Tag: commitment

Academics & Vocation, The Campus Minister

Kingdom Work and Homework


It’s the dreaded college triangle. If you choose a social life and sleep, you sacrifice good grades. If you choose good grades and sleep, you give up the social life. If you choose a social life and good grades, then you won’t be getting sleep anytime soon.

The moment I thought I had the college triangle figured out, I began my life as a youth and college minister while still in school. At the age of 22, I was a senior in college, engaged to my high school sweet heart, and began serving as the new youth and college director. My college triangle now turned into a rectangle. So what do I choose now? Social life? Good grades? Sleep? Or ministry? What would be sacrificed because of my decision? These very real questions began to haunt my everyday life.

The Campus Minister

The Lost Art of Mentoring

I’ve found myself wondering lately if mentoring — as an intentional form of raising up the next generation — is lost?

In our fast-paced, keep your nose out of my business, anxiety riddled culture — have we lost the know-how to be with people in intentional, honest, and life-giving ways? And just as importantly, has the value of this kind of relationship been lost on this generation of students?

Without faithful examples, and our focus drawn away from mentoring — towards other things — have we forgotten how to do this? Or what it looks like? Or what it can yield in another’s life?

Big Ideas & 'Best Of'

My #iMentor Story | Josh Waugh

Growing up in a larger church, you would think that I could go through youth group picking the best mentors out there and entering college as the next Billy Graham.

That’s what everyone would think at least.

In reality, it was not until my freshmen year of high school that my Sunday School teacher and I began a relationship that changed my life forever. Harry Barber (yes, that’s his real name), who was my interim youth minister and incredible mentor, worked together with me every week for a year and a half as he taught me how to lead my peers at church. We did life together and I learned by watching his example.

Student Culture, Trends & Issues

The Problem With Tolerance

The problem with tolerance is both simple and complex — and has everything to do with how we understand it and attempt to live it out.

It’s simple in the sense that this cultural call to create space for those who don’t believe exactly like you speaks to the kind of charity and hospitality that we see exemplified by Christ.

This is good. And something that many of us as Christians have struggled with for a long time now.

I believe that Christians should be a living definition of charity and hospitality.

But it’s complex in that — for far too many followers of Jesus — we understand it to mean that we need to keep our beliefs and opinions to our selves.

Big Ideas & 'Best Of'

#iMentor | Guy Chmieleski

The #iMentor Initiative was started to honor the investment of mentors all over the world, and to encourage potential mentors to take the initiative in starting an intentional relationship with a college student today.

Read my story here.

Blogathons, Student Culture, Trends & Issues

The Future Consequences of Present Actions

As a pastor of students, and father of five small children, I am deeply troubled by the statistics describing the sexual practices of today’s young people.

Sometimes I wish I had the ability to sit down with students and allow them to look 5 years, 10 years, or maybe even 15 years into the future — so they could see how their present actions will have a direct impact on their future.

I honestly believe that if more students knew how their choices today would impact their lives in the years to come, they’d make changes in their lives.

At least I hope they would.

Blogathons, Student Culture, Trends & Issues

The THIRST

Jesus told the Samaritan Woman that ‘whoever drinks of this water will thirst again.’ (John 4:13 emphasis mine)

Never before has this Scripture come screaming at me as it does when I watch some of the interactions of students on the college campus. The phenomenon of dating is evolving, and the church isn’t keeping up. The idea of a more traditional mindset of dating where the guy talks with the family…especially the father…about courting his daughter is nothing more than a manuscript of a 1950’s sitcom that airs reruns on TVLand.

Gone are the ideals of respect, trust, love and commitment.