Do you ever feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle?

When I started at Belmont 6 years ago I inherited a role in a weekly worship service that was dying. And I was told when I was interviewing that should that worship service ever cease to exist that I would be responsible for the creation of something to follow in its place.

Well, after two years of life-support, we finally put that dying service to rest.

And the funeral was a small one.

And so began the process of trying to provide something different — something specifically for Belmont students (the deceased service was more geared towards young adults in Greater Nashville) — that would draw them into the presence of God and provide a time and space for a communal worship experience.

For the past four years we have conceived, and re-conceived — again and again — what this might look like on campus.

We’ve provided evening opportunities and morning opportunities.

We’ve tried upbeat, contemporary style worship and slower, more liturgical and contemplative styles of worship.

We’ve had longer, shorter and at times no teaching component.

We’ve included different forms of prayer time and other experiential elements…

And on a Christian campus that is moving towards 7000 students, we’ve only ever been able to average between 50 (at the beginning of the semester) and 12 (by the end of the semester) students.

Yes, we’re located in Nashville — where there are 101 opportunities to worship, fellowship, study the bible and serve; on any given day — but I believe that God wants more here on campus!

I believe I’m called to want more too.

And for the past couple of years (at least) one of my colleagues has been trying to convince me to offer “convo credit” for these worship events. (For those of you not familiar with the ins and outs of Christian colleges and universities, many of these institutions still “require” involvement in regular worship — or programming — through a chapel or convocation program. The difference between the two is that chapel most often looks more like a worship service and convocation typically operates more like a lecture series — and convo also provides students with a lot more options).

I have fought my colleague on this — believing (from my spiritual high-horse) that students should NOT have to be incentivized with “receiving credit” to want to come and worship.

She’s been patient with me.

And her rationale has remained consistent — on a campus where we’ve (as an institution) incentivized pretty much everything that happens outside of the classroom (and I’m not kidding) we actually devalue programs (in the minds of students) when we don’t offer convo credit.

To be honest, her argument has always repulsed me… primarily because I didn’t want to believe that about our students.

But over the past four years I have failed to find a way (outside of offering credit — and short of the Holy Spirit moving in a mighty way) to help students want to make corporate worship on campus a priority.

And so, this year, we will offer convo credit for our Wednesday morning worship experience. And we’re also combining with a popular speaker series on campus that has typically drawn in 200-400 students just for the Christ-centered lectures.

Yes, in some ways I feel like I’m selling out.

But in other ways I feel like I might actually be getting out-of-the-way — finally — getting my pride out-of-the-way so that God can more freely move and work (within the system), which is what I’ve truthfully wanted all along.

Time will be the judge of whether or not we’ve finally found a combination for corporate worship on our campus that will actually work (ie. — draw in more students with the belief that regardless of why they are there, God can get their attention — and yes, I’m well aware that the “numbers” of it all is not the only indicator of success — however, it is one of the many)…

All of this has me wondering:

• Are there ways you might be hindering the work of God on your campus?
• Are there areas that you struggle to work within the “systems” that are present on campus?
• Are there times, and appropriate ways, to fight the cultural current on campus? I think so! But what does that look like for you?