The face of today’s college student isn’t the same as it was 20 years ago or even 10 years ago. In the past, the primary demographic was 18-24. Today, that demographic has changed to include significantly more adults 24 and up including those who took a gap year (or two or five) before attending college to those who decide later in life that they need a degree for their career path. Public and private universities alike have implemented online, blended/hybrid, and night and weekend classes that target working adults, parents and those whose unique daytime responsibilities keep them from following a “traditional” college schedule. The question is, are college ministries adapting to the changing needs and demographics of college students as well? And if a sizeable chunk of college students aren’t on campus, how can campus-based college ministries reach out to them?

Finding Online Students

The key to finding these students in the first place starts with the campus-based students who regularly attend your ministry functions now. Once you’ve decided you want to launch an online branch of your college ministry, it becomes something to promote at the beginning of your campus-based services. Ask your regular attenders to spread the word about the online ministry to the people they know who study online and to collect email addresses from friends that they believe would want to get connected with the online ministry. Another step is to contact the college through the appropriate outlets and ask about the possibility of making an email announcement about the online student ministry or at least posting the online ministry branch to the list of student groups on the school’s website. You can also try contacting the student newspaper. Spreading the word at the home church(es) associated with your college ministry is also a good idea.

For the ministry to grow, you will need to talk with your ministry team to strategize additional ways of getting the word out about your ministry’s functions online. Word may take a while to spread, but your work won’t be in vain, since your campus-based students will start taking advantage of the online ministry materials.

Ministry Opportunities Online

The easiest way to provide resources to online students is through podcasts and videos of your campus-based services. This is a relatively streamlined process if you’ve got tech-savvy volunteers on your team who are willing to take video during the services and post the video and/or audio content to the online ministry website. These can be updated on a weekly basis. This serves as your meat-and-potatoes content and you can archive older messages for online students to sift through at will.

Other materials you can focus on can be a blog targeting the online college student demographic, where you can focus on topics pertaining to maintaining a spiritual life in a digital world, trusting God when you’re overwhelmed, and keeping God at the center of your school and work life. This can be a lot of work, and depending on how much interest there is in the ministry, you can scale back as necessary.

Other ideas:
• Video testimonies, where you can feature individuals from the campus-based college ministry sharing their heart on what a relationship with God means to them and stories from their journey toward Christ.
• Worship of the week, where you regularly provide links to new worship music for online students to listen to at home.
• A connection with Facebook and Twitter so that online students connected to the ministry know when new material has been added to the online ministry page.

Face-to-Face with Online Students

While it’s great for online students to have access to a ministry tailored for them, the ultimate goal is to connect with online students at a personal level. Emphasizing small groups or life groups they can connect with throughout the week, even if they can’t make it to the on-campus ministry, is still important. If this is impossible, you may want to experiment with the idea of having an online small group meeting using Skype or some other form of video chat.

In conclusion, when evaluating whether or not to incorporate an online ministry, keep in mind that the more ministry content you post online, the more possibility that not only online students will be impacted, but also anyone else who stumbles upon your site. By going online, you broaden your overall mission territory.

[ BACK-TO-SCHOOL BLOGATHON HOMEPAGE ]

================

Barbara Jolie writes for online classes. She can be reached by email at: barbara.jolie876@gmail.com.