In the first weeks of each school year, most college ministries place ONE purpose above all others: Recruitment. I have no problem with the reasoning behind this effort, which is probably something like this:
- Students are likely to be impacted by finding a college ministry
- We (whoever we are) believe our college ministry is one of the best opportunities for that impact
- There’s a limited time for encouraging students to make their involvement choices
- What’s more, we want to begin impacting students as soon as possible!
But in those first awesome-crazy-overwhelming weeks of the school year, the temptation is to focus so much on #2 and #3 that we forget our first roles as shepherds of college students – rather than simply staff members (and recruiters!) for our organization, church, or college.
As college ministers, we believe it’s more important that students find a (solid) college ministry than that they find our college ministry (even if we do prefer our own!). And we believe it’s more important that students are impacted than that they are recruited.
Don’t we?
So here are some ideas for keeping impact – and not simply recruitment – flowing in the first month of the 2010-2011 school year:
Help students make a great decision.
It’s a sad thing indeed that college ministers rarely (if ever) teach on “How to choose a college ministry.” In fact, our recruitment efforts may not even do a good job of teaching “Why you should choose our college ministry”! But both of these topics are important to share with students. So unless they’ve learned how-to-choose in their Youth Groups (they haven’t), we have to be the ones.
Help students choose to commit.
Do we really believe that it’s far better for students to go deep in one college ministry than to stay in the shallows with several? Or are we satisfied if 50% of your Large Group Meeting’s students could be found in other Large Group Meetings throughout the week? We need to disciple students – from the beginning – to commit well to a few things (and probably to only one college ministry).
Don’t forget to impact your “old” students.
Are we faithful – from the beginning of each year – with the students God has already provided us? I’m not sure that going after new friends at the expense of old flocks is a good shepherd’s trade-off. Re-recruitment, re-assimilation, responding to what God has done in their lives, responding to their spiritual struggles over the summer, re-evaluation of students’ leadership positions, and other steps may be vital. Likewise, it’s vital that we help these students get off on the right foot as they enter their sophomore, junior, senior, or SUPER-senior years!
Don’t forget transfer students and others who aren’t freshmen.
Transfer student ministry is an undervalued and under-discussed area. So is recruitment among those who aren’t freshmen. But these guys and gals are worth recruiting during this time… and not in the exact same ways we treat the freshmen. Who knows? Perhaps some of your best student leaders this fall will be Juniors and Seniors who weren’t around your ministry last year.
Disciple freshmen in the other time-sensitive elements of college-ness.
If we’re only focused on Recruitment of freshmen, then we’re only focused on ONE area of discipleship. But what about their time-sensitive needs to
- Decide to study well?
- Connect Jesus with their education?
- Find a church?
- Form spiritual discipline habits ASAP?
- Think wisely about other things they join / commit to?
- Think wisely – from the start – about friendships and dating?
- Assimilate well into their new “campus tribe” – not just spiritually, but emotionally, relationally, academically, financially, and otherwise?
If all our teachings, events, activities, discussions, and other measures are focused on Getting-and-Keeping, where’s the room for the other vital things? Even if our student audiences are a bit “fluid” in the first weeks, we have the real chance to impact those who flow through, whether they stick around or not.
Consider a unified effort.
What if multiple ministries taught the same series – “Starting the Year Off Right”? What if they put out a book listing the college ministries – with little articles on how to pick, how to find a church, how to study, etc.? What if every ministry made a point to tell students for the first three weeks that
- We love the other college ministries, and
- We want you to pick just one?
Want to know one of the best “unity efforts” I’ve seen around the country? It’s when multiple ministries on a campus have decided (purposely) to hold their weekly Large Group Meetings on the same night. At first blush, this sounds like competition; they’ve done it to help students make a choice.
Not all teaching takes place on a stage.
Finally, don’t forget that these efforts aren’t limited to the Large Group Meeting. We might dedicate early small groups to these formative efforts. We could distribute a pamphlet, as described above. We can – and should – disciple students from the first moments they check out our Orientation booth. We can meet with freshmen one-on-one (or have our student leaders do this), or send a good welcome email with some discipleshippy links!
Whatever you come up with – and yes, some of it may be Large Group teaching, too – we have an enormous opportunity to disciple people in the first month. Recruitment is 0nly one piece of that amazing work!
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12 thoughts on “The First Month: Discipling, Not Just Recruiting”
hey benson great list here.
i don't think going after new students and involving current students is either/or during the first four weeks.
for the first 3 years at chico state is was either/or because our older students were not aligned to the mission, vision, and values.
the last 2 we saw a dramatic increase in the amount of participation from older students because they understood that part of being involved meant leaving a legacy on campus.
a couple events we did implement to bond the entire movement that worked great were:
–a welcome back bbq the weekend before school started where we specifically invited returning students, but still had the chance to see new students moving into the dorms show up (we hosted it near campus).
–an upperclassmen bible study the first week of ALL returning students
thanks for your thoughts!
Benson…really good. I've always had a bit of a cringe during the first weeks of school when recruitment borders on embarrassment. I do wonder if unified strategies at the beginning would eventually connect more students?
Thanks for the early comments, fellas!
Brian, you're definitely right: You don't have to miss the old students for the sake of the new. (And I think there are some church congregations that could stand to learn that about their entire membership, too!)
I really like “preseason” events (like your back-to-school BBQ) for lots of reasons, but one is because it lets returning students reconnect then… instead of doing it at the first meeting, when their reconnections will inhibit others' first connections. For everybody else reading this, this troublesome dynamic is very worth thinking about solving!
Great post and very helpful for me getting into college ministry. Thanks!
for sure. the preseason events changed the dynamics of our first week tremendously.
also guys only/girls only events work well to connect new and old students from my experience.
really liked your last thought on not all teaching takes place from the stage. this is huge!
I second Brian's idea on a pre-season BBQ.
For the last 3 years, we have done our returning student BBQ on the night BEFORE our massive Welcome BBQ for all students. This gives our returning folks the opportunity to catch up with each other and then focus their energies and efforts the next night on connecting with new students. It's worked like a dream.
This year we are in the process of putting together a 6-week “freshmen only” group. Not overly structured, I envision it being a night of the week where freshmen will gather with a few of our mature, leader, connector-types as well. Food will most likely be involved…and we are talking about different connection-type activities for us to do (service projects, city tours, etc).
Hey Benson,
I love reading your blogs, you really layed this out well, and put it in a correct blog format:)
As far as what your saying I think totally, those ideas and topic to implement during those first weeks are great.
But before someone read this and tries add this to there movement its important to look at the absolutely most IMPORTANT thing college ministries should do is create a context for RELATIONSHIPS, Staff/student, student/student, non-believer christian. The hard part for ministers I think is feeling like they are doing the right things. That maybe a BBQ, movie night, game night, is actually MORE effective then John Piper coming to preach on Romans. 🙂 Relationships effect:
-Making a decision, comitting to the movement
-Make transfer students feel involved
-Able to discipleship stuff and so on.
As far the unity aspect. That is definitely i think movement specific. I know that Campus Crusade at ASU isnt meant for everyone, for myself, I 'm looking to develop people with leadership potential to reach the campus, and that means Im going to teach, and act differently then other campus movements. Hence, I may not want to have unified efforts on a regular basis. Because Im fulfilling the great commission in a sense on another “trial.”
Loved the post!
-Dan
Sorry i meant to say “another TRAIL.”:)
nicely said Benson.
Good thoughts Benson. Especially the thoughts on unity through having meetings on the same night and forcing students to pick. We do that on our campus and it has really helped, especially in helping students get outside of their Christian bubble.
Given the chance, many Christian students will go to a Christian “weekly” meeting every single night of the week. That produces spiritual leeches/consumers not spiritual leaders who are influencing for Christ across campus.
One thing we've found, and as you said, you need to communicate clearly WHY you have your meetings on the same night. Students default assumption is: “because they're competing with the other huge college ministry on campus. isn't that sad?”. Kind of like Home Depot moving in across from a Lowe's. So if you just meet on the same night but don't communicate WHY it actually comes across really anti-Unity.
So every year we communicate at our first few weekly meetings:
“Why do Cru and StuMo and other ministries all meet on Tuesday night?
B/c we all believe that ministry is not what happens on Tuesday night.
We want you to come to Cru, to get fed and challenged.
Then we want you to spend as much time hanging out with those who don’t know God the rest of the week”
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