“We can no longer continue to under-fund, under-appoint, and undervalue the strategic mission of campus ministry.” These are the words of Creighton Alexander form a blog post entitled, “Nobody Cares About Campus Ministry.”
I first read a version of this post in the July 2009 IVY Jungle Network Campus Ministry Update. Another comment Creighton made that caught my attention was, “…campus ministries don’t work because of poor appointments, lack of funding and no understanding of the strategic potential of the work. What’s more, these campus minister positions are mostly low-paying, dead-end posts with little room for advancement.”
In his eBook, Reaching the Campus Tribes, Benson Hines calls this dilemma the Collegiate Attention Gap. He writes, “The most obvious problem for the field of college ministry is simply the widespread absence of college ministry practice, investment, or attention.”
We at NEWCHAPTER think we may be able to help alleviate this dilemma.
Maybe we’re way off target here, but there seems to be two primary dimensions of Campus Ministry. The first side is the actual Ministry:
- Service
- Worship
- Outreach
- Counseling
- Guidance
- Fellowship
- Community
- Discipleship, and all the other characteristics of “doing” ministry.
The second side is the Operations:
- Income
- Expenses
- Facilities
- Schedules
- Strategy
- Networking, and all of the other administrational facets of College Ministry.
Operations supports Ministry…
One does not exist…without the other.
If Ministry is going to grow, then Operations must grow to support it.
NEWCHAPTER partners with Campus Ministries to help expand Operations…
…so Ministry can expand!
For the greater part of the last decade, NEWCHAPTER has partnered with student organizations to fund, build, and then maintain new Student Living Centers.
Why Student Living Centers?
Student housing is a valuable financial resource that exists on virtually every college campus. If your Campus Ministry has members, it’s more likely than not, a large number of those students are living somewhere on campus.
We’ll be the first ones to say that not all Campus Ministries can, or even should have a residential facility.
In our next post we’ll explore some of the advantages and challenges of having a residential facility for Campus Ministry.
In the meantime; we would love to hear what those out in the field of campus ministry have to say in regards to this topic. What do you think?
