"And they had everything in common..."

I’m a lucky guy.

I married a girl who has vision for miles on days where I can’t see more than a few feet in front of me.

My wife decided to start reading the previously mentioned “Abide” study before I had the chance to get around to it.

The day before she had a conversation with our pastor about different projects aimed at providing clean water to poor civilizations and creating sustainable ways to provide food to feed the starving across the globe.

And then she came to me with a brilliant idea.

We had been discussing the roles of small community groups in the development of collegians. I’d like to create groups that mirror the early church described in Acts 2, because I think that model provides several key components of what community should look like.

Her idea was this: There are people in this community that go hungry. While it might be difficult to come up with solutions for global hunger, hunger on a small scale could be tackled by community groups. Our church is branched out into at least 10 to 12 small groups that get together and discuss that week’s sermon or a bible study. What if each individual in those communities started planting a garden. There would be 7-8 mini-gardens per small group that would comprise one pretty substantial garden. And there would be 10-12 larger gardens if they were replicated by each of the small groups.

Besides being an excellent exercise in the idea of abiding and planting roots, it could potentially turn into a major ministry opportunity. These crops could be used to feed all of the members of the community group, or sold to provide money that could be used to meet the needs of an individual in that small group, or even given away to those in need of food. This could put a huge dent in the hunger problem in this community.

This was big.

And I think that community groups have the opportunity to do big things. Small groups don’t have to just be Bible studies. They can be communities that enact change in the larger community.

And it starts with big ideas like that. 

Living Life Together

I’ve noticed a trend in both the responses I receive from collegiate ministers that I’ve interviewed and the current literature that’s being published about collegiate ministry:

Mentoring and Discipleship are BIG right now.

Frankly, I’m excited.

I benefitted greatly from having a mentor in high school who showed me my ministry potential and helped me take steps to reach that potential. He saw a kid who was interested in playing music and found a spot for him on the worship team.  He saw a kid who could eventually be a leader, and decided to take the time to smoothen out some of the edges.

Students want to feel that you’re willing to invest in their lives. The best way that I have found to do this is through one-on-one mentoring.

Here’s what I think is the main reason mentoring is so effective with collegians: In order to mentoring to work, it requires honesty. Collegians are desperate to find people who are willing to be honest with them. When this bond of honesty is formed, the collegian is able to build trust and is willing to share everything in their hearts. And the mentor is there to take all of the jumbled ideas and concerns and questions and pour more truth and honesty back into the student.

Mentoring meets collegians right were they need to be met.

Following the Leader

I feel like I’ve been hit by a ton of bricks.

Have you ever been working on something or teaching something that instantly smacks you in the face and convicts you?

Because that just happened to me.

I’ve been researching the importance of time use for collegians as it relates to collegiate ministry. What I found was not that surprising. Students are having to balance several different plates of responsibility and only have so many hours in a day to take care of all of these responsibilities.

Students are caught in a time crunch.

But some of the research shows that a bit of this pressure can be alleviated. It appears that students often waste valuable study and preparation time because they engage in behaviors that hinder their success, such as constantly checking social networking while studying or intentionally putting off assignments until the last minute.

All of this was sounding familiar.

It was a perfect picture of me when I was in college.

And It was a pretty accurate picture of me now.

I was guilty. I had just checked Facebook for the third time that night. I was already behind where I wanted to be on this project because I had procrastinated. 

Things got worse when I read that one of the ways that collegians develop the necessary time management skills was by watching a professor or leader and modeling their behavior.

And then it hit me. If they’re watching me and I’m modeling the wrong behaviors, chances are they’ll develop similar behaviors.

This principle applies to more than just time management. It connects back to my thinking on leaving a legacy from a few weeks ago. We can expect that if we’re modeling the wrong spiritual behaviors to our students, the chances are that some of them will follow our lead.

It’s a lot like Simon says. It’s always difficult to do what someone says when you can see them doing something else. You want to follow the leader.

This isn’t all bad news, of course. When we demonstrate good behaviors for our students, we know that this can serve to reinforce that behavior in them.

But this should cause collegiate ministers to stop and examine the behaviors that are being modeled for their students. 

The Prodigals, The Nomads, and the Exiles

I’ve been reading “You Lost Me” by David Kinnaman for class and I’ve been really taken with his concepts of millennials finding themselves in three groups: The Prodigals, the Nomads, and the Exiles.

Kinnaman offers this brief description of each group:

• Nomads walk away from church engagement but still consider themselves Christians. 
• Prodigals lose their faith, describing themselves as “no longer Christian.” 
• Exiles are still invested in their Christian faith but feel stuck (or lost) between culture and the church.

I’ve encountered someone from each of these groups while I was in college. The names that Kinnaman gives to each group is fits the attitudes I’ve encountered perfectly.

Kinnaman also describes three issues that can be either obstacles or opportunities  involved in reaching out to these groups. These are:

• Access
• Alienation
• Authority

I’ve really appreciated how Kinnaman highlights the potential obstacles in each of these areas, but offers some solutions and challenges for the Christian community. It is often easy to look at a Nomad or and Exile and say “You’re lost. You’re hopeless. I can’t reach you.” But Kinnaman encourages us to see the growing use of technology as a means of communication as a challenge to be taken, not something to run from.

In Diversity Culture, Raley describes a post-modern individual who is skeptical about religion and a lot of other things too. The picture that Kinnaman paints is very similar.

Raley’s image left me afraid of potentially encountering his hypothetical post-modern individual. Kinnaman has challenged me to see this growing skepticism as a opportunity to make meaningful connections.

So far, I’m ready to take the challenge and make those connections. 

The Rise and Fall of a Legacy

Robert Turner stopped by the class to share his ministry experiences with us this week. Robert has worked with collegiate ministers in Pennsylvania for forever. While we were at dinner, one of my fellow students asked a question that had never crossed my mind.

How are the people at Penn State dealing with the fallout from the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse trial. 

Robert referenced the response of Johnny Pons, a collegiate leader in State College who considered Sandusky a friend. Pons never could have dreamed that Sandusky was capable of the crimes that he’s be convicted of. To Pons, Sandusky was a nice guy who was always in the gym next to him.

But instead of harping on the crimes that Sandusky committed, Pons takes the conversation inward. In an interesting twist, Pons uses the shock of the Sandusky case to reflect on the damage that sin can cause and has caused in his own life.

That got me thinking about the fragility of a legacy. Legacies, like Rome, aren’t built in a day. But they can be destroyed in one. As collegiate ministers, we spend years building up trust, building relationships. And in the blink of an eye of the slip of a tongue, all of that can be destroyed.

We’ve all heard the stories about the pastors who have built great reputations, and later admit to the corruption of sin in their lives. Pons stresses the importance of guarding our lives and our legacy from letting the sin that can creep in and ruin everything we’ve worked hard to accomplish.

People who knew Sandusky are left questioning what they knew, who they knew. In the situation of collegiate minsters, students can walk away questioning everything that we taught them, and in some cases questioning everything that they believe in.

If we truly care about our students and about the legacy that we’re creating, it is vitally important that we guard our hearts and our lives closely.

Getting to Know You

Today in class we discussed the various religions of the world. While the percentage breakdown of each religion on both a global level and on a national level were interesting and somewhat surprising, the real surprise was discovering those religions that were growing rapidly in the United States.

We split up into groups and were tasked with digging deeper into the religious beliefs of several different religious groups. I selected Baha’i, mostly because I had read an article in Relevant Magazine in which Rainn Wilson, star of The Office, discussed religion. This caused me to do a bit of independent research that revealed that Wilson was a member of the Baha’i faith.

So I was intrigued.

It turns out that Baha’i is currently one of the world’s fastest growing religions. When taking a closer look, it’s easy to understand why.

Baha’i is pretty staunchly monotheistic, but they believe that Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna and others were all manifestations of their god. This creates the illusion of inclusivity. People from all religions can be included, because their deity figure is just a manifestation of the real god. What is interesting about the god of Baha’i is that they believe that he is omnipresent, but that he’s impersonal and that they can’t have a personal relationship with him. How terrible it must feel to have a god that is literally all around you, but is still so far away and unreachable.


All of this made me think about the way that we do ministry to internationals. Do we take the time to understand the ins and outs of the major religions represented on our campuses? Or do we assume that all we need to do is hand them a tract and have someone translate it for them?

I think there is value in taking the time to understand a person’s religious beliefs, especially if they differ from mine. I think it can be extremely beneficial to understanding how to witness to people coming from other faiths.

For example, because I know that Baha’is already think of Jesus as a manifestation of their god, I know I can use his teachings as a starting point. Because I know that their god is omnipresent but impersonal, I can contrast their god to the God of the Bible, who is omnipresent and who wants to dwell in our hearts.

If nothing else, taking the time to understand the other person’s religious beliefs will impress the person you’re trying to witness to. 

A Whole New World

I feel like Matthew Raley is on a flying carpet and he’s singing to be.

“I can show you a world!”

The world that he’s showing me is very different from the one that I’m accustomed to, and it doesn’t seem to be shining or shimmering.

The world that Raley is describing is post-modern America. A place very different from the South. A place where not only are Christians in the minority, but a place where people aren’t even familiar with the popular Bible stories. The stories I learned as a kid: Jonah, David and Goliath. Samson and Delilah. Moses and the Red Sea.

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We’ve been reading Raley’s book “Diversity Culture” and it’s been eye-opening. I’ve always heard that things were very different outside of “The Biblebelt” but I don’t think I even understood how different.

Here in the South, most people have been to church at least once. A lot of people have had church experiences when they were younger. Those who don’t attend church currently  generally have in the past and had a bad experience that turned them away from the church.

The world that Raley describes is drastically different. Not only are people not as accepting of the Gospel in these regions, they are more likely to never have heard the Gospel before. They’ve never been to church, even as a kid, because that’s not part of the cultural experience. They’re more likely to be turned off to Christianity because they heard about a Christian overreacting or saying something offensive rather than actually having a bad experience firsthand.

Instantly there are barriers. We’re not starting out on the same level. They’ve got assumptions about who I am as a Christian based on what they’ve heard about other Christians. I have assumptions about their understanding of the Bible.

It’s certainly easier to witness to people when they’ve already had the basic introduction. And I guess missionaries encounter people who’ve never heard the gospel before all the time. But those people live in remote locations. It’s hard to believe that there are people in America you’d have to start at Step One with, and in some cases even have to put in extra work just to get to Step One because of the negative opinion of Christianity that some people have.

It can seem like a daunting task. But I like the challenge that Raley throws out. Jesus took the challenge and broke through the misconceptions and misunderstanding by unpredictable and understanding. Instead of jumping to conclusions about the Samaritan woman, he showed an interest in starting a conversation.

I’ve found Raley’s book equal parts fascinating and terrifying. I’m interested to see where his flying carpet takes us next.

A Few Good Studies

I’ve never been a big proponent of Lifeway material. That whole situation and be a sticky one, and I won’t go into all the reasoning behind that, but I will say that up to this point I hadn’t seen much material that I would consider using in my ministry.

Until now. 

We had a visit from Bill Noe, the new events director for Collegiate Ministry over at Lifeway. In addition to sharing the perspective he had gained over nearly a decade in collegiate ministry, Bill brought free stuff. He had us at “Hello,” but the free stuff only endeared us to him more. This stack of free stuff included the leader guide to one intriguing study, as well as a little teaser kit to a potentially game changing study.

I was hooked onto the first study as soon as I saw the title: Abide. I’ve always loved the concept of abiding in God. It conjures of images of recharging, regrowth, strengthening.

And also staying put. Digging in.

I think that’s the difficult part for collegians. To abide means to lay down some roots, and roots take time to grow. In a world full of RV campers that drive up and drive off, we’re asking collegians to get out, set up a tent, and camp out a while.

If we’re going to expect our students to become leaders, we’re going to need to show them how to become stronger Christians. That’s where Abide comes in. This study is devoted to teaching collegians how to practice the spiritual disciplines like prayer, fasting, and service.

The second study has big ramifications for ministries wanting to follow the discipleship model of mentoring. Chuck Lawless developed a study called “Mentor.” It focuses on how a mentor relationship works, and can be used to prepare both collegians and potential mentors for the mentorship process.

I have always believed that real spiritual growth begins at a one-on-one level. Collegians will listen to speeches in a large group setting, and they’ll think about the topics discussed at a small group bible study, but they’ll really start to grow when they see that there is someone on the other side of the table that is invested in watching them grow.

So I’m pumped. I’m hoping to jump into the Abide study soon, and I’ll try to bring some updates with what I find inside

What's trust got to do with it?

Last week I re-read Don Everts and Doug Schaupp’s fantastic book “I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus.” Reading this book changed my perspective on evangelism and discipleship profoundly. The paradigm shifts that Everts and Schaupp introduce throughout the book are truly enlightening and give the reader a more accurate understanding of the journey to salvation that many postmoderns take.

One of my favorite sections of the book is pretty early on, in the chapter discussing the first paradigm shift. Everts and Schaupp make the point that, before a postmodern is ready to even hear the gospel, let alone accept the gospel message, a relationship of trust needs to be established. This can be one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome, and a lot of times Christians don’t make it any easier. This is an important step to understand, and it’s one that many Christians gloss over. This isn’t intended to be an attack on street evangelism, but we often get in the mindset that we can just go up to someone and Way-of-the-Master them to Jesus. In many cases, this only makes it harder for that postmodern to break through that barrier.

Everts and Schaupp outline “Five Knee-Jerk Reactions to Distrust”

• We get defensive.
• We get offended.
• We avoid further conflict.
• We get judgmental.
• We get argumentative.

Sometimes we do all five in one conversation. 

What I appreciate most about this section, however, is that Everts and Schaupp don’t end the chapter there. Instead of dropping their criticism and wagging their fingers at the reader,  they offer “Five Kingdom Habits to Build Trust” as an alternative to the knee-jerk responses. These habits are:

• Instead of getting defensive, we can pray both for them and also for us and our response.
• In stead of getting offended, we can attempt to learn and gain perspective from them.
• Instead of avoiding, we can choose to bond with them.
• Instead of getting judgmental, we can choose to find things to affirm.
• Instead of getting argumentative, we can choose to welcome them into our lives.

I’d like to say that I’ve mastered these habits, but I haven’t. This section convicted me in their very honest and accurate critique and encouraged me to respond to distrust in a more Christlike way. 

The discussion of the last Kingdom Habit paints a great picture of discipleship.

In John 1 Jesus offers some brand-new acquaintences the increadible gift of hospitality, “Come and see,” he says. They are curious about him, and he intives them into his world. They get to come and se, to get to know him by seeing who he really is. Jesus wants to spend time with them instead of preacing a sermon to them. He’s not pushy; he simply invites them in and opens up an opportunity for deeper relationship. “Come and see” is one of the most authentic, transparent gifts we can give.

May we all be more open and inviting to those around us. May we have the grace to exhibit Kingdom habits rather than knee-jerk reactions when faced with distrust. May we live lives that don’t send people running when they see us, but make them curious about Jesus.

Storms: Literal and Figurative

I’m sitting on my couch, in my apartment on the third floor of this building, in Slidell, LA, as Hurricane Isaac is barreling towards us. I’ve lived in in Louisiana most of my life, and these intense storms are nothing new to me. If I’m honest, I’m not really even that worried about the storm. Like any good Louisianan, I’ve already got my hurricane preparedness kit ready and stocked up on a week’s worth of peanut butter and jelly. I stopped by RedBox and rented a few movies to watch while we still have electricity, and picked out a book to read if we lose electricity.

Pardon this clichéd shift from the discussion of literal, meteorological storms to one on the figurative storms we encounter in life.

As discussed last week, life is filled with obstacles. The college years are also filled with new experiences. 

The first time you’ve ever had to do laundry on a consistent basis.

The first time you’ve ever had to cook your own meals (or at least choose the microwaveable pizzas you will eat for the next week).

The first time you have your own responsibilities.

For an increasing number, the first time you’ve had to work to support yourself.

And eventually, the first time you have to weather a storm of life without the shelter and comfort of home.

I can remember the first hurricane I ever experienced. My family actually evacuated, but for some reason we got a late start. By the time we got on the road, bands of intense rain were already making landfall. I remember freaking out in the back seat because the rain was so heavy it was impossible to see anything more than a few feet outside the window. My dad probably wasn’t driving very fast at all, but it felt like we were barreling towards then end of a cliff just out of sight and that at any moment the bottom would drop out and it would be over.

It was terrifying.

That’s a lot like what the first real storm of life can feel like. Whether it’s the accumulation of the little stresses of being out on your own or the big bombshells like finding out that your parents are getting a divorce, life can feel directionless, like you’re hurling towards oblivion.

Terrifying.

 One of the reasons I’m passionate about college ministry is the opportunity to help guide students through those storms.

Eventually, through the pouring rain, my dad was able to find a car up ahead and we were able to follow the headlights until the storm passed.

I see the job of a collegiate minister to be a lot like that. To be there in the storm of life with these students, just ahead, guiding them through the storm.

A Start to the Journey

I’ve always been better at blogging things that I don’t have to think about. When I sit down to blog my thoughts, I tend to get halfway through a rambling rant and decide that, at that point, anyone who actually took the time to get that far will have started to regret it. I tend to get carried away.

Fear not.

What I will attempt to do in this space is ingest a lot of information, ruminate on it, and then try to deliver a concise account of my thoughts. Since this blog relates to a class that I am currently taking regarding reaching, connecting, and discipling collegiate students, there will probably be many references to class meetings or readings. Bear with me. I’ll try to relate the basics to you without having to give you much homework.

So. Let me begin at the beginning. With a pretty wonderful illustration of what discipleship looks like.

During the first class meeting, after going through the preliminary prerequisites, my professor introduced us to a full-scale replica of the classic childhood game “Chutes and Ladders.”

As we began to play, two things became readily apparent: that none of us had played “Chutes and Ladders” in quite a while,  and that the confined quarters of the game board meant that we’d all get to know each other just a little be more than we might have wanted. 

To relate the game back to the central topic of the class, each chute or ladder was accompanied by a card that, depending on the direction you were headed, explained a situation that a typical collegiate might face. These situations ranged from “connected with a local church” to “I think I met ‘The One’” (and summarily, “Saw ‘The One’ out with somebody else”) to “experimented with drugs/alcohol/homosexuality.”

As the game went on, a pattern started to emerge. Someone would find a ladder forward and seem to make progress, only to run into the same chute that sent them back over and over again. Some got stuck in this rut early on and were stranded at the start of the board, others were so close to the finish, but kept getting tripped up by that chute.

The lesson should be making itself clear: college can be a time of great personal growth, but it can also be fraught with obstacles. In our game, no one made it to the end of the board without running up against an obstacle, and different people encountered different obstacles.

As we attempt to come along side collegians and disciple them, it is important to understand that people have obstacles that they will have to overcome in their journey. For many, the roadblocks in their path will not be new to them. It could be that incredibly painful experience from their past that still haunts them or the addiction that, try as they might, they just can’t seem to shake.

As we try to disciple collegians, we can’t be scared off by these issues. We can’t give up on someone who’s been trying to get over the same hurdle for years. Instead, we should be guiding people to a ladder and illuminating the chutes that might lie in the shadows. Some people need a push to get over the edge, others just need someone to confide in. We need to be open and available, whatever the need and whenever that need arises.

That’s discipleship.