Building a Healthy College Ministry

For the past four years I have been the college minister for Farragut Church of Christ. Last month, I resigned. It’s not as dramatic as it sounds. I was a volunteer staff, which basically means I didn’t get paid, but was still responsible for the ministry. Over the years, I have had a lot of compliments on how the ministry has grown. I did all I could to seek God’s advice on decisions (prayer, meditation, seeking wise counsel), but I also had the help from my wife Michelle. Below are a select few that I think are worth mentioning on establishing and maintaining a healthy college ministry. 

Feed them – Probably the most important part of the ministry was the once a month dinners. In fact, even though we resigned, we are going to continue offering the dinner. This was an environment that was intentionally “non-bible study”. We wanted an environment that the group could feel comfortable inviting their friends. 

Keep it Simple - Around the time that I took on the role of college minister, I was reading a book called, “Simple Church”, by T. Rainer and E. Geiger. We took 3 principles from this book, and incorporated them into the ministry. They were: 1 Worship, 1 Service, and 1 Bible study. In short, hold your ministry members accountable to one worship per week, encourage them to be involved in one service project a week, and provide one formal bible study a week. Michelle and I used these ideas to foster an environment that was welcoming of other denominations, encouraging of multiple service areas (different talents/interests for different , and specific to only one bible study a week. 

Do NOT Focus on Sunday Morning Bible Studies – For the first few years, we didn’t have class on Sunday mornings. This was a sticking point for some of our congregation. We kept to our Simple model, but focused on the bible study outside of Sunday morning. The intent behind this was to force the group to focus its energy OUTSIDE of the group (ministries/services) instead of activities FOR the group. In this way, the ministry gets a name for itself as being service oriented. 

Get Them Involved in “Church” – I think it is important for all ages to be involved with some capacity of corporate church. Young adults have just as much to offer as older ones. We strongly encouraged our members to work with our children’s ministry, help out during worship, teach, work with benevolence, etc. But the same can go for the church leaders: they have to be encouraged to go after the young adults as well. The leaders also have to be ok with some creativity from young adults. 

Treat Them Differently – This was probably the hardest part to witness outside of our group. It’s important to recognize that young adults don’t act the same as older adults, let alone the same within their own peer group! They are at different stages in life: in college, starting jobs, starting serious relationships, building a strong relationship with Christ, leaving home, etc. But for some reason we are taught that we must treat them equally. We must accept that everyone is different, and should be treated the way God designed them.  Not everyone is designed to go college! It’s ok if you want to get a job right out of high school. Encouraging them to do something they are not designed to do is creating stress where it is not needed.

Encourage Diversity – At one time we had more members that attended other congregations participating in our events than those who were members at Farragut. We also maintained a diversity that covered those that grew up in church to those that were not sure God existed. We had members that had full time jobs and those that were full time students. The important thing was that our focus was on Jesus, not a particular demographic. But with this diversity came some disappointments. One of the hardest lessons that we continually taught was that it was ok to NOT invite everyone to something you wanted to do. Loving everyone doesn’t mean treating everyone the same. It’s OK to have a core group of friends that you want to do things with. 

There are a lot of other things we did. Some worked, some didn’t. I am sure once some of the members find this post they will chime in on what they think about it as well. In the end, if you want to do something ask, “is this going to glorify God, and/or build someone up?” Asking this question clarifies a lot of your decisions. If you have any specific questions on some of these topics, let me know. I’ll be more than happy to elaborate on them.