It Takes Two to Make a Thing Go Right: Church, Parachurch, and the Third Way of Missional Campus Ministry

I’m not internationally known

But I’m known to rock the microphone…

It takes two to make a thing go right

It takes two to make it outta sight

–Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock

When it comes to campus ministry, the question inevitably arises of who should be leading the charge: Church? Parachurch? Should they work together? Can they work together? If so, HOW? In this article I will discuss the dominant paradigms in campus ministry, and the need for a Third Way.

Two paradigms have dominated—and often competed—in campus ministry: the first is the “magnet” church (often large, well-known, and polished); the second is the parachurch (often large, nationally and internationally known, with their array of pre-packaged and market-tested products and ways of doing things).

You should know that I’m writing as someone who has served as both a campus pastor of a church, and as a campus minister with a parachurch organization. I’ve seen many cases where the dominant paradigms don’t work, and I’ve seen a few cases where a Third Way approach is bearing tremendous fruit.

Magnet Churches

Magnet churches often view campus ministry as something that occurs within their four walls.  If the church has a reputation that precedes it, it can attract students off of the campus to attend the church, and it may be able to gather a decent crowd.  In the best scenario, students are regularly reminded that the Body of Christ is more diverse than 18-22 year old college students. They’re reminded that those wet, wrinkly little crying creatures are called babies. Those other wrinkly little creatures are called the elderly. Plus, there’s everyone in-between. In age-diverse churches, students are recipients of teaching, counsel, and hospitality from older members of the church. They have the opportunity to jump in and serve the church in its various ministries and mission.

But, just as easily, they may not connect in any of these ways. They may show up, but be little more than decoration, like the seat-fillers at the Oscars. At larger churches, students are often funneled to age-segmented ministry. They worship at a larger church, but when there, the only people they connect with are…other college students. They find it hard to get involved, because few churches are geared to involve the constantly shifting mass of students in meaningful ways.  In this scenario, we must ask how missional the magnet church truly is. While it is essential for Christian students to have a spiritual home during their college years, we must ask whether the church is doing enough to reach the campus. Simply being “student-friendly” is not an effective strategy for reaching nonChristian students. As we move more and more in to a post-Christian society, it becomes increasingly unlikely that an unchurched nonChristian will darken the doors of a church. Its culture, language, and practices are simply too foreign, too intimidating. Even the smallest geographic distance can become an insurmountable hurdle. At its worst, the magnet church phenomenon can undermine Christian students’ mission to their campus by effectively removing them from it.

Parachurch Ministries

The second paradigm is that of the parachurch, which views campus ministry as something they (alone?) do on campuses.  Parachurch campus ministry arose because of the void created by churches’ collective inability, unwillingness, or laziness in reaching out to students. In the best scenario, a parachurch ministry is able to reach students with the Gospel, and connect them to a body of Christian students.  They receive regular, relevant teaching uniquely suited to their context and lifestage. They worship and serve with other Christians, and incarnate Christ in all the corners of the campus.

But a parachurch ministry may just as easily not do most or any of these things.

Counter-intuitively, parachurch ministries can be just as guilty as magnet churches of removing students from the campus—not physically, but socially, intellectually, and culturally.  Tim Keller has noted that even Ivy League parachurch groups are infamous for discipling their students in “anti-intellectual pietism.” For decades, many have noted the ease with which parachurch fellowship groups create Christian ghettos—“Christianese spoken here!”  Instead of being a community of missionaries—“commissionaries”

—to their campus, they act like hermetically sealed bubbles of Christian culture. Instead of engaging their campus, they sit around listening to MercyMe and quoting VeggieTales to each other. The fellowship group becomes little more than a haven for people who “think like me, speak like me, dress like me.”

Many times, ministries baldly state that their purpose is to be little more than a “safe place,” a place to babysit churched kids and “protect” them from the world.

Two false (but often unstated) assumptions dominate in these unmissional communities (whether church or parachurch):

1. College students are not really called to reach out to their world—just survive it. Retreat from it as much as possible. Get good grades, don’t get pregnant, and come home as often as possible with your nose clean. It’s as if Jesus never said “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world…As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 17:15; 20:21)

2. College students can be protected from the world by their external activities.  That’s not missional at all. In fact, it’s Pharisaical. Jesus said it’s not what goes into us that makes us unclean, it’s what comes out of us (Matt. 15:11).

Adding to these problems is the frequent phenomenon of parachurch-without-local-church.  Parachurch ministries may pay lip-service to connecting students to a local church, but leave no room for actual church involvement in their philosophy of ministry or weekly planning. Consequently, students are discipled in a lifestyle of churchless Christianity. Upon graduation, they look for a setting just like their fellowship group, and finding none, many apparently graduate from meaningful involvement in the Body of Christ.

The Third Way

Because of the shortcomings of both magnet and parachurch approaches to campus ministry, it is vital that a missional orientation to campus ministry practice a “Third Way” of campus-church connection.  Instead of merely making students come to the church, or merely looking for parachurch ministries to exclusively go to the students, a missional campus ministry approach utilizes the strengths of parachurch ministries to empower the local church to take its place on the missional edge. A missional church is a Sent Church. If they have a campus nearby, then they are sent to the campus. This means that they must be present on campus, physically and frequently. It means they must seek to contextualize the Gospel to the people-group of college students. They learn to speak the language.  It means that they disciple the students in being missionaries to their campus.

It also means that they do not stop with a successful ministry on campus, because they act as a bridge between Church and Campus. They make room for students to participate fully in the life of their church, so that students are both served and serving in meaningful ways. In a post-Christian world, this is a crucial way for the church to make inroads into the cultures around us, and make disciples for a lifetime.

A Place for Parachurch?

What of parachurch ministries, then?  Emphasizing the church’s place on the missional edge is not to dismiss or do away with the important roles of parachurch ministries. Not at all. Rather, it is a call for the parachurch to recover the its true calling, inherent in the name: to “come alongside” (para) the Church, to help facilitate and equip the church for its mission.  Parachurch ministries ought to adopt a John the Baptist role: prepare the way, and then be willing to get out of the way. Be willing to decrease in reputation. If a local church is taking its place on the missional edge, be willing to help and facilitate, even if your name isn’t on the marquee.

The “Church Only” crowd will sometimes say “Parachurch ministries are inherently illegitimate.” This is arrogant. A Parachurch is illegitimate if it tries to take the place of a church. But it is legitimate if it seeks to serve the church. Practically speaking, this means missional parachurches will always seek as much meaningful partnership with like-minded local churches as possible—and will even help churches to be planted if ones don’t exist. This flows from the conviction that local-church-based campus ministry, with on-campus pastoral & staff leadership, is the most fruitful way to see college students become Christ-centered laborers for life.  Parachurch ministries continue to have a large role in making that happen. A missional campus ministry will not see students graduate from the Body of Christ, because they will already be meaningfully connected to the Body in all her messy glory.

The Power of Pride

Doesn’t this sound good? Church and parachurch, working together in harmony, with great fruit and effectiveness?

It sounds so simple. So why is it so hard?

Let’s go to the heart of the matter for a moment. We can’t ignore the human—and therefore, sinful—element here. As Jonathan Edwards and many others have noted, Pride is the chief sin, the foundational sin, the sin that lies underneath all others.  Pick up the rocks of suspicion, disdain, or selfish independence, and we will find Pride wriggling and squirming underneath. It is Pride which destroys otherwise fruitful partnerships between church and parachurch. It is Pride that causes turf issues. It is Pride that causes both sides to view the other with poop-colored lenses.

Prideful arrogance, which results in disunity and unfruitfulness, deeply grieves Jesus.

Our righteousness and identity are not found in what we do in ministry, but in what Jesus has accomplished for us. Laying our ministries at the Cross, as an act of worship, should melt our pride, humble us, and cause us to be thankful that Jesus calls us to partner with him in his work. Jesus not only reconciles us to God, but to one another, for the sake of his mission.

So let’s get to work! Let’s repent of our sinful attitudes and actions, and look for meaningful ways to partner together in order to see the Kingdom come in power on our campuses!