I recently read the book, Finding Organic Church by Frank Viola.  The subtitle is: a comprehensive guide to starting and sustaining authentic Christian communities.  I read the book because there’s been a fair amount of buzz about it from college-age people nationwide.  I have heard of a sort of “rebellion” happening from people in this stage of life after reading this book.

If you’re leading a college ministry, I’d recommend reading it.  My guess is this book will gain much more traction, especially with college-age people.  I’ll explain more in a minute.

Things I liked: The book had a lot of really good insights into what biblical community can actually look like.  And, it was practical for leaders seeking to implement community in their church/ministry.  I can say that there were a lot of things I’ve been doing in my ministry for years and agree with.  I think any leader can gain some insights for their immediate ministry – regardless of context – from reading this book.  I can also say that I think Frank Viola (from what I can tell) loves Jesus, the Church, and is seeking to be faithful. I mean that.

But I’m also very concerned.

My Concerns: To be as blunt as I can here, this book is extremely dangerous.  And, I think, it has the potential of causing damage in the body.  This is all the more reason you ought to read it!!!  Frank Viola’s conclusion is that there should be no long-term leadership or authority in the church.  You can probably see why people could grab ahold of this and run, especially the college-age person who has been burned by a leader or has been in a ministry where the leader has abused the authority given.  This book, unfortunately, is fuel on that fire.  And I believe without biblical grounding.

Frank Viola of course uses a ton of Scripture to back his opinions.  He bases his conclusion on a study of the patterns of the apostles – they started a church/community, then left it in the hands of the people there.  One problem though: in this book he never addresses passages clearly speaking of spiritual authority in the church.  He omits them and this is where the danger comes in.  If you take a person who has been “burned” or experienced an abuse of authority in a church context – has a lack of biblical knowledge and only reads this book – they can be lead astray.

This book never addresses Paul’s apostolic instruction to Timothy or Titus to appoint elders in the church (1 Timothy 3:1-7 / Titus 1:5-16) or Peter’s [...]

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When I was in LA I had the chance to sit down with some of my friends.  One of those friends was Reggie Joiner.  In case you don’t know who he is, here’s a few things that might ring a bell: co-author of Seven Practices for Effective Ministry, author of Think Orange, Catalyst Conferences, the founder of reThink, founder The Orange Conference, a guy who helped Andy Stanley start NorthPoint just outside Atlanta.

The more I get to know him I realize, beyond this STUFF that he  loves God, loves his wife and family, and those around him (that live life with him daily) love him as well.  This, to me, says all I need to know.  You should also know that I think he is one of the top thinkers we have in the Church today.  For sure.  No doubts in my mind.

I have the privilege of currently writing a book with Reggie (along with another friend Abbie Smith) and I’m very excited to be processing through these issues with him.  Anyway, I asked him to share ONE quick thought for those working in college ministry.  He did.  It’s very simple.  What do you think?  Agree?  Disagree?  Why?

CollegeLeader Thoughts – Reggie Joiner from Kristen Giesenschlag on Vimeo.

This weekend I was in LA at NYWC.  It was an encouraging weekend teaching, discussing college ministry with a bunch of people, hanging with friends, and listening to some good messages.  I also took some video of a few friends while we were hanging out who shared some “words of wisdom” about college ministry.  I’ll post some of those soon.

But, being true to my word, I wanted to write a very short bit about the show Community.  The biggest insight into college-age people, I thought, came in the idea of being a part of a cause.  Being a part of something bigger than themselves.  It’s no secret that college-age people have zeal, but one thing many miss is their zeal to help the helpless.

This surpasses the recent awareness on social justice.  This is an age-stage thing.  Some might even say it’s a human thing.  But what I can say for certain is it’s a college-age stage thing.  Some of this is due to their place in life – or lack of “place” in life.  They don’t have direction in life, but we all need direction and “a cause” to live for.  Since many don’t know the “cause” for them as an individual yet, their zealous energy is funneled into a cause to help someone else.

Unfortunately when we get older we far too often lose this, focusing on ourselves.

As leaders we need to emphasize focusing on others as biblical and especially during the college-age years.  It’s when we can help college-age people focus on a worthwhile cause today that keeps them from devoting their lives to worthless causes later.

I think the show, Community, had some insight into this.  It was twisted in a relational mixed motivation plot, but that’s life (and television).  The show highlighted this focus of being a part of a cause and I thought rightly so.  I also think it’s good to process through for our ministries.

How do you help keep college-age people find meaning in eternal things?  How do you help them focus their zeal on Christ-like causes?

We all use words to communicate.  One problem: we all attach connotations to words.

It’s like naming one of your kids.  You have a name you love so you share your amazing idea with your spouse.  But he/she knows someone they didn’t like with that name.  Because of the connotations your spouse attaches to that name, it changes everything.

Know what I mean?

Defining terms is crucial to be able to focus in ministry.  Especially with terms like “spiritual maturity.”  I’m assuming we’d all agree that we want people to be “spiritually mature,” but how we define that might be different.  Entirely different.  And that can change everything in our ministries.

So, how would you define “spiritually mature?”

Friday morning I’ll be heading to LA for the National Youth Worker Conference.  If you’re there stop by a seminar and say hi – even if you don’t attend it.  I’m going to try to do some video blogs from there – we’ll see how it goes.  I’ll be doing a couple of things, but one is a seminar called College Ministry 101.  The description for this seminar is:

Many youth workers want to do something for college ministry, but either don’t have the time to invest or the understanding of what’s truly needed. If there is an area of ministry that isn’t understood, can use more resources and training and yet is much more simple than we realize, it’s college ministry. Is being effective in college ministry really about having another church service or having an older youth-ministry-on-steroids approach? Or, is it much, much deeper? This seminar suggests the latter and articulates the things churches are embracing that truly engage and connect with the minds and hearts of college-age people. This seminar will address the following questions:

What is the ONE thing we need to focus on in college ministry?

What are the age stage issues needing specific attention and how do we meet those needs?

What teaching and discipleship philosophies work – and which don’t?

How can I help my church leadership better understand the importance of college ministry?

What resources are available that would help me manage my time best?

Hope to see you there…

I’m sure many of you have seen – or at least heard of  - the show, “Greek” seen on ABC Family channel.  I’m curious to hear your thoughts.  There are a TON of things I could write about this show as to how it pertains to ministry with college students, what college life is really like, insights into relational boundaries/issues, sifting through and bailing out on previous faith assumptions, dealing with fraternity life, dorm mates, the issue of homosexuality in college…I could go on and on.  But, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the show in general and whether or not you feel like it would be helpful to have a series of posts on this show.

Have you seen the show?  Have you heard anything about it?  Do you think it’s an accurate or inaccurate portrayal of true college life?

Of course it’s a drama, but this doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t provide at least some insights for us.  Let me know your thoughts…

While we’re on the topic of community colleges (see previous post) I thought I’d write briefly about some of the things happening on community college campuses, showing the growth they are experiencing.  If you are in college ministry and live remotely close to a community college you must begin to be intentional with these schools.

In a recent post on Higher Ed, one professor from Bunker Hill Community College in Boston wrote about the experience of having to teach a midnight class.  That’s right, the class begins at 11:45 pm and goes until 2:45 am.  And believe it or not, the class is completely full, having 47 people taking the course.  In addition it might surprise you that the age range of students in this class is 18 to 59 year olds.

Why class at midnight?  Well, professors claim that all other classes are full and there are literally no more scheduling slots in the 24 hour time period to place class times.  This particular community college (and others are pretty much the same) has seen a 25% increase in enrollment in the last year.  Of course the economy has something to do with this and I don’t think it will change anytime soon.  I think the coming 5 years will show community colleges as a real “force” in higher education.  And churches better catch onto this!  College ministry on community college campuses must be a major focus for us.  If not, we’ll be missing a massive part of the college-age population as well as much of the movement of this age-stage from a  sociological perspective.

Midnight classes are not all great, there are some concerns.  One would be that the typical community college student is not as financially well-off as those say at major universities.  And, as this particular post points out, we’re forcing our countries poorest people to take midnight classes.  Professors are not paid more to teach these classes than those teaching during daytime areas, which of course will cause some union issues at some point.  It will be interesting to see if these schools begin charging less for these less than ideal time slots (believe me, college is a business and I’m sure administrators will figure out how to make the most “bang for their buck”).  For some these later time slots works great, but for others it’s simply the only option if they want to obtain a degree.

I’d recommend you not limiting college ministry to 4 year campuses.  I know these commuter campuses can be difficult in ways to reach out to (for an article on this, click here).  I’ve issued ideas in an Appendix in College Ministry [...]

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As promised, I wanted to post some of my thoughts on the new sitcom “Community.”  This will be short, as I was fairly dissapointed with the amount of insight it had into the actual life at community college’s around our country.  That said, I do think two things came across (which I’ll discuss here) and I am still hopeful that as the series goes along that there will be some more accurate portrayals that can help us in ministry.

First, briefly, it did portray the variety of ages and personalities attending community colleges.  This is very true and easily seen.  I’m hoping the show will depict more of the not so obvious aspects of community college atmospheres.

The show, of course, was character driven.  What else can you expect.  The second thing that the show was intentional about bringing out is the perception that community colleges are sort of a “less than” approach to college education.  Having worked with many students attending these schools, I have found this to be fairly normal.  Students do often feel like they aren’t “really” in college yet, that they’re somewhat behind in their education pursuits, or they feel like they’re having to compromise some things for a time.  And most community colleges come with some sort of nickname that has been past down by the students emphasizing the reality that its not a full-fledged university but rather somehow just an extension of high school.

I do think this is true, but I also think this is changing – and will continue to change more and more.  Community colleges are growing tremendously!  The cost of 4 year universities are rising rapidly, which obviously contributes to this.  I also think many high school graduates are just beginning to think about what direction they will head in which also contributes to the growth.  Instead of paying huge amounts of money for this time of discovery, why not go to a community college and get some GE out of the way while you do? (more on that in later posts)

Anyway, hopefully this Thursday nights show will have more to write on.  For now, here are a couple questions for discussion:

Do you find community college students having a “less than” mentality?  Do you see them feeling like they are behind in education somehow?  What other differences do you see in community college students from major university ones?

I was just at a “prayer” meeting with some local pastors.  I put prayer in quotes because we talked most of the time.  I think this was fairly unusual though.  Their Thursday morning gatherings are typically spent praying for one another.  Pretty cool.

The highlight for me though was listening to Louie, a 90 year old man.  Well, I think he was 90.  If not, very close.  He was there with his wife, whom was sleeping in her wheel chair.

Wisdom spewed out of Louie throughout the meeting.  He’s a retired pastor, but certainly seemed to be a godly man.  He said something at the end that I thought was very cool.  We were just about done talking, when he interrupted and said: “We’ve had a good discussion today, but I just want to remind everyone that Satan isn’t sitting on his butt doing nothing today.  He’s tirelessly at work, and we ought to be tirelessly praying.”

We prayed.  Afterwards he asked if he could pray for me.  He got up and walked over to me as I was sitting in my chair.  I stood in front of me, put his hands on my shoulders, and began to pray.  I can just tell you that I felt like this man knows God and that when he was praying for me I really felt like God was listening and present.  Prayers of the older, yet faithful saints are underrated.  I confess that I don’t recognize their faithfulness enough.  Man, that was cool.  This man has walked with God for more than 3 times the time I have and he had a softness and humility about him that I would love to have at his age.

Louie gave me his number.  I’m gonna have a cup of coffee with that man….more than once.

Over the last few days I’ve issued some concerns with small groups.  I tried to make it clear that I was simply issuing concerns, NOT condemnations.  I hope that was clear.  At the same time I do hope it caused some thought and I’m totally ok if it also caused some frustration.  When we’re frustrated, we think more deeply.  That’s a good thing.  My heart in doing this series was to do a few things:

• Really force thought on the weaknesses of them.  Every structure has weaknesses, but thinking through how we can improve them are a different story.  I think we need to be honest about them first of all.  And this was my attempt at bringing some realities to surface.
• Timing.  Most ministries are looking to launch small groups soon, if we haven’t already.  It’s now, at the start, that we need to intentionally battle some of these (potential) weaknesses.  
• I wanted to (and I admit subversively) get to a point where we were thinking beyond just the small group.  This is important, I think, for us in college ministry.  I’ll explain.

First, on the weaknesses.  I’ll offer a couple suggestions to addressing these in our ministries:

• Talk with the leaders of your small(er) groups about these weaknesses.  Make sure they’re not only aware of the potential of them taking root in their group, but for them to pay close attention to even the slimmest appearance of them.
• Draw up some questions for the leaders about some of these issues to discuss in their group.  For instance, in regards to accountability, encourage the leaders to really ask those in their group to give each other permission to dig into each other’s lives.  You have to address some issues like responding in defensiveness, arrogance, tact in approaching someone in confrontation, etc.  All of these times of talking about these issues, how to approach them, our attitude when we’re confronted, etc. can provide a TON of teachable moments in college ministry – and particularly a smaller group.  These are addressing some major relational boundaries that many college-age people aren’t aware of. 

Secondly, thinking beyond small groups.  This is vital for collegiate ministry, in any context.  It’s certainly not a bad thing to connect college-age people with peers in small(er) groups of people.  It’s in these times where we can really dive into age-stage issues that are best addressed in these settings (at least I think they are).  But whether we’re church or campus based, we need to continue thinking beyond that age-stage group (which was my challenge when it comes to valuing sameness).  It’s my belief that college-age people not only need, but actually desire (and deeply!) connection with older mature believers.  And, I think, it’s [...]

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