Is There a Future for Campus Ministry in Our Region?

Healthy campus ministry seeks creative interaction between Christians and the university campus. Rather than removing students from their networks of friends and acquaintances, a vibrant ministry tries to transform lives from within the context of the university. The goal is not to extract collegians out of the campus but bring them into relationship with Christ and equip them to be campus missionaries.

Healthy campus ministry finds ways to stream across the bridges of existing relationships and networks. Certainly, Christian students need to involve themselves in church life. Yet their involvement in church should not disconnect them from the place they are needed most – the campus! Jesus said, “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (John 17:18). Campus ministry should provide students with tools to be salt and light to people who need Jesus on their campuses.

I am convinced that there is no perfect way to minister to college students. Every context is different. Each campus work is bounded by place and time. What works in Delaware may not work in Wyoming. And what is successful in Alabama may completely bomb here in California. Individual campuses are unique. The UC system is different from the Cal State system. Some schools are residential while others are primarily commuter. Some universities promote faith while others are antagonistic. Things that worked in the 1970s probably won’t work in 2008, and vice versa. You could even have two different ministries at the same university at the same time doing different works, both with potentially positive results.

Good campus ministry can take many forms. The Bible chair movement – that tended to emphasize education and training – was a unique way of engaging the university. The Crossroads movement – that focused on converting the lost – was an attempt to battle lethargy in campus churches. Each had positive emphases, but both devolved into methods that created separation from the university rather than active and healthy interaction with it.

When I was campus minister at West Virginia University, perhaps 3% of the student body there had any active involvement with a Christian group on or near campus. This is a crisis of epic proportions! Church attendance is apparently unimportant for almost all Western young people.

But how should we react at this crossroads? Should we pour our energies into being ecumenical? Should the campus minister’s job description encompass more tasks at our local church? Should we go after more of the 3% (or whatever a campus's % may be) who aren't our form of Christian and teach them how to follow scripture our way? Or should we aggressively create exciting substitute realities that draw them out of campus life and into our church world?

I would suggest that the way forward is far more complex than any of these questions suggest. The days of putting up signs & posters and waiting for them to come to us are over. We have to go to them. Unfortunately, many of us don’t connect with or belong to the world of university life. We will therefore have to go to our young people, partner with them, and empower them to be salt & light, praying over them as they go.

This is the incarnational model of Jesus who sends us to the campus, just as the Father sent Him to us. This principle does not have quantifiable steps and methods. Rather, it produces a way of thinking and acting that gives God creative space to work in the lives of people and draw them to Himself and to His church. God grant us the courage to look forward to the future and to walk boldly down paths that are neither familiar nor predictable.