Well, if you haven’t been to the Simply Youth Ministry Conference before, you’re missing out. I can honestly say that I love this conference. Over the past five or so years I’ve gotten to know many on the team at SYM and Group. They truly have a passion for student ministry (which college ministry is a huge part of!). It’s one of the few, possibly the only, student ministry conference that has slotted a significant chunk of time out for our ministry.

This year they prove that by having me teach 8 hours of seminars on college ministry and also have a couple other people that speak to this issue as well, doing other seminars. That may not seem like a lot for a 4 day event, but make no mistake about it: there is no other student ministry conference (that I know of) that places this high of a value on it. This year it’s in Chicago. It was here last year as well and it’s a great, intimate venue (as intimate as 2k-2500 people can get). I’ll be doing the following 4 hr tracks:

Why College Ministry Matters To Your Student Ministry, And How To Start One

Session 1: (Saturday 10:30am-12:30pm)
Erasing the “Finish Line” of Youth Ministry
Session 2: (Saturday 2:30pm-4:30pm)
Steps to Starting a College Ministry From Scratch

Description: 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. Is college ministry really about having another church service or having an older, youth-ministry-onsteroids approach? Or is it much, much deeper? Learn about the things churches are embracing that truly engage and connect with the minds and hearts of college-age people.

College Ministry 201: Meeting The Needs Of A Lost Age

Session 1: (Sunday 10:30pm-12:30pm)
Discipleship Issues With College-Age People
Session 2: (Sunday 2:30pm-4:30pm)
Integrating Our Philosophy Into Our Ministry Context

Description: Want to know more about the (actual) lives of young people? Their values and mindset are worlds apart from previous generations and in this track, you can learn how this all affects you? College-aged people find themselves in-between just about everything. And this impacts just about everything. This seminar paints a picture of insight into their minds and hearts so that you can understand what they need and desire from you, your church, and your ministry.

Well, we have our first Regional Training planned for 2011 – with more to come. I have planned new seminars for this year and I’m very much looking forward to diving into them.

So, our first regional is scheduled for Thursday February 10….in Dallas! For info, click here.

This day will have about 4 hours of training/discussion through seminars as well as plenty of time to network with others in college ministry in the Dallas area. The day will be broken up into two seminar slots:

Seminar #1: Dissecting Generational Differences

Seminar #2: Focusing, Measuring and Sustaining Our Ministries

For full seminar descriptions click here.

If you’re in the Dallas area I hope to see you there!

In a age stage of confusion and intellectual gymnastics I find college students sifting through all kinds of tensions. And, from my experience, for the most part churches aren’t really helping college age people where they are. Of course some are. But as a whole, churches aren’t addressing the things they are actually processing through in every day life. Watch the video below and then ask yourself the following questions:

1. Does our ministry address these tensions? If so, how? If not, why?
2. Would a person fighting through these tensions and questions connect at our church? Why or why not?
3. Does our youth ministry prepare people for these challenges during the college age years?
4. Do I talk about these issues in my times of teaching? Small group curriculum?

Enjoy getting a glimpse into the complex world of being a Christian in college…where surface answers just don’t cut it anymore:

I’m a Uni Student… from Campus America on Vimeo.

I just looked at the stats for this blog. I wanted to see what posts had the most reads in 2010. This is what I found:

Top viewed post in 2010 was: College-age Sunday School. This surprised me because I wrote this in 2008! In this post I ask some honest questions about this format.

Second: The Un-Talked about College Students. This post is about how we deal with apathetic college students that have grown up in the church.

Third: Terms We Use. This one also surprised me a bit, because I also wrote this in 2008. In this post I discuss the pro’s and con’s of different ways we refer to our ministry.

Fourth: Stats That Might Shock You (and change the way you do ministry). This post discusses how the “traditional college student” is changing and how it might affect our ministries.

Fifth most was read blog post of 2010 was: Para Confused In The Church. This post challenges the typical approach to doing ministry in a local church context.

I will have to write more on this later, but for now let me just say that I’m finding expositional/expository preaching becoming (increasingly) more attractive to younger people. Topical sermons/series’ are great as well. I teach topically andl have a variety of series’ I teach through. But I also teach through books of the bible.

What I’ve seen is the latter is more intriguing, at least in some ways, for younger people. Here are some things I’ve been hearing them say about this approach:

1. They really enjoy seeing the flow of thought of an author and have said that seeing the way the author thinks about a subject has changed the way they view it. I think this is a GREAT thing.
2. They appreciate the fact that it forces us to deal with the “tough” issues/passages, that topical messages seem to avoid.
3. They’ve learned more about studying the bible through this approach – particularly seeing how context plays into proper interpretation.
4. Lastly, and this kind of ties into #3, they say they are getting a better grasp on the scriptures as a whole.

I like these things.

One other thought that I’m thinking more about. Younger generations are repulsed by the “indoctrination” of churches. As leaders we have even seen the unfortunate downsides of this, especially during the college age years. Indoctrination refers to us only teaching OUR conclusions – and at times forcing the application of them. Something to think about is how, if we’re not careful, teaching topically might be perceived as just another way of indoctrinating our people. Whereas, possibly, teaching through a book of the bible could avoid this perception, and hit the topics as well…?

Just a thought to put out there. I’m going to continue teaching topically at my church. I usually do this after teaching through a book of the bible to better help us apply the truths in the book we studied, but I also teach topically if I feel like it’s best for those in our church at that point in time. However, as I do I want to make sure the four things I’ve been hearing about an expositional approach to teaching are incorporated.

I have a good friend, David Kinnaman, who is President of the Barna Group. I have a ton or respect for him, his character, leadership, faith, and love for his family. I also appreciate his work!

The Barna Group did a research project resulting in finding 6 patterns developing in the church in 2010. If there is any wonder why college age people are not connecting with our churches as a whole….here ya go! The 6 patterns were:

1. Less theological literacy. The report shows how even the most basic truths are getting lost.
2. More ingrowth and less outreach-orientation. (this one is interesting in light of #1, you’d think we would “know” more)
3. Greater interest in practical solutions rather than spiritual principles.
4. Increased interest in community service and social justice for its own sake. to clarify, the report says this is due to this being “the socially esteemed choice at the moment,” not necessarily out of an authentic expression of a biblical perspective.
5. Increased tolerance. The report chalks this up to the pattern found in #1 above. The lack of literacy leads to poor decision making.
6. Little visible impact of Christianity on culture and individual lives. The report says that Americans have a difficult time identifying any particular value Christianity has added to the country’s culture. Wow.

Reading this report was both encouraging and disheartening. Encouraging in that when I think of a lot of people I know in my church, these things don’t apply. Disheartening because, well, did you read the six things above?

Let’s be honest: connecting people of different generations is not the easiest thing to do. We face obstacles like core values being different, older people being intimidated or frustrated by the younger generations, younger people not feeling the value of having an older person in their life…to either generation not knowing how to connect with the other. There are ways we can help with these things (for more on that see chapters 7 and 8 of this book), but there is another issue that is just as obvious – if not more. We just don’t talk about it as openly.

Younger people are desperate for an experience they know is Divine. Of course not all desire this, but many just want to experience God, walk with Him daily, be a part of what He’s doing and be used by Him. Sure, experience based pursuits can be incredibly dangerous if they are separated from truth. But experiencing God can also be rooted in truth. And this is what I find many college age people seeking.

And herein lies the problem. It seems like there is a lack of older adults that authentically experience God – daily. Many of them, if you ask them directly, have a hard time pointing out anything specific they feel like God is teaching them or working on in their life today. Some can’t explain their own testimony of how and why they personally decided to follow Jesus – or why they do today. Much of this is due to, and in some ways this will be an over simplification, older generations not being experience based. They can know scripture, be grounded in doctrine, etc. but as I talk with more and more pastors working with older adults the lack of experiencing God in their lives is a huge issue.

Bridging these generational values together (a high value on experience with a high value on intellectual knowledge of Scripture) is what’s needed. But if these tensions aren’t helped the differences actually hinder sustainable mentor/disciple making relationships. And, I’m not okay with that. More to come…

One of the things I make a part of just about everything I write and seminar I give is that, universally, college age people reevaluate all the assumptions they grew up with. For instance, I devoted a chapter to this in College Ministry 101 where I walked through how they process through these things and what impacts their processes – and I also included another chapter on how we ought to approach teaching in a way that guides these processes. College age people, regardless of religious – or non religious – upbringing, begin to explore all sorts of new questions.

Two days ago an article in the LA Times titled, “Spirituality finds a home at college” was released. The article begins with this statement, “Sandwiched between a time of squirming under parental control and the tethers of a career, college often means freedom for young people to begin a search for who they are and what they believe.” This stems from a long term study we linked to about 2 1/2 years ago at CollegeLeader (for info on this study click here). This article points out some of the following points:

• College is a time of mind opening opportunities leading to thought processes that have long term impact after the college.
• College is a time students struggle with and become less certain in their beliefs.
• Students that are more “spiritual” seem to do better academically and are generally more satisfied with their college experience.

The article defines spirituality as a time of “asking the big, existential questions; working to improve one’s community; and showing empathy toward other people.” The use of the “spiritual” is very broad in our culture, but I’d suggest it ought to mean more than just intellectual processing (for more on this see an earlier post here). Nevertheless, this is a great reminder that we are dealing with people who are reevaluating and asking some of the most important questions in all of life. And these questions cannot be met with shallow, regurgitated answers. It’s much deeper than that.

For some practical thoughts, here are a couple articles I’ve written on this: Indoctrinated or Educated / rethinking (true) discipleship

I just read an article in the Los Angeles Times about a pastor who is banning his leadership from using Facebook. If they aren’t willing to delete it they will be forced to step down from their leadership role. Apparently he has had a number of couples over the last year and a half face marital issues because of people from the past popping finding them through their account. This has led to physical meet-ups and adulterous situations. At the end of the article it’s clear that this pastor is not banning this from the whole congregation, but he is going to advise them to forgo their accounts. In the past he has recommended for spouses to make sure they shared all their login information with one another, but apparently there is still ongoing issues with people in his church.

Facebook obviously has many pro’s to it, but have you found the people in your ministry falling into issues by their use of it?

Yesterday I was writing and began to expand a thought. I boiled the thought down and tweeted it. Here’s what the tweet said:

“How you live your days will become how you lived your life. #2DayMatters”

With people (especially those college age) looking so much to the future to what God wants to do through them for their rest of their lives, I’d recommend pointing them to a principle in scripture (glad I didn’t come up with this idea myself!). Use passages like Matthew 25:21-23 or Luke 16:10 where Jesus helps us understand that we need to be faithful with little before we are entrusted with much. We all long to be used by God in much, but the more we look forward the more likely we miss being faithful today. And that’s a problem. This principle Jesus makes in these passages ought to completely transform our day.

What makes us think God would reveal what He wants to do with the rest of our lives when we’re not completely living for Him today? How we live our days will become how we lived our life. Let’s first make sure we are living for the right things today, being faithful with little. Then, let’s be an example of that for people who desperately need this modeled!