The 5 Big Issues in Campus Ministry Today

My friend Benson Hines’ post on what would make a strong book on campus ministry, along with the release TODAY of Chuck Bomar’s book “College Ministry 101″ got me thinking about the big issues in our field. Specifically, what are they, and which most urgently need to be addressed in the next 1-3 years?

(I almost wrote 3-5 years, then realized that in our hyperspace society, that’s an eternity. Especially in campus ministry. I can’t see 5 years into the future, can you?)

(BTW, I say “campus ministry,” you may say “college ministry.” Tomayto/Tomahto, whatever).

Here are what I believe to be The 5 Big Issues in Campus Ministry today. Some are being addressed, but none of them have been addressed sufficiently. All are vitally important and urgent. We’re talking about the most strategic people-group in the world today!

[UPDATE: Please also check out my in-depth posts on each of these 5 issues. Missiology, Theological Foundations, Ecclesiology, Innovation, and Sustainability.]

1. MISSIOLOGY: We need more work on a missiology of our people-group, including information on sociology, demographics, psychology, and worldview of college students. Who ARE we trying to reach, anyway? Since very few campus ministries are breaking ground in reaching unchurched/dechurched students, we need ‘best practices’ on who’s doing that well.

We also need a missiology of our context: higher ed/academia. This is a failure in my opinion of the old guard campus ministries, who tended to just look at reaching students without much interest in redeeming & renewing places and institutions.

We must also talk about what missional campus ministry looks like. Most everyone is content to keep doing attractional ministry among the shrinking enclaves of churched kids. But it’s not enough to attract a crowd anymore. We have to mobilize them for mission. What if instead of entertaining students, we called them to the sacrifice and service of being a missionary to their campus? We live in a post-Christian mission field. Are we preparing students to engage the world they will live in, or the one we grew up in?

2. HISTORY: Campus ministry has an interesting history, and a rich one. A quick survey of the history of awakenings/revivals, and of world missions, reveals that college students have played vital roles in ALL of them. The Haystack revival, Student Volunteer Movement, etc. Yet it’s hard to find coherent histories out there. What does exist is usually hagiographic write-ups by in-house PR departments. It’s even harder to find seminary courses or bibliographies on campus ministry.

We need more critical interactions with the history of campus ministry, which can affirm the contributions of people like Bill Bright, yet also draw out the unhelpful trajectories they’ve put us on. As our own country quickly becomes a post-Christian mission field, we need to know how previous generations mobilized students for mission. “Those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it.”

3. ECCLESIOLOGY: What ought to be the relationship between church and parachurch? What’s our theology of each entity?  What do we all need to work together on, and what should we do separately? How can the local church most effectively serve and reach out to students? Do we aim for age-and-stage program, or full integration? Do we plant college churches, or bus them into regular ones? In the age of house churches, what IS a church, anyway? These are all ecclesiological questions, and people have many different ways of answering them. Will we get closer to a consensus?

4. INNOVATION: How can we foster innovation in campus ministry? The world is rapidly changing, and yet much of campus ministry seems stale and stultified. We live in an age of movements, yet we operate within stiff, bureaucratic ministry institutions. Why have our approaches to campus ministry become so dull, predictable, and cliched? We’re doing the same old, same old. While the church has been breaking new ground in church planting and thinking missionally, we’re still content to play chubby bunny.

I believe we need innovation particularly when it comes to discipleship, to what we actually DO with students on a weekly basis. I sense a boredom and jadedness among campus ministers (and students) with the traditional “Sing-n-Speak,” but most people just keep doing it because it’s all they know, and they have to justify their paycheck somehow.

Who’s doing it well? Who’s resourcing the rest of us to think boldly and creatively? Where are the champions for college ministry nationally? Say what you might about Youth Specialties, but they’ve advanced the cause of youth ministry in incredible ways. That’s why I’m excited about Bomar’s book. I hope it advances the cause. Still, is it possible that college ministry has the least mojo among every other form of ministry, even youth ministry, even children’s ministry? How did that happen?!

5. SUSTAINABILITY: If you haven’t read the iMonk’s blistering article on The Coming Evangelical Collapse, you should. If half of what he says come true, the landscape of ministry will be utterly different. And I’m afraid much of campus ministry is asleep at the wheel.

One line in particular keeps gnawing at me: “The money will dry up.” What happens when the Builder generation is gone and the Boomers are using all their savings on healthcare? What happens when there are FAR fewer churches, far less discretionary missions budgets, and thus far fewer missionaries? What will we do then? What will happen to campus ministry?

We already have an image problem as not quite “real” work, not even “real” ministry. I believe we will be among the first in parachurch ministry to have a sustainability problem, particularly as it relates to funding. This is much more far-reaching than our temporary problems due to the economy–this is a long-term question.

Like the iMonk, I don’t think this is all bad. But getting there will be painful, especially for the unsuspecting.

This quote from Tim Keller serves as a good statement for what we need to address, and is about as close to a personal mission statement that another person could write for me. I’ve basically memorized it:

“A looming crisis for all American evangelical churches [and campus ministries] is that they cannot thrive outside of the shrinking enclaves of conservative and traditional people and culture. We have not created the new ministry and communication… models that will flourish and grow in the coming post-Christian very secular Western world. Our vision should be to develop campus ministries, new churches, [and] Christian education/discipleship systems that are effective in those fields in North America.” – Tim Keller

What do you think? Do you think these are the big issues? Which are the most urgent? What have I missed? I’m eager to hear your opinion.