The IMB shares the statistic that two percent and five percent are considered the thresholds for what the terms “reached” or “unreached” peoples are. If a people group is less than 2% evangelical Christians, then it is considered unreached. Some mission organizations also consider that if they have less than 5% of the population identifying as Christian. As a campus minister to Drexel University those thresholds are significant, and help frame the scale of the task of reaching Drexel.
The general population of Philadelphia, PA is in no way an unreached people group. And by default, any university within Philly would not be either. But those percentages give me a benchmark for campus ministry. Let’s just run some of the numbers for my campus. This may encourage you to think about your campus in a similar way.
Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA has 22,344 students. Two percent of that number is 447 and five percent is 1,117. If Drexel was a people group, it would need about 500 evangelical Christians and 1000 professing Christians to be considered reached. I like round numbers. For some universities those numbers are easily obtained. For Drexel, those numbers are goals.
The university does not collect data on religious identification. I do not know how many students are involved in churches in the local area. So, the best way to measure the number of Christian students on campus is through participation in Christian student organizations. Looking at the student organizations that would identify themselves as evangelical there are about 386 students listed as involved which is 1.7 % of Drexel’s overall student population. There is very little way to accurately calculate the level of this involvement. If we add all Christian student organizations including the Catholic group and others that would not label themselves as evangelical that number comes to 555, which is 2.5% of the population. In a vacuum, just looking at the numbers of students involved in Christian ministry on Drexel’s campus, it is easy to see how Drexel feels like an unreached people group.
These numbers and percentages formed other questions in my head. Do we even have the infrastructure to support 500 or 1000 students? Right now, we have 11 evangelical groups (and 13 total) averaging 35 members. For a comparative perspective Fraternity and Sorority life has 1,700 students involved with 35 different groups averaging 48 members.
On Drexel’s campus, there are about 300 student organizations. Ninety percent of these organizations are below 50 total members with the average being around 25 students involved. Let’s assume that those numbers would hold true for Christian groups. To have 1000 students involved on campus we would need 20 student organizations with 50 members or 40 student organizations with 25 members. For Drexel to have 1000 students involved we would need the number of Christian student organizations to double and the size of each individual group to double. That would also mean 20 faculty advisers and at least 100 student leaders. I think it would be best to have at least 20 ministers (church-based or campus-based) working with the individual groups and 20 to 40 churches invested in the groups.
As I look at my campus, I pray that the number of Christian groups on my campus doubles from 10 to 20, that each group doubles in size from 25 to 50, that the number of Christian ministers investing in Drexel goes from 10 to 20, that our student leadership increase from 40 to 100, and that the number of churches investing in the campus reaches 40. The only way this happens is through a movement of the Holy Spirit calling Christ-followers on campus and in churches to come to Drexel and share the life-giving Gospel to those around us. But with 1000 reaching the rest of campus becomes a possibility. What would be the thresholds on your campus?
Rev. Brian J Musser has been the Baptist Campus Minister at Drexel University in the heart of Philadelphia, PA since 2005. He works closely with multiple Christian organizations on Drexel’s campus and churches throughout the city. You can follow the ministry @drexelcampusministry.
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