The Value of Longevity in College Ministry
I am fortunate to receive and enjoy seeing email and paper newsletters from lots of different college ministers. Today, one was particularly enjoyable. I will not identify specifically the person or campus but will quote some parts of it. The College Minister shared that they were taking a group to Beach Reach in Panama City […]
Mobilizing Prayer for Your College Ministry
Mobilizing prayer for your ministry is one of the most important things you can do. I would suggest that you mobilize yourself first to be a person of prayer! If you are not passionate about praying it will be very difficult for you to mobilize others to pray. This is hard for me. Being “faithful […]
7 Habits of Highly Effective College Ministers
Stephen Covey’s book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is an enduring classic. I have recently begun to wrestle with what are “EFFECTIVE” habits. In my current role, I supervise student assistant/interns. They care; they work hard. They give more time than we pay them for. This has helped me to again focus and think […]
4 Principles for Creating a Sermon for a Collegiate Audience
Sermon preparation is both a science and an art. That is, there are certain principles that are good safeguards for anyone to follow in order to make sure the message they craft is biblically faithful. That’s the science. But there’s an art, too. That’s when messages get infused with our personality. Our understanding. And our […]
Are You Developing and Sending Your Students Well?
In Gaining by Losing, J.D. Greear shares the vision for a ministry that celebrates a sending capacity over seating capacity. As a college ministry, we have no choice but to send people! After four or five years, our students leave whether we want them to or not. For the college minister, the question is not […]
4 Non-Negotiables When Speaking to College Students
I love communicating to college students. It’s rare to find a more attentive, engaged, and moldable group of people than an auditorium full of young men and women at university. It makes sense when you think about it. College students are bombarded, some for the very first time in their lives, with freedom. They have […]
Motivation Matters
Let me encourage you to relax and trust God as you lead your ministry. The enemy will constantly be at work to distract and discourage you with setbacks and awkward moments when no one shows up to your events. Remember that in Christ you have nothing to lose and nothing to prove. “Therefore, since we […]
One Question that Can Change a College Student’s Life
College is a time for questions. Students are inundated with questions from professors about their lectures, from parents about their lifestyles, from new relationships about their backgrounds – questions everywhere. All the time. And if we are doing collegiate ministry, we ought to be masters of asking questions. But our questions should go beyond the […]
What Do You Do When Your College Ministry is in the Weeds?
If you do college ministry very long, you will have that semester or year when your ministry is in the weeds. You are working hard… sometimes even harder than usual, but it just is not up to what it has been or what you think it ought to be. When we speak, we speak about […]
4 Imperative Topics for Collegiate Ministries
For most students, college is a time when they are forced to confront real-life issues at a more intimate level than they ever have before in their lives. They might, in high school, have had discussions about issues of culture and world events, but those discussions were mainly constrained to the realm of philosophy; they […]