We have to know what really matters.

I serve a campus of 1800 undergraduates, most of who indicate that their relationship with God is important to them on a likert scale. In the course of this past week, I have auditioned twenty-some students and selected two worship bands to lead next year’s worship services, taught a class on gender and evangelicalism, listened to a male student’s story of addiction to sex-chat-rooms, and a female student’s progress from addiction to pornography. I have hosted chapel speakers, led two book discussion groups on women’s spirituality, and debriefed campus life with my faculty colleagues. I missed an all-important task force meeting that is creating a theological diversity statement for our university to bring birthday cupcakes to my daughter’s class. You who serve the campus know this life. Most likely over the next decade our campus ministry professional teams will not grow bigger, and the opportunities to serve our students and faculty colleagues will continue to expand.

We have to know what really matters.

Is our primary work developing relationships with faculty and encouraging them to see themselves as vital in the spiritual formation of the university?
Is our primary work worship programming or teaching in the classroom?
Do we serve on institutional committees that shape how the university understands itself in a complex and fragmented Christian landscape?
Is our most significant work pastoral care in one/one relationships with students?

The only way we can know what really matters on our campus is to become excellent at deciphering our campus-context and discerning how God is moving in our particular university-setting.

To do this, we need to be in conversation. Three conversations.

First, we need to have deep conversations with a few students. Not just the students who we counsel, but a few students with who we share life. Relationships that are not contained by 45-minute increments over a cup of coffee, but students who know us and our families and how we think and make decisions. Students that we see outside of the walls of our offices and coffee shops. Real relationships.

Second, we need to be in conversation with a few faculty members and administrators. We need to be in the conversation of academics, technology, strategy and faith integration on a regular basis. Technology is reshaping the teaching environment and budget reductions are clarifying what is mission critical to the university. We must be listening and participating in these conversations in order to discern the way forward for the campus ministry we lead.

Third, we must be in conversation with the Holy Spirit with a group of listeners. Discernment comes best with a group. Whether you have a ministry team on your campus or not, developing a small group of people to listen to the Spirit of God together and discern the direction of your ministry is the way forward to know how to follow the wake of God. We can expend ourselves in all sorts of good ways that address all sorts of important issues. But only a small group community can listen together for what really matters with your students on your campus.

The stakes are high. Our students come to us with little theological understanding, limited church experience, and almost no mentorship and spiritual friendship in their lives. In the next decade our students will arrive less prepared for a life of discipleship, not more. Their sexuality is splintered and their idea of integrity is authenticity—being true to self. The ones who are earnest in their faith often equate it with being rigid in their doctrine. The challenge will be as great as it is today.
I want us to be people of God for our communities, anchored and centered, discerning and listening, ready to lead and follow.

We have to know what really matters.
In order to do this, we must become the most excellent listeners and interpersonal communicators on our campuses. No matter what challenging and exciting times are ahead in campus ministry, if we listen, we will pastor and lead well.

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