Last week I was speaking to a 1,000 high schoolers at Hume Lake.  It was an absolute blast, for sure.  From chapels to judging the bike jump and Gauntlet, to the cups of coffee with youth pastors…it’s all great!  I’m doing fewer camps these days so I can concentrate more on college ministry training, but Hume is one I’ll keep doing - if they keep asking that is.  Hume has a special place in my heart (and my wife’s) for sure!

I also had a chance to speak to the summer staff - what a blessing that was.  Hume hire’s about 350-400 summer staff every year.  This is on top of the 150 full-time staff (kind of a guess, but not far off, if at all, I’m sure).  I was planning on speaking about contentment and being faithful today to what God has called us to.  College-age people are looking forward to discovering what God wants to do with their life, but sometimes it’s at the expense of being faithful today.  Or, better put maybe: because they’re looking for what the rest of their life will look like, they forget about being faithful with what God’s called them to today.

But, the last song right before I got up, I threw that talk out the window.  I decided to speak on hearing God’s voice.  So many college-age people say they desperately want to know what God wants to do with their life.  But, there’s a huge dichotomy that few see.  And I wanted to point that out.

The hard balance here is that words and actions don’t always match up in this area.  Most say they want to do what God wants them to do, but meanwhile are trying to figure out what it is they want.  This is typically the most important thing in their life - to discover what it is they want.  Most are somewhat stuck in life…until they discover what it is they want.  I’m not going to say what they want and what God wants is always different, but there is certainly a danger of confusing the two.

My point was to challenge them on whether or not they know when it’s God’s voice speaking?  How do they decipher the His voice from their own?  Do they really want to hear what God will say…or is that just the “Christian” thing we’re all supposed to say? 

I pointed out one way in which we often wrongfully judge whether or not God is speaking: circumstances.  I talked about the dangers of this.  Most often if the circumstances line up just perfectly, we assume it must be God speaking!  But, is this really how God works?  Could that possibly just be my voice or my sinful desire to have everything be easy for me?  

Judging God’s direction based solely on circumstances is extremely dangerous.  Could you imagine Christ the night before he was to be crucified praying for direction and concluding that since this was going to be incredibly difficult for him, it must not be God’s will or desire for him?  Could you imagine the apostle Paul in the prison cell in Rome questioning whether or not it was God’s will for him to be there simply because it was tough?

The fun part is this pretty much takes away how college students view God’s voice speaking to them…leaving them to question how it is they hear God’s voice.  Man, I had some great discussion with people afterwards…a ton of fun.  Could be a good topic for you to teach on sometime.

I’ve been looking at some research on spirituality in higher education lately.  I’ve concentrated my time in research that is done by Universities themselves.  I’ve been doing this to stay away from any faith bias, seeking to see what measurements they are using for their research, what they are finding, and what they are saying about their findings.  

I’ve recently looked back over one study called, “A College Students Search for Meaning and Purpose.”  In my book, College Ministry 101, I have a chapter on the college-age pursuit of meaning.  I discuss what they deem as meaningful, how they pursue finding it, how their definitions and pursuits differ from their parents generation, and then how we can help guide them toward biblically mature conclusions in their pursuit of meaning.  But, this research is different - it’s just filled with stats.  

Here are some of the stats that stood out to me as I reviewed this study last night.  The last one I’d love to get some of your feedback on!

• (52%) of the college students sampled reported attending religious services frequently the year before they entered college, but less than one-third (29%) attend frequently by their junior year
• Two-thirds (65%) report that they question their religious/spiritual beliefs at least occasionally (18% frequently), and a similar number (68%) say that they are “feeling unsettled about spiritual and religious matters” at least “to some extent.”  I think this gives us some real focus in college ministry.  Helping college students “land” for themselves ought to be one of our top priorities.
• One-third (38%) of the students report feeling “disillusioned with my religious upbringing” at least “to some extent.”  That means 1 in every 3 people in your college ministry could fall under this category.  We should be digging deep into their lives, individually!
• This last one I’ll put as a point of conversation.  The stat is: students become less concerned with becoming well- off  financially after three years of college (71% to 63%).  Why do you think that is?  What might be contributing to this?  

If you are thinking about upgrading your ministry website, I’d HIGHLY recommend checking out Clover.  You can view and demo all their sites live by clicking here.  I’ve been using one of their websites (but there are many more to choose from) for my church for the past year and a half and we’ve loved it.  

The websites are extremely clean, very easy to manage (the admin side of things is VERY simple and user friendly), you can upload all the video/documents/messages/etc. you want, and it’s very affordable.  Anyway, I’ve found it to be a great resource so thought I’d pass it along - that is if you haven’t already checked them out.

Just a quick reminder that the price of the conference increases $20 on Monday, so you may want to sign up before then - that’s the price of the shuttle from the airport!  To see more of the details, including some of the speakers, click here.

Sorry for the non-blogs this week.  I’ve been speaking at Hume Lake this week in the high school camp.  It’s been an extremely fun week, but also a very exhausting one.  Besides meeting with youth pastors and students, I’ve spoken 6 times so far since Monday.  But, the reason I haven’t been able to blog about my week is because my computer has had issues with connecting to the network here (for whatever reason).  

That said, I’m off to speak to the summer staff right now.  Not sure how many will come, but I know Hume hires about 400 summer staff - which by far the majority are college students.  So, I’m obviously very excited.  Anyway, I’ll most likely issue some more details and things I’ve learned this week on next weeks blogs…

Off to hang with college students!

There are a couple training opportunities coming up you may want to be keep in mind.

CollegeLeader Regional Training:  I will be doing a day of intensive seminars in Pittsburgh, PA at Robert Morris University on July 16.  For seminar descriptions, schedule, etc click here.

Drink Conference: our 2nd annual CollegeLeader Conference (Drink) is coming October 15-17.  Registration costs go up July 1, so you may want to check into that sooner than later.  Until then you can get all meals, lodging, conference, and everything else for just $149 (not a misprint!).  The speakers and seminars will be posted soon and you certainly won’t be disappointed.

We all talk about college-age people being “disconnected” from the church.  I think that’s pretty clear - and obvious.  But, how do we define a “connected” person?  What is the criteria by which we determine whether or not someone is connected?

If we can’t determine the criteria we won’t ever be able to see whether or not we’re doing what we’re saying ought to be done. Let me begin the discussion by listing out ways in which I don’t think are proper criteria for determining this.  Then, you can put in your thoughts and we’ll see where this goes.

• I don’t think attendance in a church service defines connected.
• I don’t think being involved in a small group put on by our college ministry defines connected.
• I don’t think serving in a ministry defines connected.
• And, I don’t think attending events defines whether or not someone is connected.

A new article I wrote just came out.  It’s called, “Out from Under: preparing kids to leave the shelter of youth group.“  My desire for the article  was to show the simplicity of this transition.  I think we make it far more difficult than it needs to be…

I’ve been getting a lot more emails lately asking about what a philosophy of teaching ought to be with college-age people. Most pointedly people are asking what shifts I think need to be made. So, briefly, here’s what I think the shift should be in our college ministries:

From Physical to Spiritual.  Instead of focusing on physical elements of our faith (behavior), a focus on the spiritual is what’s needed. I’m not saying we don’t need to be ‘doers of the word,’ but we need to shy away from a behavioral focus and concentrate on spiritual issues. If we call ourselves spiritual leaders, we ought to lead in spiritual things.  We know from Scripture that it is spiritual issues that produce physical behavior. So, instead of focusing on the outward behavior, let’s focus on the inward - which in the long run produces the correct outcomes.

From Conclusions to Presuppositions.  We are very good at teaching the conclusions we’ve come to, but not good at helping others think through the presuppositions that have led us to our conclusions.  This is especially true in America with our definition of “educated” being one who regurgitates information.  However is indoctrination not necessarily faith development.  Our college ministries need to be about helping people think through their presuppositions rather than applying our conclusions.

From Indoctrination to Imparting Wisdom.  I believe we need to be encouraging a deeper commitment to the simple truths more than we need to discuss deeper theological issues or debates - and simply defending our view.  This can be stimulating to a late adolescent mind, for sure, but imparting wisdom is better.  To do this we need to help college-age people embrace what they already know and we need to be showing them how we are living that out as well.  Wisdom would lead us to actually live out what we say we believe.  Encouraging our people to do this more than to learn more is where we ought to be focusing in college ministry.