With college enrollment increasing each year, there is no doubt a need for campus ministry. To echo Trent Sheppard’s book God On Campus, I believe God longs to encounter this generation of students like He did in the early Methodist Oxford Club. Yet hindered by years of ineffectiveness, disconnected from the life of the church, and struggling to find its place within the university; campus ministry is suffering from a lack of imagination as it relates to the models, systems, and strategies that make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

In January, I became the new campus pastor at the Alabama Wesley Foundation in Tuscaloosa. Like most of the 17 campus ministries I have coached over the last year, the Alabama Wesley involves around 30 students. With over 30,000 students on campus, I was brought in to re-imagine what campus ministry could look like here in Tuscaloosa. The process has been lubricated by barrels of caffeinated beverages and sharpened by dozens of conversations with faculty, staff, students, and local church members who want something to happen on campus. Yet I found I could use a shot of creativity. I have seen many models of how campus ministry was not working, so I decided to go hang out at a place where it was – the University of Georgia Wesley Foundation. Here is what captures my imagination as I dream about the future of the Alabama Wesley.

DISCIPLING
Many discount the UGA Wesley, simply because of its size. In campus ministry terms, its a mega-church. I have constantly heard other colleagues say, “They are too big, I couldn’t possibly learn anything from them”, or “We are just getting started, it could be years before we could apply what they are doing”. Their size might seem intimidating, but not when you understand that their philosophy of ministry is discipleship-based, not program-driven.

Frankly, there is nothing flashy about the UGA Wesley. Bob Beckwith, the current Executive Director & Campus Pastor, studied to be an engineer before hearing a call to ministry 4 years out of college. And it looks like an engineer is running it. No flash. No bells and whistles. It’s just a well-oiled, disciple-making machine that believes the greatest truths are best learned in relationship with others.

A working definition of discipleship may be helpful here. In the context of the UGA Wesley, discipleship is a consistent investment into a handful of individuals that encourages them to grow closer to God, to His people, and reach out in care and service to the world. It is a skill that college students can learn and grow in. It is weekly, it is relational, and it cannot happen without the power of the Holy Spirit. It can be done one-on-one and in groups. It can happen in a coffee shop as easily as in a church building. And it is a lot of fun.

Here is what happens every week during the fall and spring semester at the UGA Wesley. Bob, with the help of two of his lead directors, oversees and disciples the twelve directors. The twelve directors in turn disciple 5 to 8 of the 70+ interns. The interns then disciple 5 to 8 of the student leadership team. If you are counting, we are well over 300 people at this point. It is no wonder that over 800 students show up each Wednesday night.

Programs will come and go. I am confident that you need to throw a funeral for half of the events your ministry has been doing “because we’ve always done it”. We need to teach our students how to invest in the relationships around them, not keep them busy doing stuff. People over programs. Jesus invested in three, in twelve, in seventy, and in 120 – and it changed the world. History and our campuses will be changed by the unique and unrepeatable miracles that show up at our schools. Our priority is to equip them in who they are, and the work they have been given to do while at the university and beyond.

Those campus ministries who live into the future will be those who capture the vocational and communal imaginations of the average college student.

STAFFING
Love it or hate it, Teach For America is doing something about public education in America by tapping into the imagination of this generation of college student. Pulling from the best and brightest, they put recent college graduates in teams, give them just enough training to be dangerous, and throw them into the deep end of our nation’s public school system. And they keep turning more and more graduates down each year.

For us in campus ministry, the model is not a new one. Campus Crusade, Intervarsity, and many Wesley Foundations have taken on recent college graduates as missional staff or ministry interns who raise their own support. Like Teach For America, campus ministry organizations have discovered that what these young adults lack in formal training, they make up for in passion and the hope that they can make a difference. Yet the UGA Wesley has taken this to a whole new level.

At present, they have over 90 missionary staff serving their campus this year. While the UGA Wesley supplements the salaries of the twelve ministry directors by $600 a month, every person on staff raises the rest of their support (except for the executive director/campus pastor). Most of these students came up through the ministry from their Freshman year on and are volunteering 1 to 14 years of their lives to the campus. And they are making a huge difference on their campus. It’s safe to estimate that one in thirty students on that campus have participated in the UGA Wesley this past year.

Like most denominations, the United Methodist Church is wrestling with the recruitment, education, and ordination of new clergy – but with increasingly decreasing results. For us, the pipeline is dry because we are not effectively discipling college students, nor are we seen as an organization that can make a difference in the world around us.

Those campus ministries that live on into the future will capture the imagination of college graduates by giving them opportunities to serve back on their campuses.

FUNDING
Each group that I have coached over the past couple of years have basically asked the same two questions:
how do we get more students?
how do we raise more money?
The reality is that these two questions are completely immeshed – it is like the chicken in the egg riddle. Fruitfulness in reaching students impacts giving.

In many parts of the United Methodist Church, campus ministry continues to find itself on the chopping block of conference finance committees during this extended world economic recession. Faced with an aging and declining membership and substantial decreases in apportionments (money local churches give their Annual Conference to support our connectional ministries like the work on campus), well-meaning laity, pastors, and denominational officials are asking if we can afford to keep doing campus ministry.

It doesn’t matter where you serve or who you are aligned with, our ministries are evaluated by the number of students involved and the money we raise. We have all become masterful at telling stories of transformation and change, parading students in front of funding agencies, and using pictures from the first of the year to justify while our budgets should not be cut in the next fiscal year. When numbers are not enough, we emphasize the quality of the ministry to counter-balance the lack of quantity. Regardless of the tactic, my concern is that we are spending too much time trying to convince segments of the church that what we do is worth backing, when it is preoccupied with its own future survival.

No one in the United Methodist Church is saying it out loud, but I believe that conference supported apportionments will disappear. For those of us in Wesley Foundations, we have to find ways of involving alumni and parents to create the long-term financial stability needed. At best, even the most effective Wesley Foundations are only given 30% – 45% of their yearly budgets. Even the UGA Wesley that is easily reaching over a 1,000 students a week falls into this category – but they have found two creative ways that attract alumni and parents to invest in the ministry.

With alumni, it starts when they are students because the UGA Wesley takes up an offering in their worship services. This practice alone could shape a discipline of giving for these students in college and after they graduate. Widow’s mite as it may be, we can no longer fail to invite our students into all aspects of ministry – even the financial side. At this point, fundraising experts tell us that more people give back to their alma mater than even to their church or temple – why not sow that seed early for the on-going support of your campus ministry?

The week I visited the UGA Wesley, they were training their Freshley leadership team about calling the Freshman parents. At present, their Freshley ministry involves over 100 leaders to reach about 300 Freshman. Needless to say, it is larger than most of the ministries who are participating in this blog-a-thon. Freshley makes a difference in the lives of the students who plug in, and the UGA Wesley knows their parents are thankful for the opportunity to support their work. That’s right, thankful. Whether its a phone-a-thon, a letter that goes out each quarter, or gatherings in key cities around your university; campus ministries need to invite parents to partner with them.

The campus ministries who will live to see the future will be the ones who have captured the imagination and support of their alumni and their students’ parents.

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Creighton Alexander served 13 years in campus ministry on four campuses: Southern Methodist University, the University of Kansas, the University of Missouri – Kansas City, and now the University of Alabama. He serves as the Director of Refresh Conference, a winter conference for campus pastors sponsored by the Foundation for Evangelism. As part of the Griffith Coaching Network, he coaches other campus ministries and has developed a Campus Ministry Boot Camp to empower and encourage new campus pastors. Working with Gallup Faith, he is helping to pilot Strengths for use in campus ministry. His passion remains to strengthen United Methodist campus ministry.

Creighton holds a B.S. in Psychology from Texas Tech and a Master of Divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Kansas in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies.

He and his wife, Nikki, have three children and live in Tuscaloosa, AL.
www.thecampuscoach.org

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