Win your way to the 2013 Faith ON Campus Summer Institute!
That’s right, I’m giving away 5 tickets to this inaugural event, and you could win one of them.
Here’s the deal — I need your help spreading the word about this upcoming event — so I’m going to give you the opportunity to tweet, post, and share your way into the drawing that will be held on the last day of every month.
The rules are simple:
A cure for the stressed life of a college student — REALLY!?!?!
I think we’d be the most popular office on campus if we professed to posses such a golden ticket — because we can all testify to the fact that we hear our students complain about this far more than we hear them complain about anything (or even everything) else.
Our students struggling — and they need our help.
I recently ran across this INFOGRAPHIC depicting the many things that today’s college students are stressing about… and a rather surprising set of cures for the student who feels too busy, broke, lonely, and/or stressed to keep it all together.
It’s a new year, which means that a new season of ministry with students is upon us.
And as we’ve launched into 2013, I’ve generated a new reading list, and decided to start the year by re-reading a couple of classics.
One of my first re-reads of the year is Richard Foster’s, Celebration of Discipline.
I couldn’t venture a guess as to the number of times that I’ve worked through this book. The first time I read it I was in grad. school — and it changed my life! Since then I’ve re-read it several times on my own, and led numerous groups through it as a way of learning to work on the interior life.
Merry Christmas — one and all!
As we move further in to the Christmas season, and nearer the end of 2012, it’s time to for some of my annual countdowns.
It seems fitting to start with one of the things I am most thankful for — because it’s what makes being a part of Faith ON Campus so enjoyable for me — and that’s YOU!
Some of you have gone so far as to offer guest posts at different seasons, that have helped to provide a unique perspective and/or insight that I myself could not offer — and the collective Faith ON Campus community has benefited from it — GREATLY!
So for my first countdown of 2012, I bring to you the Top 12 Guest Posts of the year!
60% of college presidents surveyed said they believe we’re going to see major changes in Higher Education by the year 2020 — just seven short years from now.
What’s driving this shift? A major factor is most assuredly is the high price of education.
In fact, 75% of adults polled in a recent Pew Research study said that college is too expensive for most Americans to afford, and 57% of adults said that U.S. Higher Education system fails to provide students with a good value for their money.
So what’s the alternative to traditional Higher Ed.? What’s a more cost-effective way for young people to get further education beyond high school?
A few days ago the Pew Forum Research Center released some new statistics on faith in America. And what it revealed was not good.
19.6% of Americans claim no religious affiliation. This includes those claiming to be both agnostic and atheist.
And this number has gone up nearly 5% in just the past 5 years.
Even worse, 33% of Americans under the age of 30 claim no religious affiliation.
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?
I started this blog — in it’s original form — three years ago.
On January 11, 2011 I wrote I post entitled Is Sex Before Marriage Really A Sin? for the 1st Annual Sex & the Soul Blogathon.
Since that post went live, it has far and away received the most traffic on my site — accounting for 13,000 views.
Daily — DAILY — I’ll get numerous visits to my blog from people who have used the following terms in search engine searches:
You may already know this, but prescription drug abuse on campus is on the rise.
It’s hard to get an accurate read on just how rampant the problem is, but some reports suggest as high as 40% of students misuse prescription drugs just to aid in their studies.
And that doesn’t account for students who are misusing drugs for the sake of getting high or “taking the edge off” in order to have less anxiety in different social settings.
With a generation of students that were more heavily (and quickly) medicated as youth, now arriving on campus, the amount of prescription drugs on campus shouldn’t surprise us.
It started today — for us.
It may have already started for you. If not, it will soon.
I’m talking about the return of students to campus!
It’s time for another academic year to begin — which likely means that there will be a trip (or two — or more) made to the mall, the grocery store, and/or the local Walmart in order to get everything they’ll need to be successful in the year ahead!
And as new and returning students prepare to move to campus, and we prepare to help them lug their belongings from car to room, here’s some insight into what we might be carrying (not to mention the kind of money students — or their parents — will be spending):