If I Was Back on Campus...

It's hard to believe, but it is now almost four years since I was last on campus on a daily basis as a campus minister. Since that time, I've served in regional and national roles with Campus Crusade/Impact. Giving leadership on a broader scale has helped me to gain a greater perspective on the realities of ministry to college students and to recognize trends across the country. Thinking back on my 14 years of experience with college students (four years as a student; ten years on staff), I think there are several things that I would do differently if I were to go back on campus tomorrow. Here they are:

1. I would spend more time pioneering. The natural tendency in campus ministry is to hunker down with a core group of students once a movement is launched or a small group is formed. In the initial stages of forming a movement, we do a ton of evangelism in order to surface students, but then once we find the key leaders, we taper off our evangelism as we focus on discipleship. The problem is that these two areas, evangelism and discipleship, are not mutually exclusive. They actually go together!

Once forming a core leadership team, I would take a more apostolic (pioneering) approach in leading. I would still seek to equip and coach these leaders, but I wouldn't do all the ministry. I would do a better job of training them to lead. I would move on to other people groups on the campus and move on to other campuses. This could be a great part of the discipleship process as I would take my disciples with me to trust God to launch movements in new ethnic communities and to seek to launch movements on nearby campuses. I did this some with a few of my disciples, but I would do it a lot more. Instead of sitting in a cafeteria or a coffeeshop talking about our lives, we could do that while we're doing ministry together.

2. I would give students more freedom to lead. It's funny because as a student, I was on a non-staffed campus. We had a CCC staff member visit our campus once a week, but we as students were really leading things. I was actively sharing my faith on a regular basis (i.e. multiple times each week) and gathering for prayer several times each week with other students. And it wasn't because I was super spiritual. It was because that was modeled to me and was expected. As a student-led ministry, it also meant that we reserved the rooms, bought the food for socials, organized and led prayer times, followed up evangelistic contacts, spoke at weekly meetings frequently, led Bible studies, put up publicity flyers, interacted with administration, etc. But once I came on staff with Crusade, I began to think that I was the "expert" and that the students needed me to do stuff for them.

We can't allow students to become dependent upon the "professional missionaries." It cripples them. And let's be honest here. Who understands students better -- college students themselves or middle-aged missionaries that are still jammin' to Keith Green? Just as a parent prepares their children to go out on their own, we need to prepare our students to do the same. I've asked a number of our staff, "What would happen if your whole team left your campus/city tomorrow? What would happen to the movements you lead?" The typical response is that "the students wouldn't be ready for that."

I'm sorry, but the reason that the students wouldn't be ready is because we haven't prepared them for it. 18-23 year olds are very capable of leading and leading well. Go to Iraq, spend some time with our soldiers there and then tell me 18-23 year olds can't lead. Most campus organizations are led by students and we're actually quite an anomaly in that we have whole teams of outsiders giving leadership to our ministries. Even among campus ministries, there is usually only 1 or 2 staff giving leadership to the ministry. Not 15-20 like we have in some locations. In order to fully "own" their movement, students need to feel the burden of responsibility. That's why they should be the ones leading Bible studies, leading outreaches, initiating campus prayer, recruiting for conferences, and planning socials.

3. I would focus more on foundational truths. Though I first got involved with Crusade in the early nineties during a major change process in the Campus Ministry, I was brought up "Old School." I went through NLTC training times, was sharing my faith within a few months of making a profession of faith, and went through the old Discovery Group, Discipleship Group and Action Group Bible studies. In fact the first Bible study I was ever in covered the five follow-ups that we go through with new believers -- Assurance of Salvation, Relationship with God, The Holy Spirit, Ways to Grow (Prayer, Word, Fellowship, Witnessing) and Purity. Just after a few months of being involved in Crusade, I was challenged to be discipleship and become a leader.

I think we've gotten too "cute" in recent years. We think the Four Laws is outdated, few people know how to share the ministry of the Holy Spirit, evangelism is occasional rather than a normal part of life, our Bible studies lack direction and I'm guessing that most of our student leaders have never heard of the Transferable Concepts. I certainly wouldn't disagree that our materials and resources need to be continually updated, but the message needs to stay the same. I fear that in an effort to stay trendy, we've gotten away from what our leadership is now referring to our "core DNA."

As a parachurch ministry focused on evangelism and discipleship, our primary calling is pretty clear. We should not do everything that a local church does, now should we attempt to. Campus Crusade has always been a help to local congregations as we take the gospel to students that our churches have a difficult time reaching, build new and immature believers in their faith, train them for ministry, and send them forth to do likewise.

Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade, was often accused of being too simplistic and naive because of his simple gospel presentation and insistence on focusing on the basics of the faith. But Dr. Bright was anything but stupid. The man spent five years in seminary and could walk theological circles around most Christians. But he knew that complicated explanations were not easily and simply passed onto others. That is why he developed tools that the average Christian could quickly learn and be able to pass onto others rapidly. Dr. Bright sincerely believed that a follower of Christ (no matter how old they were in their faith), if empowered by the Holy Spirit, could see God do great things through them.

I'm encouraged by how we are moving forward in these areas as a ministry as we wrestle with a changing student culture. Pioneering new movements, student ownership and a focus on the fundamentals are all current emphases that we have in the Campus Ministry. While we do have a lot of great things happening , I look forward with anticipation as many more students are compelled by the love of Christ. And not just so that they can be a better person, but so that they can be engaged in mission of expanding God's kingdom "on earth as it is in heaven."

What Do We Do With This Jesus?

The following words were penned by Douglas Kaine McKelvey for the liner notes of the 2000 Jesus miniseries soundtrack. I love the picture that McKelvey paints of the Jesus that I know and love -- the Savior who stood up for the mistreated and loved all those that crossed His path. I think it's especially appropriate as we remember Christ's death, burial and resurrection. Read on...

"What do we do with this Jesus? This was the question on everyone's mind at the swing-point of history 2000 years ago. The Jews, the Romans, Herod, Pilate, the High Priests, even Jesus' own disciples - they all found themselves wrestling with the same perplexing question: "What do we do with this man?" For some reason he didn't seem to fit very conveniently into anyone's agenda - personal, national, religious or otherwise. The Jews wanted a warrior king to drive the occupying Roman army out of the promised land. The Roman's wanted to maintain and expand their empire over the known world. Everyone else just wanted what people everywhere have always wanted: pleasure and prosperity and to be left alone.
Jesus came along and upset all of that. He refused power. He didn't seek fame. He treated the pleasures of this life as inconsequential. He humbled himself as a servant and his selflessness alone became a walking indictment of all human agendas - base and noble alike. It's no wonder he made people nervous. He was like a splinter in the soul. Even those who despised him couldn't ignore him. They buzzed around him constantly, angry and perplexed.
In their defense, his presence must have been a bit overwhelming. The story of his life on earth are more than we seem eager to contend with today, but people then had no choice but to physically rub shoulders with him. They walked the same dusty roads and breathed the same air. There wasn't any getting away from it. He kept popping up at odd moments, infuriating people with his compassion, perplexing them with his gentle wisdom, and frightening them with his unbearable love. And then there was the whole business about claiming to be the Son of God.
Truth is, Jesus was an absolute scandal. He taught that the least were the greatest, the rejected were the blessed, the wise were the foolish, the weak were the strong, and the secure were the lost. He taught that people should selflessly love, not just their friends and families - which would have been difficult enough - but strangers and enemies as well. He called on those possessed by their possessions to leave their wealth behind to follow him into a life of uncertain suffering for the one promised consolation of his love.
His words grew so appalling one afternoon that many of his followers gave it up for good and returned home, muttering that his teaching was too hard. They had had enough. Those who stayed were apparently in too deep already. Most scandalous of all was the way Jesus publicly and persistently rejected the proud, self-righteous religious leaders of the day and instead drew prostitutes, half-breeds, political revolutionaries, smelly fisherman, and turncoat tax-collectors into his circle of friends - all of whom soon and somehow found themselves, by his very acceptance, transformed from what they had always thought they were into a new existence as children of God.
It's one of the eternal ironies surrounding Jesus that those who allowed the exposure of their own weakness, shame, and guilt were the very ones who were afterward able to drink with joy from the fountains of eternal forgiveness and love, while those who fought desperately to prop up their own crumbling facades of self-righteousness were in the end reduced to a ridiculous position, raging blindly against love and their own liberation. Jesus was always hard to take that way - an insult, even - because beneath it all, it seemed that everyone needed him whether they wanted to or not, prostitutes and Pharisees alike.
And that really was the crux of the problem. His very nature exposed the heart and forced the hand of everyone around him so that in the end, after the haze and baggage burned away, it was all laid out pretty simply. You were left with only two possible ways of answering the question "What do we do with this Jesus?" You could either follow him or you could crucify him.
2000 years of science, progress and religion don't seem to have changed things for us all that much. The human heart is still the human heart. Nuclear power, psychotherapy, and satellite television notwithstanding, most of us still find ourselves - in our more honest moments - faced with the same troubling question and the same simple options that perplexed Christ's contemporaries...
"What do we do with this Jesus?" It is something to think about...

Don't Make 911 Tragedy Indictment of Race, City

From Detroit Free Press columnist Desiree Cooper:

"They're the calls heard around the world. On Feb. 20, Robert Turner, then 5, called 911 to get help for his mother, who he thought was dying on the floor in their Detroit apartment. By now everyone has heard about his desperate attempts to get help from a dispatcher who thought he was playing a prank. Frustrated at one point, he groaned "Ugh," and hung up the phone. His mother died before help arrived.

The story has stirred up sympathy, outrage and even litigation. But there's one reaction that has been totally unwelcome: the feeling of collective shame on the part of black people. Whenever news of a heinous crime or outrageous behavior hits the airwaves, black people in America -- and especially in Detroit -- share a
singular prayer: "God, I hope they weren't black." This is a rare experience for white Americans, who generally skip through life without feeling that people like the Unabomber, Howard Stern and Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush reflect upon them personally, or on their whole race.

But when an African-American person becomes the subject of controversy, all of us blacks carry the shame of it, breathing a sigh of relief when the perpetrator is not one of us. Double ditto when the wrongdoing happens in Detroit, where a bad act brings down not only a whole race, but a whole city as well.

When responding to Saturday's Free Press story about the tragic 911 incident, bloggers weighed in, revealing what many are thinking. Readers posted messages like:

"What else do you expect when your hiring pool is from the wonderful city of Detroit. Did you hear the 911 operator?? Talk about a ghetto hood rat."

Another blogger said,

"Fire her. She has no right to decide who's pranking or not. Dumba** n****r."

People regularly hurl personal, racial invectives at me as if I had something to do with management of the Detroit Zoo, the ending of bulk trash pickup and the political foibles in the city. I'm not sure my white colleagues suffered as personally when Patrick Selepak was charged in a killing rampage in Macomb and Genesee counties, when a Rochester High student threatened a Columbine-like massacre in an effort to get out of school, or when an Oakland County judge was caught spending more time at the mall than on the bench.

In 1988, Peggy McIntosh at Wellesley College's Centers for Women wrote the essay "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." "I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color," she wrote. "I can swear, or dress in secondhand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race."

The dispatcher on Feb. 20 may have been a jerk. Or maybe she has a stellar record of discerning which calls are bogus; about one out of every four is a prank. But no matter which employee she turns out to be, she's not a reflection on all black people or on the entire city. If you insist on coloring us with one broad brush, then the shame isn't mine, it's all yours."

Contact DESIREE COOPER at 313-222-6625 or dcooper@freepress.com.