Tag: mission

Big Ideas & 'Best Of'

How Big is the ‘Front Porch’ of your Ministry?

How big is the “front porch” of your ministry?

It’s another way of asking if your ministry creates space for students to belong — before they believe.

If the house, in this metaphor, represents the “inside” of your ministry — the place where believers go to be fed and nurtured spiritually — then the front porch represents an important place of gathering that is both inviting and inclusive.

And although we’d all like to believe that our ministries do, in fact, offer this… How do you know for sure?

Big Ideas & 'Best Of'

MY NEW FAVORITE WAY TO FIND SEEKERS ON CAMPUS

A College Student, A Homeless Man, And A Rabbi Walk Into A Coffee Shop.

That may sound like the opening line of a bad joke, but it actually describes an experiment I started last semester at the University of Delaware.

A couple volunteers and I were discussing the example we have in Jesus and his disciples, who were intentional about sharing their faith with friends “friendship evangelism” and with strangers “initiative evangelism”. When we scrolled through our phone contacts to count how many friends we actually had who weren’t Christians, we realized something had to change.

Big Ideas & 'Best Of'

JOIN THE MIRACLE OF FEEDING THE MULTITUDES!

About 925,000 people go to bed hungry every night. Food insecurity plagues one in seven people on the planet. Around 25,000 people die every twenty-four hours from hunger or hunger related disease – more than those who succumb to malaria, TB and AIDS combined. Most of them are children – ten children die every minute.

What makes these statistics not only staggering but sinful are these two additional facts. There is enough food produced for each person on the planet to consume 4.3 pounds of food per day – that’s equivalent to seventeen quarter pounders. Even college students don’t eat that much food! And this: nearly 3 trillion pounds of food goes to waste every year.

Blogathons, Student Culture, Trends & Issues

Gluttony: It’s Not Just For Dinner

“Luke just finished a 10 lb burrito!” exclaimed his friend Colin rushing back from one of our local Mexican restaurants.

Gluttony: to gulp down or swallow; a serious failure in self-discipline. Always the words you want to start the semester with.

I work with two campuses that have the same problem in opposite directions. Campus A is a denominational school that requires chapel twice a week, often bonus chapels, has only one strong Christian organization that many attend, and service opportunities around the school.

Campus B is…

Student Leaders

Connecting With Student Leaders… Over The Summer

They’re gone, but not forgotten.

They are our student leaders — the heartbeat of our ministry on campus — and they’ve dispersed for the summer months.

But thanks to all of the advances in technology, keeping up with them this summer has never been easier!

And it will be important that we do, because the pace of life that most students live at is mind-boggling. They are heavy consumers of experiences and information… and they don’t like to say “No” to much that comes their way.

Big Ideas & 'Best Of'

Hospitality: More Than Greeters & Coffee

Somewhat ironically, though not surprisingly, I’m sitting in a coffee shop reflecting on the idea of hospitality.

At the Edge House, the place where I engage college students at the University of Cincinnati, I have often described my approach as a mix of discipleship and hospitality.

We think hospitality is a pretty critical metaphor for the Gospel.

But when I use the word hospitality, I sometimes hear reactions which betray a misunderstanding of the biblical/Jewish/Christian practice of hospitality.

Big Ideas & 'Best Of'

Evaluating Before Hibernating

For most of us the school year has now come to an end.

The natural reaction is to breathe a sigh of relief and start packing for the beach. However, judging by the fact that you’re reading this post you realize that, while the summer means more time to rest, there’s still work to be done.

So before you enter the period of college ministry hibernation, take some time to assess this past year, while it’s still fresh in your mind.

Here are 5 questions to ask as you evaluate your ministry:

Leadership Development, Student Leaders

Steering New Students Away From Leadership

I have very few “pocket speeches” that I pull out and use over and over again.

I find that every student is unique, as is their situation, and it (and they) deserves to be treated as such.

However, at the start of every new school year there is one speech (conversation is probably a more accurate description) that I seem to present over and over and over again…

When new students approach me about finding a place to lead (and more specific to our campus — to lead worship) I tell them all the same thing:

Find a place to belong first, then look for ways to invest your gifts.