Tag: ministry strategy

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.

The Campus Minister

Mentoring—A Huge Gift in my Life | Pete Hardesty

Many people have helped to shape my life.

Especially my mentors.

There was my Young Life leader Danny O’Brien that would pick me up at 6am every Wed. for a Bible study.

Then when I was in college, I was home on break and was paired up with a “prayer partner.” It was an old man named Bill Geigert. He has written me once a month for about 20 years.

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 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.

Blogathons, Student Culture, Trends & Issues

Sex in the Digital Age: What to Remember About the Perspectives of Young Adults

The digital age has completely changed any conversation relating to sex. Statistics tell us that by the time a college student arrives on campus, they have been exposed to sexually explicit material for an average of seven years.

Those of us who work with students on a regular basis recognize the emotional and spiritual toll this takes on those on our campuses. We see the numbness, the apathy and the brokenness that often accompanies this saturation of explicit material.

Increasingly, I am becoming more aware of the physical manifestations of a sexual identity formed in the digital age. There is a growing amount of research relating to the actual neurological changes caused by long-term exposure to explicit material. The scientific term for this is neuroplasticity. Neurologically speaking, route behaviors we participate in have the ability to wire our brain to respond in certain ways and to specific stimuli.