Nor Cal / Nev College Ministries

This is a process you can use when pioneering to get a sense of the school and to learn information you might not otherwise discover until it's too late.

CAMPUS:

Location:

Public transportation:

Brief history of school:

Demographics

• Student Population:
• Undergrad:
• Grad:
• Commuter:
• International Students:
• Countries Represented:
• Dorm Dwellers:
• Commuters:

Campus Information

• Quarters / Semesters?
• Where do students live?
• Where do students hang out?
• Student Organizations Office:
• Director of Student Life:
• Chaplain:
• Dean of Students:
• International Student Advisor:
• Residence Life Director:
• Athletic Director:
• Greek System Director:
• How To Reserve Meeting Space:
• How To Schedule An Information Table:
• How to Schedule Open Air Presentation/Drama

Making Noise

Models That Churches Can Use (in ascending order of difficulty)

• Student-Led Bible Studies on Campus: there are tons of resources for releasing your students to do this sort of thing and do it well. You’ll need one or two gifted and committed students to launch this. Point them to Advice For Student Leaders.

• Lunch Programs on Community Colleges: begin offering a free meal along with an evangelistic program on campus once a week. You’ll need enough time to do this and a core of students who will agree to come to the meeting (to create energy). You’ll also need money for the food. Learn more at Reaching Community Colleges.
• College-Age Sunday School Class: if you’re overwhelmed and are trying to do something, try to throw one of these into the mix. You’ll need a quality leader and a core of college students to start.
• The Three Hours Model: a college-friendly Sunday morning worship service, a college-specific Sunday school class/small group network, and a college-specific midweek worship service (either on campus or in the church). You’ll probably need multiple youth staff to be able to pull this off. In fact, under this model the ideal is to have a full-time college pastor.

This is a synthesis of an interview Glen Davis conducted with Steve Shadrach, founder of Student Mobilization along with highlights from Steve's packet titled "Heart of the Campus."

Launching Transformative Campus Ministry

1. Your students will do to others what you did with them. If all you do to start up is find all the loose Christians on campus and get them in a room, don't expect an evangelistic powerhouse to result. Win them to Christ, don’t just invite Christians.
2. You will attract students like those in your core: focus on mainstream influencers (as opposed to interested or isolated students).
3. Don’t start a large group meeting until you have 15-20 mainstream students who have primarily been won to Christ who are all sharing Christ with their friends. It takes a year and a half to two years to reach that point.
4. The three key components of a campus ministry are momentum, multiplication, and management.
5. Do discipleship in the context of evangelism, and not vice-versa. Frequently we teach people to do evangelism as one component of our discipleship strategy and then get back to 'real discipleship'. What we need to do instead is help students share their faith and in the context of ministry do on-the-spot discipleship.
6. Spend all your time on campus, hold all your meetings on campus—don’t even have an office! Grab your suitcase/backpack in the morning, get on campus, and don't leave until the day is done.
7. The beginning is hard, exhausting work. You have to take the initiative in everything, meet people like crazy, and follow up on those meetings.

Reaching The Heart Of The Campus

• "All people are equally important, but not all people are equally strategic." Dr. Bill Bright
• The most strategic people on campus are the key leaders of the key groups.
• They comprise only about 5% of the campus, but their influence is huge.
• Win the chief, win the tribe--this is a basic missiological principle.
• The heart of the campus is the most unreached segment.
• Focus on influencers and you will indirectly effect more interested and isolated students.
• If you want influential staff down the road you must focus on influential students now.

Do We Want FAT Or FAITH?

We often say we're looking for FAT student-faithful, available, and teachable, but for an interested or isolated student, FAT may mean this:

Launching a college ministry from your church can seem overwhelming. Here's how to do it:

Get Vision

Repeat after me: schools are the steering wheel of our society—as goes the campus, so goes the culture. Our leaders are shaped in university lecture halls.

Don't believe it? Read all about The Vision For College Ministry.

Get Conviction

Vision is all well and good, but if you don’t have a strong sense of conviction, you’ll never sustain ministry to collegians. There’s a very simple reason for this—college students don’t return the investment that a church makes in them. Children’s ministries bring families into the church, youth ministry brings families into the church, but college ministry sucks money out of the church.

this is the constitution used by Chi Alpha at Minnesota State University

CONSTITUTION OF CHI ALPHA CAMPUS MINISTRY

PREAMBLE

Chi Alpha Campus Ministry is an organization of students and non-students at Minnesota State University, Mankato who have united to express the person and claims of Jesus Christ to the campus community, to call others into a relationship with Him, and so to establish the Kingdom of God at Mankato State University.

CONSTITUTION ARTICLE I: Name

The name of this organization shall be Chi Alpha Campus Ministry. Chi Alpha is a chartered ministry, affiliated with Chi Alpha, Christian Fellowship USA; the College Ministries Department of the Assemblies of God. We choose this name as a witness that Jesus Christ called His disciples to be active testimonies of His resurrection and love for the world.

A Bible study for non-Christians.

Some suggested resources

• Alpha Course: Alpha is a food-based, discussion-driven, Spirit-filled outreach that many Chi Alpha groups are using successfully. This is a great program if you don't have time to prepare your own studies or train leaders. All a leader does is this program is moderate discussion with specific instructions not to answer questions themselves. Some Alpha representatives say that Chi Alpha is the best college ministry fit for their outreach because we embrace the Spirit as they present Him. -
  Alpha On Campus website: http://jhfrahm.home.texas.net/

Dorms

At most four-year schools, the way to reach the students is to impact the dorms. Students in dorms live in close community with one another:

• They share living space.
• They share meals.
• They share classes.

There is a rich web of natural relationships that already exist. When a student living in the dorms get on-fire for God, good things happen!

A student's guide to Living In The Dorms.

Focus On Reaching Key Students

There is a principle in world missions: win the chief and you win the tribe. In other words, some people wield disproportionate influence over others.

Go to the office of student affairs, find out what you need to do to get registered as a student organization. That allows you to use space on campus (usually rent-free) and to hang up publicity materials on campus. While you’re at it, Charter With Chi Alpha, the college ministry of the Assemblies of God. They’ll hook you up with resources, training, and networking.

Why Register?

• To gain access to school facilities (and sometimes funds).

• To gain legitimacy in the eyes of students and their parents.
• To gain some automatic promotion (listed on school website, in publications).
• To submit to authority (the school probably expects that all organizations will register and comply with certain guidelines).

How to Register

The process for becoming a registered student organization varies from campus to campus, but it almost always goes something like this:

1. Contact the office of student activities/student life on your campus to get an application form.

There are 81 colleges or universities that enroll more than 1,000 students in our district. We currently have ministries on less than 20% of those campuses.

We've got to start more ministries!

Basic Principles

1. Be sure to become a Registered Student Organization--it will really make a difference in your ability to get things done on campus (reserving rooms, etc).
2. Always prefer action over inaction.
3. You Get What You Have