I’m currently writing a chapter on characteristics found in churches that are embracing college age people.  This isn’t a chapter about characteristics in college ministries specifically, it’s about churches as a whole.  I currently have 8 characteristics and am looking for a few more.  So, this is where your thoughts would be welcomed!

• If your church (as a whole) is engaging with college age people, what do you think it is about your church that is attractive?
• Or, if your church isn’t engaging college age people (as a whole), what characteristics in your church are hindering that engagement?
• In your time with college age people, what do you hear them say they like about their church (as a whole).

Again, I know it could be easy to talk about an individual ministry, but this needs to be broader than that.  Would love your insights, suggestions, thoughts…

First Baptist Church in Dallas just announced plans Sunday to build a $130 million state-of-the-art campus in the middle of the downtown Dallas arts district.  For more info and to watch a news cast of this, click here.

The reason I’m posting this here is to find out how you think college age people might respond to this.  College age people in Dallas might think one way and those living in a different region could think differently.  Church culture is vastly different in different parts of the country.  And I think this is necessary to some degree.

So, would this be a turn-off for college age people in your area?  Or, would this get them excited?

To be clear, I am not interested in your opinions on whether or not you think this is a good idea – that can quickly become a fruitless discussion.  I’m only asking what college age people might think.  So, what do you think?  Potential turn-off or turn-on?

I recently read an article called, “Nature Refreshes Student Spirituality” that is about a subset of Campus Crusade called Lifelines.  I was intrigued, and frankly impressed, with the values their embracing and modeling for all of us.  It’s not rocket science, it’s just focused.  Their program is described in this way:

“Students are at odds with so many things during this phase of their lives,” three-year Lifelines facilitator Jon Ayers said. “Lifelines is a rope for students to grab onto, a resource to help them navigate these waters.”  In another place the article says, “The vision of Lifelines is to raise up spiritual leaders who will meet the pressing needs of the world and offer true hope.”  A sophomore in college said this about being involved, “You can allow yourself to be totally vulnerable.”

This is perfect.  This is exactly what college ministry ought to be about.

One of the facilitators of the program said, “We want students to learn about themselves…We want them to relate the things we talk about in our programs back to their lives, so each trip we talk about a different virtue …  hope, courage, trust, teamwork, communication.”

Interesting how she breaks down what the students are struggling with at home.  I’m not sure if this is something the organization has articulated formally or if this was off the top of her head, but it’s interesting for sure.  I boil things down to identity, intimacy, meaning, pleasure and truth as the core issues college age people are sifting through.  I’m not entirely sure what they mean by the words they use (hope, courage, trust, teamwork, communication), but I like the practicality of the words.

Anyway, the article points out a few other things that stood out to me.  And if this article is accurate in regards to the organization, we see the following things modeled for us:

1. college ministry is specifically about helping people navigate the waters they are in.
2. college ministry is about helping people discover who they are, uniquely
3. college ministry is about preparing people for a life of mission – interesting to note that the article states that 80% of the people involved in the program do NOT come from church backgrounds.
4. college ministry is about allowing people to discover who they are and providing a safe place for them to express what they are finding – good, bad, or ugly

I think if our college ministries could embody these things we’d be successful.

I’ve been in Atlanta the last couple days, writing a new book – The Slow Fade.  It’s set to be out early summer, but will pre-release in late April at The Orange Conference.  It walks leaders through principles that need to be embraced if we are going to halt the fade away of college-age people in churches.  The thing I love about it is that it’s about solutions and extremely practical.  Abbie Smith, Reggie Joiner and I are bringing three perspectives to it that really rounds off the book.  Over the last couple days we’ve gotten a ton done and we’re more excited than ever.   Can’t wait for it to be in print.  Here’s one of the boards we have for the general flow…

There is a new training series I did that has just been released through SimplyYouthMinistry.com.  It’s a 7 part seminar series that talks through the role of a college ministry, major discipleship areas pertinent in college ministry, teaching/discipleship philosophies that work – and those that don’t, and how to truly connect college-age people to the life of your church.  The series is filled with practical examples and illustrations from my ministry and gives an overall vision for college ministry in the local church context.  The series is divided into the following sessions:

• Session 1 – Role of College Ministry
• Session 2 – College-Age Pursuits: Identity
• Session 3 – College-Age Pursuits: Intimacy
• Session 4 – College-Age Pursuits: Meaning & Pleasure
• Session 5 – College-Age Pursuits: Truth
• Session 6 – Teaching & Discipleship
• Session 7 – Ingraining College Ministry Into the Fabric of Your Church

Each seminar is about 20-25 minutes long, it comes with handouts (PDF and Word doc) as well as additional Q&A sessions for each topic.  These are designed to: help you create a healthy college ministry that prepares students for the transition into adulthood; you can show it to new leaders to help them understand your ministry’s focus and potential impact; or maybe even watch it with your senior pastor to share the vision for the ministry.

You can purchase each session individually, or purchase the bundle at a discounted rate.  Click here for more info on these, to view a sample, or to purchase and receive 10% off all College Resources from SimplyYouthMinistry.com.

Here is a brief introduction video I did as well:

College Ministry Training by Chuck Bomar from Kristen Giesenschlag on Vimeo.

There is  a lot of talk around college campuses – from the administration side of things – about the possibility of requiring students to have a laptop or a Netbook.  Some of the arguments being thrown around for such a requirement are:

• With good wifi on campus, students could do work just about anywhere, not just in dedicated labs.  This could save money on repairing library computers, managing the time spent on them (especially on community college campuses where the # of students attending is sky rocketing), and could open up square footage for classes currently designated for computer labs.
• If they’re required they would then be covered by financial aid.  This then would give lower-income students a more even playing field with their more affluent peers.
• It encourages “portable academic study” which these skills will obviously be more and more necessary moving forward.
• All books could be purchased in soft-copy format, ultimately saving money for students – potentially a LOT of money.

Some of the questions being posed are:

• Netbooks often don’t have enough memory.
• What about students that only take one class?  Would they have to pay for a laptop (if they don’t have one) and pay more for it than they did the class?

But, for me, I’m wondering if students would pay attention in class.  My hunch is their Facebook profile would get much more traction than their Word doc or excel spreadsheet.  Aren’t cell phones a distraction enough?

Any thoughts on this?  Have you heard of this happening on campuses near you?  Is this a good thing?

This past weekend at the CollegeLeader conference I did a seminar called, “One-on-one’s: what to do and questions to ask.”  I talked thru some general things we need to make sure we are doing during times of sitting down with college-age people and we talked through 8 questions that are good to ask.  The seminar went about an hour and then we had another hour (unplanned) of discussion.  It was phenomenal.

So, I thought I’d give you one of the questions I talked about and a bit about why I think it’s good to ask college age people.  In college ministry, asking good questions is vital.  So, the first question I discussed was:

“What commitments do you want to shape your life?”

This question is good to ask for a number of reasons.  It’s good to ask anyone, I think, but for college age people it forces a few processes that are helpful.  First, it helps them think through commitment.  As I discuss in College Ministry 101, there are 5 stages of identity college-age people walk through.  And each of them have commitment aspects in them.  Some never commit, some over commit, while others commit without realizing what the implications of that commitment are.  So, asking this questions gets the idea of commitment on the front of their mind and hopefully forces them to move from one stage to the next.

Secondly, a key part of the question is the “want.”  College-age people are trying to figure out what they want.  This can be a dangerous process – being focused on our own desires – but nevertheless it’s where they are in their thinking.  This question is helping them figure out what they want to be committed to.  Notice I didn’t say what they ARE committed to.  This is getting them to the heart of their own desires.  Once they figure out what they want to be committed to we can then help them differentiate that with what they ARE committed to presently.  At this point, discipleship really begins.

Our desire is to get them to the point where they WANT their commitment to God to shape their life.  Getting to that point could take 6-12 months of conversations.  But the time is worth it.

Spend any amount of time on a college campus and you will see/hear and possibly join in all kinds of debates.  Philosophy classes thrive on debate over morals, ethics…the seemingly “gray” areas of life.  Many campus-based clubs push certain agenda’s and professors certainly push theirs in the classrooms.  College is a time of expression, exploration, standing up for and landing on beliefs.

For the last 11 years or so I’ve counseled through countless “gray” areas of life, and walked with people who are struggling through one of these complex issues.  That’s a major part of what it means to lead a college ministry.   But in my experience there is no issue that is as complex in college ministry as that of homosexuality.  College is when this is usually explored and expressed.  And now it’s being debated from a doctrinal perspective more and more.

I personally can’t see any way we could affirm this behavior from a scriptural perspective.  But some are fighting for another perspective and boldly standing up for it no matter the cost.  Watch this video for an example…

Again, theologically, I can’t agree with this. But what about the college student who knows it’s not right or natural, but they don’t remember a time when they chose it either.  I’m interested in that person that has cried out to God thousands of times for Him to take it away and He hasn’t.  The college student who’s left wondering what happened, why them, and if there’s any hope of freedom.  They battle the internal confusion every minute of every day and there are a million tensions they’re trying to process through – and unfortunately doing so alone.

I wonder what will happen if the church doesn’t come out soon and boldly walk with these people I just described. What I’ve seen happen is they gravitate away from scripture just because there’s an avenue (like the video represents) where they feel like they don’t have to reject God if they embrace this issue in their life.

An encouragement to you: pay the price of time with these people – I think it’s worth it.

With the CollegeLeader Conference coming up tomorrow and the amount of conferences happening this time of year, I thought I’d issue some tips for attending them.  I’ve been around ministry-type conferences for about 15 years – attending and speaking.  So these tips come from both sides of that fence.  Here are 4 quick tips if you’re heading to a conference:

1. Keep it simple. Usually when you’re at a conference you’ll hear a theme.  The theme might not be the theme of the conference –  it’s often not.  Typically you’ll hear the theme from seminar to seminar or conversation to conversation.  All other seminars might not even mention the theme, but it’s clear in the one’s you attend.  The theme is God working on you.  Stick to that theme, keep it simple, push everything else aside, and go home and implement the theme God’s given you.  Not sticking to the theme leaves you with a binder of notes you’ll never implement.
2. Develop a filter. Every speaker is there for  a reason.  Most have thought a ton about the subject their teaching on and have experience (hopefully) in that particular area.  But, they don’t know your context, the people you work with, or the traditions you live in/with.  Therefore, you have to develop a filter that would sift out the things that wouldn’t apply in your context – no matter how epic the thought might be.  God’s called you to the context you’re in and you’re at the conference to be more effective in that context.  So, the filter is necessary.
3. Stay humble.  Every speaker has something to offer you and your ministry.  Sometimes we can get frustrated because the seminar didn’t hit what we thought was important.  We might even think we could do it better.  This attitude shuts off our ears and inflates our mind.  Ultimately we tune out what God was trying to teach us.  As simple or basic as a seminar could be the truth is there is always something we can take away from it.  Find that one thing and embrace it humbly.
4. Purchase carefully. Sometimes we go to a conference because we just need some time away, but usually we attend conferences because we’re hungry for some direction, training, and resources.  And, oh man, we go into the resource center and everything looks good.  We have the budget, so we just go crazy.  Getting resources, by the way, isn’t a bad thing.  If there are resources you think will be useful in ministry by all means buy them.  But, just be careful to buy those that will actually be used.  Far too many budgets are spent on resources still in the wrapper 12 months later.