Eric Geiger leads the Resources Division at LifeWay and serves with a team of leaders who are passionate to serve the Church in her mission of making disciples. Eric worked with LifeWay’s Collegiate Ministry team to put together this list of things to pray for college ministers. This post originally appeared at ericgeiger.com.
I am very grateful for those who lead and serve college students in collegiate ministry as the Lord used those leaders in significant ways in my life. As a freshman and sophomore in college, I went on my first global mission trip, learned from my first experiences leading others in ministry, and developed friendships that still remain. I also met my wife! I was freshman president at Louisiana Tech Baptist Collegiate Ministry and she was in the same role the following year. Kathy Nelson, our collegiate ministry leader, asked me to mentor Kaye. Thank you, Kathy Nelson! Yes. Yes. Yes. I would LOVE to “mentor” Kaye—and here we are twenty years later.
I was impacted by great collegiate ministry and great collegiate ministry leaders, and I still believe in collegiate ministry. Millions of college students have returned to college campuses across the nation over the past few weeks. You probably know a college student or two that you have prayed for recently as they’ve started the new semester. What about our college ministers? Have you prayed for the church staff, campus ministers, and volunteers who seek to disciple these young adults during such a pivotal time in their lives? Ministry to college students is raw and hard and awesome all at the same time. The ministry leaders on the front lines of our college campuses need our prayers, so here are four specific things you can pray for them as they seek to minister to students:
1. Wisdom in Counseling
College life can be tough. Students are often making big life decisions apart from parental guidance for the first time in their lives. They may come face to face with major consequences of sin or find themselves dealing with anxiety due to a variety of pressures. Our college ministers need our prayers for wisdom in knowing how best to help students in a variety of situations.
2. The Heart of a Disciplemaker
College students are like sponges and desperate for someone to walk alongside them, helping point them to Jesus along the way. They crave the kind of life-on-life mentoring that can produce life-long disciples. Pray for leaders that they will have hearts that long to make disciples who in turn go and produce more disciples.
3. Discernment to Be a Good Neighbor
Many secular campuses value diversity and the religious diversity that campus ministries and churches provide for students, but they can be wary of evangelical Christian groups. Pray that collegiate ministry leaders will be wise in how they interact with the university community. May they be good neighbors who seek the best for the campus while also representing the truth of the gospel.
4. A Fruitful Harvest
Big life moments can also lead to unprecedented openness to the gospel. College students are often making decisions about their faith apart from parents or other church influences. Pray that our college ministers will be used mightily by God to reap a harvest of individuals ready to step into a new life with Christ.
The Collegiate Summit is an event exclusively for collegiate leaders. It’s so good it only happens every three years. The event includes plenary sessions where insightful talks help leaders better minister to the unique needs of college students, a variety of breakouts led by experts in an array of fields, and multiple idea labs and affinity groups where practitioners direct focused conversations around specific ministry topics. It’s an event designed to help move college ministries forward in the coming semesters.
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