In the early 2000s, the US Postal Service was stable.  They delivered millions of pieces of mail, and that number stayed basically the same year-to-year.  Meanwhile, revenue was increasing.  But starting in 2006, the USPS experienced a major reduction in the level of volume–down 17% since 2006. Now, the service is struggling to adapt to the new landscape, while UPS mocks it with commercials soundtracked by a band called… “The Postal Service.”

What happened? The USPS was surprised by a “disruption event.”  They saw stable volume and increasing revenue, but missed the fact that competitors were gaining on them, and larger forces were aligned against them. The rising tide of mail volume floated their boat, but it floated everyone else’s too. And when the tide went out, they were left high and dry.

It’s my conviction that the field of college ministry is headed for some kind of disruption event in the next 5-10 years. We can rarely predict the future, let alone control it.  But we can prepare for it. We can take a proactive posture towards coming changes, rather than simply being reactive. As people who work with younger generations, we straddle the Future-Now. We should be the early adopters and the best adapters to coming changes. Why? Because one person’s disruption event is another person’s golden opportunity.

So what change(s) could be coming? I’m not smart enough to predict which one(s), but here are four that have seismic potential. Each of them would mean a serious challenge to the status quo of college ministry. I’ll describe them, and offer some ideas about how we can proactively respond.

1. The Higher Ed Bubble Bursts. The rapid growth of Higher Ed was built on the largest cohort of college students ever, plus years of cheap credit.  But the Great Recession has hit, and the number of college-bound students will begin to diminish. With tuition costs at an all-time high, and loan obligations stretching out longer and longer, people are increasingly wondering if college is truly “worth it.”  Institutions themselves are over-extended and making cuts. The system as we know it may not be sustainable.

The promise of “college for everybody” is increasingly out of reach. We may be looking at a massive constriction–less students, perhaps even less institutions. What if we have significantly less students coming to school, because of economic considerations? What if the students who are no longer coming are the relatively poorer, disenfranchised ones? What if higher ed returns to its more elitist roots?  This will have big implications on the “who” and “how” of ministry.  We’ll have to adapt to working with two diverging swaths of the population: those who are privileged and still able to access college, and those who are struggling to get by while in school.  Both groups present challenges to our “extracurricular” model.

2. Technology (& other cultural forces) will distance, disperse, and depersonalize connection to students

My cousin goes to University of Central Florida. When I say he “goes there,” I mean he happens to live there, because this past semester he took ALL FIVE of his classes online. Technology is one powerful force that is fragmenting students, making it harder for them to connect with each other, and with us. The rise of online learning is a profitable boon for higher ed, (and an opportunity for those boxed out by #1). But it’s a challenge for those of us who count on lots of students showing up in the Fall.

We’ll have to transition from an emphasis on gathering to an emphasis on granular ministry; from macro to micro; from getting a thousand students to our location, to equipping students to reach into a thousand people-groups. We’ll have to get better at connecting with new students online, not just maintaining IRL (in-real-life) relationships.

3. Non-traditional students will become more traditional
As online education expands, and economic forces change people’s plans, we’ll have less “traditional” students (full-time, 4-5 years, 18-22) and more non-traditional students.  This could be anyone from the student who spent a couple gap years doing charitable work, to the working professional–perhaps supporting a family–taking a class here and there to finish out a degree. What if the students we’re seeking to reach look more like the cast of NBC’s “Community.” How does college ministry reach Shirley, or Pierce? We’ll need to adapt our methodologies to not just appeal to recent high school grads, but students of all types.

4. College ministers will lose access to secular campuses
The Hastings case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that a university-sanctioned student organization could not discriminate on the basis of sexuality, could prove to be a watershed moment in Christian student organizations’ access to campuses. Already, a couple other cases are raising similar issues, at Eastern Michigan and Illinois.  The “shibboleth” of homosexuality, in particular, could make it impossible for Christian student organizations to get funding, room reservations, and other accommodations. It could also effectively bar those of us who don’t have reasons besides ministry to walk on campus.

If I was a betting man, I’d bet that this is the disruption that is most certain to occur, and is coming most quickly. We may look back at 2010-2011 as the year the climate on our campuses changed. I wonder how many people watched the Hastings case, and plan challenges on their own campuses.

Some organizations will likely elect to fight this battle legally. I think we have some rights worth protecting there, but relying on the law alone is a losing strategy. Going through the courts will be incredibly costly: in time, energy, money, and our witness to the campus.

We ought to be working on navigating the coming challenges with grace & humility; adding value and generally seeking to bless our campuses; and contingency planning in the event we have to go “underground.”  It’s not the end of the world if we do–witness the explosive growth of the Chinese church after the western missionaries were expelled.

Will any or all of these disruptions happen? If they do, will they really be that disruptive? I don’t know. My intention in writing this is not to cause fear or anxiety.  My fear is not so much these issues themselves, but how we will (fail to) respond to them.  Neither blithely ignoring them, nor belatedly reacting to them will help us grow and thrive in the future. Better to be proactive-by-faith, and trust that the God who has shepherded his church through challenges far worse than these will once again be proven faithful.

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Rev. Stephen Lutz is a campus minister with CCO (Coalition for Christian Outreach) at Penn State in University Park, PA. Steve leads a network of student missional communities reaching out to their relational networks. He works with student athletes, atheists & agnostics, and many others. Before returning to Penn State for ministry, he helped plant Liberti Church (PCA) in Philadelphia, PA. He is also the director of Life Groups at Calvary Baptist Church, and the founder of Commontary.com, a ministry which provides free biblical resources to Christians around the world. Steve lives with his wife Jessica and their three children (Samuel, Micah, and Abigail) in Boalsburg, PA. He blogs athttp://stevelutz.wordpress.com and tweets @stephenlutz.