articles, a leaders’ guide, discussion questions, and a list of resources for further study. The articles are very applicable and even include a few topics that aren’t discussed nearly enough. Importantly, this group of articles is also fitting for a wide range of churches – from churches that will never have a classic, “full-fledged” college ministry but want to impact however they can… to those churches that might be able to make a large investment in this area.

via a college ministry resource from the Christianity Today family « Exploring College Ministry blog (daily notes about our field).

Happy New (School) Year!

A new year of campus ministry has arrived here in Happy Valley! That means I’m entering my busiest, most exhilarating, and most important few weeks of the year.

As I’m writing this, thousands of freshman and their parents are descending on Penn State to move in to their new digs. Our quiet college town (in the summer) is being colonized by a mass of nervous energy and raging hormones.

Jess and I beat the rush to the Creamery last night and walked around East Halls for a bit. Hard to believe it was 14 years ago we were moving in to our dorms as freshman. Even harder to believe is that we’re only 13 years from sending our oldest to college!

I’m looking forward to connecting with hundreds of students and seeing how God works. Before classes start, I’ll be convening over a dozen of Missio Dei’s leaders to pray and plan for our year together.

We have a lot going on. Here’s just a snapshot:

• Discipleship through Tim Keller’s The Prodigal God and The Gospel Centered Life studies.
• “Missional Communities” reaching out to all types of students, from jocks to indie rockers to international students to atheists, and (nearly) everyone in between.
• Our Sojourn Forum, dialoging with skeptics and people with doubts and questions about faith.
• Prayer meetings throughout the week.
• Service on campus and in the community.

I appreciate your prayers during this season of fresh starts and new connections!

Harry Potter & Christians

I enjoyed this article on how more religious people are coming around on Harry Potter. Though I would describe myself as an orthodox, Bible-believing Christian (“evangelical” in the popular understanding is too freighted with political connotations nowadays, I find), I have never been part of the run-and-hide segment of Christendom that boycotts Disney and leaves FoxNews on all the time.

That said, I was a little suspicious of Harry Potter in the beginning, thinking it might be in the same family as Ouija boards, a sort of “harmless” gateway into the occult. That changed when I actually read the books, which may be what other Christians have been doing recently as well.

[SPOILER ALERT if you don't want the plot explained to you]. In the books I saw the timeless struggle between good and evil, with an unlikely hero who must live and ultimately die sacrificially. No relativistic pabulum here: good is clearly Good, and evil is clearly, make-your-flesh-crawl, EVIL. Virtues such as love, friendship, loyalty, and respect are applauded. Justice is served, as the bad guys get what’s coming to them, and the good guys are vindicated. Yet there is also mercy, as some (like Malfoy) are spared.

It’s not hard to see the redemptive analogies to Christ and the Biblical story in Harry Potter, even though Rowling is not writing an allegory like C.S. Lewis did with Narnia. Why so much overlap then between her story and the Biblical story? Because “eternity is written on our hearts.” When you write about the great issues, the big problems, the ultimate questions, you will inevitably end up repeating elements of The Story. It would not ring true if you didn’t.

Far from being the occultish gateway that many Christians claimed it was, Harry Potter actually offers a tremendous point of contact in vividly portraying the story of redemption. Christians ought to read everything with discernment, and certainly some books/shows/movies out there aren’t worth taking in. But Harry Potter is quality literature, and with the right framework, highly edifying. It’s unfortunate that so many Christians missed this for so long, but it’s a good sign that they’re finally coming around.

The Book of Harry

How the boy wizard won over religious critics — and the deeper meaning theologians now see in his tale

Boston Globe By Michael PaulsonAugust 16, 2009

The world of religion was not, at first, particularly enthusiastic about the arrival of the Potter boy. For several years, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series topped the American Library Association’s lists of the most-challenged books reasons cited in 2001: “anti-family, occult/Satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence”. Evangelical Protestants were skeptical: would the positive depiction of wizardry mislead children? And some Catholics were worried too, ranging from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger now Pope Benedict XVI, who warned that “subtle seductions” in the text could “corrupt the Christian faith,” to the Rev. Ronald A. Barker, a Wakefield priest who yanked the books from his parish school library.

Read the rest of the article here.

Winner, Creepiest Athletics Logo

Sorry for not as many posts recently, as I’m up to my ears in planning for the new semester. But I couldn’t resist passing this on:

Winner, Creepiest Athletics Logo

The best college sports mascots and logos strike fear into the hearts of competitors, but Nicholls State University has managed to terrify its own alumni with its revamped logo.

“It looked like a Nazi soldier — a very angry Nazi soldier,” Hollie Garrison, a Nicholls alumna, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “My jaw dropped. I was speechless. I kind of thought it was a joke.”

Let’s hope the controversy has settled by next week, when Nicholls State unveils the new uniform of its mascot, Col. Tillou, named for the former Louisiana governor and Confederate officer Francis Redding Tillou Nicholls.

via Tweed – Winner, Creepiest Athletics Logo – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Welcome readers from JesusCreed!

I’ve long followed JesusCreed and am thankful for the ways that Scot, RJS, and legions of readers like yourself produce thoughtful dialogue about the things that matter most.

I’m thrilled that campus ministry is getting to be a part of that discussion, as it’s my conviction that it is the single most strategic mission field in the world today. I’m glad that some of my posts can help contribute to that conversation.

Please check out my in-depth posts on each of the 5 Big Issues in Campus Ministry Today, and please join in the conversation! Missiology, Theological Foundations, Ecclesiology, Innovation, and Sustainability. Also, check out my Resources tab for articles I’ve written on missional campus ministry and Support Raising. If you’d like to find out a bit more about what I’m doing at Penn State, feel free to check out the For My Partners in Ministry tab.

I welcome any questions, comments, feedback, and especially networking!

In the College Atheist Lions Den

My good friend and CCO colleague at Ohio State, Jonathan Weyer, recently was asked to speak at the national conference of the Secular Student Alliance. (The SSA is like the Campus Crusade of atheist student groups). That’s right, an (ordained) campus minister was asked to address a bunch of atheists! Apparently, he was the first to do so.

He joked that he was being thrown to the lions, but they treated him well. Trust me, Terrelle Pryor will have it much worse when he comes to visit the Nittany Lions on November 7th.

Jonathan’s done some excellent bridge-building work with secularists on campus, including an award-winning lecture they sponsored and a trip to New Orleans. Imagine that, a Christian who has earned some credibility within the atheist camp!?

Included in this conference was a visit by over 300 secularists (and Jonathan) to the Creationist (6 day, 24 hours, dispensational) Museum near Cincinnati, OH. the event was covered by ABC News, and Jonathan has been blogging about this and his thoughts on the entire conference over at The Thomas Society blog, his ministry at Ohio State.

Among Jonathan’s comments, I enjoyed:

Met a very nice atheist couple from Canada while waiting in line to get my ticket. Great look on their face when I told them not only was I Christian, I was a minister.

Got glared at by the Christian families going into the museum. Guess they thought I was another atheist. Or, it could have been my question mark cross tshirt (the sign of the Thomas Society) I wore. It says, “Question Everything” on the back. On second thought, I got a bunch of weird looks from the atheists too. I think I confused everyone.

No media circus. More like media ripple.

Everyone behaved themselves, Christian and atheist alike. It was tense, no question, but no hostility either. I could tell the museum staff was tense and they watched the atheists like hawks.

The museum has its own security staff with guns and guard dogs. Yes, you read that right. Guard dogs. Why????

Met PZ Myers (in) famous atheist blogger. Much nicer in person than on his blog. Will be hanging with him more during the conference. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

A dualistic worldview is a bad thing.

Dinosaurs rock. Probably my favorite part of the museum. What is it about those things that turn me into a seven year old?

Book store: Terrible. I’ll get into the more later, but the only book I would recommend in that store was Francis Schaeffer’s “How Should We then Live?” .

Seriously? People are still using Bishop Ussher’s dating of the age of the world? Why? Why???????? I love the good bishop theologicially, but the dating system, yuck.

Atheists annoyed me a few times with some of their comments. Christians annoyed me with their hostile looks at the atheists.

One secular blogger, Camels with Hammers, responded to both the Museum and Jonathan’s take on it. Great job Jonathan–we need more Christians doing what you do.

Where are the incubators for ministry innovation?

A few months ago I read about “Y Combinator“ in INC. magazine, a sort of incubator for coaching and funding new technology ventures.

Y Combinator is a new kind of venture firm specializing in funding early stage startups. We help startups through what is for many the hardest step, from idea to company.

We invest mostly in software and web services. And because we are ourselves technology people, we prefer groups with a lot of technical depth. We care more about how smart you are than how old you are, and more about the quality of your ideas than whether you have a formal business plan.

They fund dozens of new ventures, offering coaching and a relatively small $25,000 in seed funding. They also provide networking and an all-important stamp of approval. When one of their companies grows or is acquired, Y Combinator gets a percentage. Their model is working very well, and producing dozens of high-impact tech companies a year. Their website says they’re expanding.

I’m always interested in seeing if good ideas translate/transfer to ministry. So why not a Y Combinator for new ministry ventures? To a degree, we have that with church planting, but what about other ministry innovations?

At the recent Ideation Experience I participated in (where I was pitching Commontary), I heard some great ideas, but I found myself wondering if any of these would come to fruition, and if so, how. What if we had organizations and churches skilled in facilitating, uncovering, coaching, and seed-funding new ministries “from idea to ministry”? What if we had an incubator for mass-producing ministry start-ups? Can you imagine the exponential impact this could have?

These services exist of course, but they’re spread out. The genius of Y Combinator is that it combines and streamlines all aspects of innovation so that good ideas become a reality quickly. This seems like an idea with real Kingdom potential, but I’m not aware of anyone who is doing ALL of these things for ministry.  My friends at Leadership Network would be a natural to spearhead something like this, and I’ve put it on their radar–hopefully they’re already on it!

Are you aware of anyone who is doing a Y Combinator for ministry? Let me know!

5 Reasons You Should Read “Reaching the Campus Tribes” by my friend, Benson Hines

A few months ago I became aware of this guy Benson Hines, who had gone on an extraordinary yearlong journey around the country, visiting every college campus and ministry he could find. I think he hit something like 45 states and over 300 campuses. Extraordinary.

One fruit of this trip was a fantastic (and free!) eBook called Reaching the Campus Tribes, which you can download over at his blog Exploring College Ministry. Benson also blogs about campus ministry every day, so make sure you check it out and bookmark it!

Anyway, I initially found out about Ben on Twitter, (@BensonHines) and discovered he was on another trip around the country. I extended an offer for him to stay with us if he was ever coming through State College. (Jess wasn’t sure what to think of my invitation to someone I had met on Twitter). Sure enough, a few weeks later Ben was staying with us, and I got to show him around Penn State. We also had some great times talking about campus ministry around the country. A few weeks ago, we got to hang out again in Dallas, when I was at Leadership Network’s Ideation Experience. I got to introduce Ben to the Leadnet crew, including DJ Chuang, who recorded snippets of our campus ministry shoptalk on his iPhone. (Did you ever do anything with that, DJ?)

Anyway, here are 5 reasons you should read Ben’s eBook:

1. It’s an honest, helpful snapshot into the state of campus ministry in the US today. Most people talk about their very localized campus ministry experience, and very few have a sense of what’s really happening out there. Not only does Ben know, he’s been there. I don’t anyone else with that breadth of perspective in campus ministry today.

2. Ben’s not here to bash anyone. The eBook celebrates what’s working and what’s going well. Sure, there are critiques in there, but they are not spiteful. Ben doesn’t have an axe to grind, and he’s not overly critical. He wants to elevate the conversation, not drag it down. As someone who is prone to being critical, I appreciate this trait.

3. Ben’s not advocating any particular model. But he does advocate a Missional, Church-based orientation to campus ministry. Ben says that the biggest insight of his trip was that campus ministry needs to move to a campus-ministry-as-missions orientation, as opposed to several alternatives (young adult programming, extended youth group, etc.) This is a needed corrective.

4. Like much of the ministry world, we have many practitioners who work so hard IN ministry that they never work ON it. To make sure we’re doing the right things, we need to step back from the trees and take a hard look at the forest. Reading this eBook will help you do that, and bring into focus why you’re doing what you do, and enable you to join the discussion!

5. Because he’s a great guy, who cares about campus ministry. And that’s somebody worth supporting!