fallenlines-inpleasantplaces

[fallenlines-inpleasantplaces]

thoughts on my experience in college ministry

So this topic has been on my mind lately, go figure. My church recently restructured their college ministry in order to align with the purpose of being one ministry inside a church rather than mini church for college-age people, a move by which I am immensely impressed. Now, it has me thinking.

What makes a college ministry truly God-honoring, purposeful, or worthwhile? Does every age group truly need its own dedicated ministry sub-group? I do think there is value in dedicating resources to address the unique challenges each age group tends to face. Ultimately, though, God calls Christians to be part of the Church, not just an age-group meet-and-greet. Thus, I began to wonder what purpose a college-age ministry fulfills in serving the greater church as a whole. I then looked at what I admired about my church's college ministry and built backwards to some key principles for successful college-age ministry.

First, as the pastor of my church's college ministry rightfully declared during the restructuring announcement, a successful ministry is a part to the whole of, not a replacement for, the greater church body. College ministry independent from a healthy local church is bound to lose sight of what the Christian needs, since God has declared that the Christian needs the church. Many a pastor has outlined God's commandments to be a present part of a local gathering of fellow Christians, so I will not venture to argue these points again. Instead, I will stress that as God has made his will known that we be involved in a local gathering of believers, then a college ministry cannot be an exception.

Let me expand on this point by raising a situation I experienced where I took part in a college ministry that had been divided from the local church. In this ministry, a few paid post-college adult staff manage a campus ministry 100-200 strong from afar. On campus, students form a volunteer leadership team and make most of the planning and other administrative/executive decisions for the ministry. Over the course of my years there, I watched a slow transition from a focus on the spiritual health of the ministry to an emphasis on increasing the headcount at our large-group gatherings. Gradually, we considered less how to stir one another up to love and follow God, and began to grow complacent, assuming that regular attendance would suffice as a catalyst for spiritual development.

All this, I would assert, was the result of being apart from a local healthy church body. The adult staff were not grounded in their own discipleship at a local church, so the spiritual-milk-level theology presented to the students was the primary source of teaching and growth for some of them. Students too, without the example of biblical discipleship, also began to adopt immature beliefs and deprioritize their personal spiritual disciplines, having no model of accountability or groundedness. The local church, offering a space to be held accountable for regular attendance and involvement, a refuge from which to seek wisdom in hard years of ministry, a source of teaching and correction as needed, and in general, a place where one is stirred up to recenter one's life around the Gospel, is essential to any successful ministry work. Otherwise, why would God demand it in his word? College ministry, like any other ministry, needs to be faithfully tethered to a local church.

Secondly, and just as if not more importantly, a good college ministry trains up its students with a right view of God. College-age students are in a state of life where for the first time they feel themselves to be the masters of their future. They make decisions for themselves about where to live, what to eat, what to study, where to work someday, and much more. I know, having been in this state recently, how easy it is to either become puffed up with self-congratulating arrogance, or crippled with self-doubting anxiety. This is why I think there is merit to a dedicated age-group ministry as a part of a greater church body, because college students can benefit from targeted teaching about particularly relevant topics, such as submitting to God's will, marriage and singleness, finances, or making other important decisions. This transformation only occurs in the heart, when students are consistently fed a healthy dose of fear of and reverence for the Lord. Sure, have a sports night for the Lord if that's what will win people to Christ, but I truly believe we are doing college students a grave disservice by treating college (and youth ministry before that but that's a whole different story) only as a casual hang-out. Every Christian needs to be regularly recaptured by the surpassing worth of Christ and his death and resurrection, and college students are consistently sidelined with a dissmissive "they're young and stupid, they'll figure it out." To that I say, how will they hear, unless someone tells them?

One final point, which stems from a combination of the previous two, is that college ministry leaders, like all leaders, must be subject to accountability. Paul's words "imitate me as I imitate Christ" feel incredibly relevant, but the counterpoint "if the blind lead the blind they both will fall into the pit" serves as a reminder to take responsibility for the soul in our charge. As soon as we remove ourselves from this chain of imitation, we are lost. Leaders with no one to whom they are accountable will not be able to lead for long, and the students in their charge will follow the example. Recently I was reminded at Bible study that if your trajectory (in theology, habits, etc) as a leader is a straight line, and then veers off at a small angle, it doesn't seem so bad at first, but if you continue on that path for a while, you travel further and further away from the right path. The mechanism of accountability is the local church, and the reason for it is the preciousness of the souls in one's care. Leaders need to be responsible for realigning with proper teaching in such a way that stokes the fire of their affection for the Lord, in order to be spent in ministry stirring up students to do so in kind. This process is crucial, and the absence of it has devastating consequences.

So what's the point?

Speaking as someone still in the throes of college ministry, who spent the better part of her undergraduate years craving real sound teaching and community, these students need so much more. Maybe it's a product of the geographic region where I live, but I have seen an epidemic of degrading, unbiblical college ministries, and yet we have the gall to wonder why young people leave the church or else fall into false teachings. College ministry is not some holding pen before our young adults reach "the real world," it's valuable time where students can be molded into Christ followers for God's glory and their ultimate good and joy, if only we have the wit and care to reach them.

[fallenlines-inpleasantplaces]

A lot has happened in the last couple months. My program turned out to be way more demanding than I expected, and I had expected a fair measure of intensity. As a result, I felt like each day was an all-out battle for survival, and I was losing an inch of ground every day. I wasn't tumbling off a cliff, but that little bit every day felt so demoralizing, especially when I had had such high hopes.

As such, I really feel like one of the biggest lessons of my life has always been "I can't do it on my own." I was talking through all of this with my small group leader (by the way it has been life-changing to be involved in a real, biblical church), and I mentioned how it has always been challenging for me to reconcile the concepts of me not being able to accomplish anything by my own strength, while also knowing that to grow I need to commit to spiritual disciplines. I used to really torment and shame myself to the point of avoidance, and then coped by saying "well it's God's power alone so..." which is a terrible, terrible mindset, I know. But my small group leader looked at me and said "I think you just need to re-frame your thinking. Yes, God's power alone saves you and keeps you, but the Bible, prayer, fellowship, these are gifts and tools to arm yourself for battle. Sure, you can walk into a fight with the enemy in your own strength, but it's going to be way easier to win if you're protected and armed to fight back."

So all this to say, I really am hopeful that 2025 will be a year of healing and unlearning some harmful thought patterns! Cheers and God bless!

[fallenlines-inpleasantplaces]

I feel a lot of pressure to start off strong but to be honest that's not me, I don't really do organization all that well. Still, I think I want to explore some current thoughts I have on college ministry and its goals.

There are so many organizations dedicated to evangelizing to and discipling college students, but what makes any college ministry effective? (Fair warning: I'm approaching this as a nondenominational Christian who has adopted more reformed theology, who is a part of a large interdenominational college ministry organization). As I think about my own, I think about the ways in which it has cast aside sound doctrine for the sake of broader appeal. I think of leaders sorely under-equipped to handle the burden of shepherding students their own age. Now that I'm nearing the end of my undergraduate experience, I think I'm slightly (but only slightly) more qualified to reflect on what Christian college students actually need.

One of the biggest issues is longevity. I am constantly pitting myself between two ideas: 1. that God ultimately cares for His own and does not abandon them 2. that college ministry needs to do a good job of providing relevant instruction on how to be a Christian after college. It seems as though we bring students in, give them a highly emotional few years in an insular group, then send them out to reality of adult life where connection takes real work, and they struggle. God's power is greater than these obstacles, but I have seen many people fall away from faith after college because they are not equipped to find a good church, and conduct themselves in a real-life community.

Another issue is always branding, as in its existence to begin with. With so many Christian campus ministries, it becomes inevitable that competition for students occurs. Then, it leads to each ministry scrambling to form a distinct 'brand' identity, that ultimately distracts from the Gospel and core Christian tenets as ministries present themselves as "this brand" of Christian ministry rather than just "Christian." I see a pattern of the ministries on my campus requiring their name on their events, and refraining from events uniting all ministries' students.

In the interest of not becoming too distracted in this big long post, maybe I'll dedicate further exploration in specific posts tackling each issue, but I'd like to list here a few key issues I've been mulling over:

Students are not being well-equipped to pursue their faith upon exiting a college ministry environment.

College ministries can become too focused on their individual mission rather than the mission: the Great Commission.

College ministry relies on its own students to lead others, despite them not being well-equipped to handle such a role, as they tend to be newly adults, or even newly Christian.

College ministry without a local church is not beneficial to the long-term development of a Christian.

College ministry being staffed by people who came to faith through college ministry, who never left college ministry, and who now only repeat jargon of their organization without true, grounded theological foundations, ultimately leads to the detriment of the ministry when its staff are unable to truly lead students in true Christian living because they never learned it themselves.

[fallenlines-inpleasantplaces]

an introduction

a bit about me:

Hey, I'm Hannah. I've been on Tumblr for quite a while under a different url but wanted to start this blog to refresh and keep things organized. I'm in my early 20s, currently attending graduate school in the US. I've been writing on and off practically my whole life, and journaling for God has been a great source of relief and comfort over the years. I joined Tumblr as a space to share my writings, and clearly that hasn't changed- I've just created a new space!

a bit about this blog:

So, I've been a Christian since about age seven. Psalm 16 is the theme of this blog because it's my "life verse" passage of the Bible, and I always come back to it. Verse 6 says "The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance" (ESV). Hence, my url. I hope to be able to share my honest experiences and thoughts as I strive to live out a God-honoring life in school, work, family life, and more.

a bit about life more recently:

In August I began my master's program in speech-language pathology. Honestly, this is the most busy my life has been by far, and thus I have had very little time to dedicate to anything else that isn't absolutely essential. Thus, I'm on a bit of a break at the moment. Not that there was much here to begin with, haha, but just putting this here for a time when I can actually revamp this thing.

Currently reading: Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

Currently listening to: Josiah Queen, City Alight, Shane & Shane, and Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey