Mission of a Campus Minister: Engage, Strengthen, Send – Seth Thomas

I have never felt called to go: I mean, I’ve never felt like God has said “Pack up, move across the country or the world, I have work for you to do there.” Global missions, therefore, seemed to be ruled out.

Instead, I have felt drawn to the local. Increasingly so. I’m a homebody, the kind of person who likes to walk the streets of my neighborhood, likes to say hi to the folks around town that I’ve known for at least a decade, in this place my life has been situated.

Beginning in campus ministry, 7 years ago, I wondered about how this sense of place could be used to impact students. What if, instead of me being the one who goes, I was the one who was called to empower others to do so? What if it was my job to engage, strengthen, and send students out to be the hands and feet of God in the world?

This has been the driving force for me as a campus minister, these past 7 years. All aspects of the work I do with the INN University Ministries, located in Bellingham, WA, serving Western Washington University students and young adults, has been done with the drive that says, “Don’t stay long, your job is to go!”

How does this look? I think one of the biggest challenges of doing campus ministry, over a long period of time, is the sense of displacement or lack of continuity, year after year. The students change every year, some staying longer, but many just popping in for a short while. So how does one engage, strengthen, and send a transient population?

First: Engagement
For us, it starts on Tuesday nights. Our weekly gathering is the place where students are called together to meet, worship, have fun, and be a gathered-people. In my opinion, the focus of those nights can never be to dive into the deepest subject matter. Rather, it is a time to connect people, help them build relationships, and establish mentoring, discipleship communities that will call them into fuller maturity once they are engaged. So, a big push we make is to teach, but also to establish relationships and connect people with small groups. When I’m doing my job, a big part of those nights is to meet students, see how they are, check in on their lives, see if they want to grab coffee, and get them into a peer-led small group ASAP to help them continue their engagement.

Second: Strengthening
In our context, the work of discipleship is key. It is in mentoring relationships (with a peer and/or with an older mentor like myself) that transformation, growth, and strengthening occur. For the brief time we have students in our lives, my work is to help call them forward as leaders, challenge them to grow as disciples of Jesus through prayer and learning, and help them discern where God is leading them vocationally. This final piece ties into the last part of my calling as a campus minister: sending.

Before I address sending, though, I want to say a bit more on strengthening. The reality is that in this post-Christian, Almost Christian, sorta Christian world, students come in to our gathering at many stages of development. Some have learned a lot and developed deep roots in their walk with Jesus. Others, the majority, are new to faith, exploring and considering what following Jesus even looks like. And that’s ok, but because of it, we have to challenge our methods of engagement and discipleship. One size does not fit all. We have to be ready for the slower walk with someone coming to faith for the very first time. And we have to be ready to sprint with the one who’s been at this for a while and is thirsty for what’s next.

Finally: Sending
My job as a campus minister is not to keep students in my ministry. My job is to help them see the places of brokenness in the world, develop the tools to follow Jesus faithfully, and then get them the hell out of my church to go do the work of justice, reconciliation, and beauty-making in the world. To do this, I try to spend most of my time in conversation with students asking questions about where they are being led, what’s the passion in their hearts, what’s the thing they feel uncomfortable about and what are they going to do about it?

To close, here is an example of what I see as success in campus ministry. I take no credit for any of this, but I think this is what I’m trying to articulate about a student being engaged, strengthened, and sent.

A girl name Hailey came in to our ministry as a young student, a few years back. She had a beautiful voice, great musical abilities, and a passion for justice. Over the years, after having a chance to be a part of small groups, lead a Tuesday night worship team, and gone on a couple of mission trips, she graduated and left our community. With her, went the prayers of our staff. We had loved watching her grow and were excited for what God had in store for her. Over the next few years, we have watched as she connected with fighting injustice through Invisible Children. She became a huge part of the KONY 2012 campaign, advocating, with her voice, her passion, and her artistic gifts, for the fight against Joseph Kony’s atrocities in Uganda and neighboring countries.

In my mind, she is why I have done campus ministry: To empower, equip, send, and cheer on ambassadors for Christ’s reconciling justice in the world.

Seth Thomas (@sethjames) lives in Bellingham, WA. He is a Master of Divinity student at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology. After working in campus ministry for these past 7 years with the INN University Ministries at First Presbyterian Church of Bellingham, Seth is transitioning into a career in specialty coffee, one of his deep passions. He blogs about coffee, theology, music, and the church over at http://blog.sethjamesthomas.com.