Nor Cal / Nev College Ministries

If you’re doing church-based college ministry, how do you relate to groups like Intervarsity and Campus Crusade? For that matter, how do you relate to a denominationally-based group like Chi Alpha?

Cooperatively.

If you have a ministry of any significant size, you will attract students to your worship service who consider themselves to be members of Campus Crusade/InterVarsity/Navigators more than members of your ministry. You have a choice—view it as an asset or a liability.

I strongly suggest you learn how to think of this as an asset. Meet the directors of the parachurch ministries you are drawing from. Talk with them. Figure out ways to partner together.

And realize that most of your conflict potential is over student leadership. A student cannot, cannot, cannot, cannot, cannot be an effective leader in both organizations. That’s a problem, since each ministry will see the same potential in gifted students and both will try to recruit them.

You need to covenant with one another that you won’t try to steal leaders. You’ll recruit as best you can, and then let students make up their own minds which route they want to pursue and then you will each live with their choice.

One more bit of advice—while you should definitely keep your critical thinking cap on and evaluate what’s going on in their ministry (because it affects yours), you really need to watch judging parachurch workers by comparing them with your ministry. It’s usually an apples and bananas kind of comparison. You’re following different ministry models, and a numbers-to-numbers comparison really doesn’t reveal as much as you might assume. Whether they’re bigger or smaller, don’t devalue them or allow them to devalue you.

If there’s already a very strong parachurch college ministry which has got several students attending your church, perhaps you don’t need to launch a formal college ministry. You just need to ensure that you’re student-friendly and that you maintain good relationships with the parachurch ministry.

How can you partner with a parachurch organization?

• Host families for international students: most college ministries want to reach international students, and one of the best ways to do that is through placing international students with American families who will periodically invite them over for a meal, will let them come and do their laundry, and allow them to participate in family holidays (because they can’t go home for theirs). Talk to the parachurch staff worker and ask how that can happen. If they don’t know, call the international student ministries office directly.
• Meals after church on Sunday: when college students attend a church, they often want to connect with other churchgoers besides college students. Get this point—if they only know college students then there will be nothing to hold them to the church if a group of students starts going elsewhere (and they will—students are notoriously fickle).
  1. A great way to help build relationships and provide fellowship is to ask a few key adult leaders to host a potluck meal after church on Sundays. It can be cheap (students don’t much care as long as it’s not cafeteria food), and it’s an easy way to build community.
  2. Incidentally, this can be especially helpful if you have several college ministries represented in your church. Students are almost always crying out for unity among groups. Be a place where that can occur.
• Mentoring relationships: the parachurch leaders are often isolated and inadequately resourced. Offer to network them with people in your church for mentoring. Perhaps the senior pastor or a business person would be willing to meet with them periodically to help them grow (both as Christians and as leaders).
• Help the Parachurch Worker Pursue Ministerial Credentials: this sounds silly, but it’s important. Licensed ministers gain huge tax advantages, and a shocking number of parachurch ministers don’t have credentials. Help them out.

Partner with them. You’ll be glad you did.