Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.

Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline

It’s all too easy to substitute shallowness for depth when it comes to making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of our world. Because I am a United Methodist campus minister, I’m fortunate to draw upon a rich heritage that includes holiness of heart and life, personal piety coupled with social concern, means of grace which grow us towards perfection in love, small groups that hold us accountable for progress in faith, and a ministry to those people who have been forgotten by the rest of the church. Moreover, Methodism began as a kind of campus ministry as the Wesleys studied & taught at Oxford in the early 1700s.

Unfortunately, we’ve lost too much of this in our contemporary Wesley Foundations. We are content to serve up attractive and accessible worship services and relevant lunchtime Bible studies, and not at all concerned with holiness and accountability. Programmatic ministry is the order of the day, weighed out according to the almighty ROI (Return on Investment) by our supervisors…while the students I see daily wonder about how to integrate their faith with their classroom expertise, or what their college degree might have to do with what God’s calling them to do.

But prayer? Too busy for it. Bible study? Got all these other things to read. Yet these are precisely the life-giving channels opened by the Holy Spirit for which my students are crying out. Diagnosing and treating these serious vitamin deficiencies means moving away from the large-scale programmatic events that satisfy our superiors’ (and our own) thirst for statistical growth.

As funding streams become more difficult to navigate, and scrutiny from local churches, ecumenical agencies, and denominations increases, more diverse models for campus ministry are going to emerge. One thing is clear: immersion in a Christian community —not one-shot programs or add-on discipleship – is the only thing that will prevent drowning in a sea of destructive cultural influences. I wouldn’t be surprised if vibrant campus ministries began resembling missional monasteries, with their own residential rhythms of prayer and accountability driving students out into the surrounding campus and community on God’s mission of salvation and restoration.

Authentic, flourishing Christian discipleship in the few decades of the 21st century will come at a steep cost. It will require us give up our own illusions about what is needed or desired, and embrace the humble realities of exploring the depths. We need to massively reinvest in the lives of students rather than the surface life offered by a pseudo-Christian entertainment industry. I imagine that the difficulty of following Jesus will cause some students to leave. But it will ignite the imaginations of students starving for something true and meaningful and deep…and it will be more faithful to the Gospel story authored by Jesus.

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