Do you ever find yourself wondering if life on campus is more challenging today, than it was even 5 or 10 years ago… and thus, making our work with college students that much more of a fight?!

I’ve been reading in Isaiah this summer… and when I ran across this passage in Isaiah 30 I found myself drawing parallels to our college campuses.  Isaiah writes:

So, go now and write all this down.  Put it in a book so that the record will be there to instruct the coming generations, a people who lie, a people unwilling to listen to anything God tells them.. They tell their spiritual leaders, “Don’t bother us with irrelevancies.”  They tell their preachers, “Don’t bore us with obsolete religion.  That stuff means nothing to us.  Quit hounding us with The Holy of Israel.” [Isa. 30.8-11, The Message]

It was as if Isaiah was looking down the corridor of time and describing what things would be like in our culture, and on our campuses, in the 21st Century… but he wasn’t.  He was describing life in Judah during the time of the divided Kingdom.  Isaiah was describing to Jews, and the royal court of Judah, exactly what he was experiencing… and then God spoke up:

Therefore, the Holy of Israel says this: “Because you scorn this Message, preferring to live by injustice and shape your lives on lies, this perverse way of life will be like a towering, badly built wall that slowly, slowly tilts and shifts, and then one day, without warning, collapses — smashed to bits like a piece of pottery, smashed beyond recognition or repair, useless, a pile of debris to be swept up and thrown in the trash.” [vv.12-14]

As I look around the campus I serve, I see far too many tilting, shifting, poorly constructed lives that are on the brink of collapse. And the scary thing is that we never know how students will respond when the destruction and devastation takes place.  In my 5 years on this campus we’ve experienced a number of suicides… the most recent of which came just last week.  It is such a tragedy when young people believe their lives to be too hard to live… or even worse, not worth living.

So what’s the answer?  Isaiah goes on:

God, the Master, The Holy of Israel, has this solemn counsel: “Your salvation requires you to turn back to me and stop your silly efforts to save yourselves.  Your strength will come from settling down in complete dependence on me — the very thing you’ve been unwilling to do”… [But] God’s not finished.  He’s waiting around to be gracious to you.  He’s gathering strength to show mercy to you.  God takes the time to do everything right — everything.  Those who wait around for him are the lucky ones. [vv.15, 18]

In much the same way that God called Isaiah to proclaim a message of hope, faith and commitment to a gracious and loving God who was at work on their behalf, I believe he is calling us to proclaim this same message to our students on campus.  Our students need to hear (be it for the 1st time or the 100th) the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Their needs (our needs) are no different from the Israelites so long ago.  While many things in life and culture have changed, this most basic and essential of needs has not.

While some campuses might have more of an openness to the Good News than others, all campuses will face their own sets of challenges — as will the ministers who serve them.

What do you think?

• Have things really changed?
• How are you preparing to serve this hurting generation in the upcoming year?
• How are you responding to the needs you see on campus?
• How will your message and ministry provide students with the hope they so desperately need?

Thanks for joining the conversation.