Catalyst and College Ministry: The Tensions are Good (Part 3)

This is the last of three posts processing the tensions inherent in college ministry, in response to this year’s Catalyst theme, “The Tension is Good.”  The others can be accessed here and here.

I want to make sure to thank the “casual catalyst collegiate cohort” convener Benson Hines for his part in getting a very diverse crew of campus ministers from all over the country together. It added a whole lot of value to the conference for me. Check out Benson’s daily blogging on college ministry here.

Now, the last two tensions I want to address:

5. The tension of “Doing Our Thing” and Unity/Partnership/Collaboration

Spend any time in college ministry, and you’ll soon hear the cry for unity go up from idealistic students. “Why are there so many ministries! We should all work together! Maybe we should all form one big group!” They would probably cite Voltron as an example, if they knew what Voltron was.  And maybe the kids have a point. Jesus did pray for unity in John 17, as we’ve all heard countless times. Through that unity, people will truly know who Jesus is.  Disunity can be quite the defeater of the Gospel. Why reinvent the wheel? Why not collaborate more? Why not demonstrate our unity?

The answer, any seasoned campus minister knows, is because one can easily devote so much time, energy, and resources to the common cause, that the unique cause of one’s own ministry can suffer. Students are lost, months are lost, momentum is lost, a unique identity is lost.

There is a method to the “madness” of having dozens of ministries on many of our campuses. In many cases, these groups take on identities that allow them to reach different types of students, and with different emphases. The whole of these diverse, separate groups is greater than the sum of combining all the parts.

Manage the tension by continuing to do our own thing, so that we have multiple ministries that are healthy and reach distinct groups of students. But don’t stop there. Leverage that health and distinctiveness to work intentionally with others in ways that advance the common cause on campus.  The right kind of unity celebrates and affirms individual groups being strong and distinctive. The right kind of “doing our own thing” celebrates and affirms working with others when we are aligned and advanced for Kingdom purposes. Focus on unity at the cost of your groups’ identities, and you won’t have strong enough groups to bring together. Focus too much on “doing our own thing,” and you’ll have exactly what you want: a group that no one would want to partner with anyway. Scary thought.

 

6. The tension of Open/Loose and Closed/Tight

 

Let me explain this one—it’s about the type of community we’re going for.  My friend Ian Clark got me thinking about this at our cohort debrief on Saturday. Ian works with Our New Chapter, a very cool organization, which helps organizations build student residences for that are strategic for ministry and financially sustainable.

Ian has worked with a lot of fraternities, and remarked that the connections frat brothers form during their college years are remarkably long-lasting, deep, and meaningful. They are tight, “strong-tie” relationships.  This is at least the result of how closed the Greek system. The whole point is that their community is relatively closed, ensuring that close friendships will form between the “brothers.”   These groups (along with some campus ministries) keep the group relatively small, and through various official or unofficial rules, customs, and cultures, close off their community for the sake of tight relationships.

 

On the other end, we have many campus ministries that are incredibly open. We go out of our way to ensure that everyone is welcome, with a “Come one, come all” message and strategies to engage the widest swath of people possible.  If the Greeks are closed, many of our ministries are wide open. To be sure, this has great Gospel/evangelistic motivations. But I know I’ve run in to more than few people who are disappointed with the looseness of their associations at large group Christian meetings. Some even go to the Greek system, or some other club, to find deeper community!

Ministries have numerous ways to help people find tighter community: Bible studies according to gender and/or year (ie, freshman guys).  Even more, leadership structures usually gather a smaller, more committed group that can jell around their common purpose. Many of my best friends to this day are people I served with in our undergraduate campus ministry.

Manage the tension by having different levels of involvement: one that is open/loose, and one that is closed/tight. There’s a good reason we don’t run campus ministries like fraternities. Can you imagine turning people away because our “pledge class” is full? We need open places, places for people to gather in a loose, informal way.

But I think we easily forget the other side of this tension. We also need places that are relatively “closed,” that foster tight relationships. I don’t mean “closed” by arcane rules, or elitism, or prideful exclusivity, but a “closedness” around a common purpose. (You might say the 12 Disciples were a closed brotherhood for 3 years, thought that didn’t keep Jesus  from connecting with many other people even as he taught them).

The Gospel message includes both a “Come” (Matthew 11: ) and a “Go” (Matthew 28:18-20). There’s a tension for you! And to be obedient to both those commands, we need both kinds of relationships, at the same time. Having only one kind won’t advance the Kingdom.  Having both is harder, but, as we’ve seen, the tension is good.