WHY COLLEGE MINISTRY STINKS, Part 2

As I prepare to start leading worship for "Immerse," a city-wide college Bible study, we're looking at common challenges within college ministry. I'd love to know what you think about these posts...what you've seen, learned, experienced through ministries like this.

Things Are Different Now...

Challenge #2 is Originality.

In most cases, college ministries like "Immerse" are targeted at students who are Christians. That's not to say that evangelism doesn't happen...but since it is a service with worship and Bible study, your typical draw is going to be kids with at least some measure of faith.

But I think that technology has positioned us in a very interesting place as we try to serve college students. (Not only college students, actually...I think the premise stays pretty consistent with most any group.)

Let me see if I can get real practical here...

When I was 19 years old, I was pretty committed to my faith. I was a devout kid...but I knew very little about theology. I had no idea about other teachers and pastors who were "movers and shakers" in the world of religion, and specifically, Christianity. The spiritual formation I had was a good one, but not a broad one. I was under the care of great pastor and teacher in a healthy church, but didn't have a lot of other scriptural influences in my life.

That's not the case, now. Thanks to tech developments - the biggest being the emergence of podcasting - people are exposed to many more viewpoints about God and personal discipleship. These days, in a given college ministry setting, you've got kids who have an appreciation for the works of John Piper, and by that connection, even "old dead dudes." You've got students passionate about recent prayer movements across the country. Some are convicted about social justice and what that really means to a Christian.

I would submit these are good developments, but here's where they hurt us...

WE CAN'T FAKE THIS ANYMORE.

Let's be honest. Fifteen years ago, you could plagiarize an Ed Young Jr. sermon...and nobody would know it. You could lift a chapter out of R.C. Sproul and they'd be none-the-wiser. You could regurgitate the exact transition between two worship songs from a "popular" worship CD and it would be all good.

I'm not saying that college ministry is filled with students who are all spiritual giants...I don't know many places filled with spiritual giants, as a matter of fact! But I do think we've got kids are so much more "informed" than they used to be.

There are some who would bristle at an encouragement for "originality." Some would say that we are speaking/preaching/living out an ancient word...and they would be right. But I would say that God has been gracious to give us the gift of creativity. We've got to use that...we've got to invest time in seeking what God would have us to say and we've got to work hard to make it our own.

And while our original work may not ever be as cool as some big shot on a CD or TV, I think making something our own...speaking it with honesty to the people we've been called to care for...will say volumes about both our investment in scripture and our passion for relationship with our crowd.

PS...on a completely unrelated note, all you RSS kids need to click over to the actual blog. I'm running a survey to convince my wife to loan me $60.