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).

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!

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.