The Global University, Part 2

 Missional Campus Ministry & The Global University, Part 2

By Steve Lutz. Part of an ongoing series on Missional Campus Ministry. Read Part 1 here.

New York’s the greatest if you get someone to pay the rent/ wahoo North America
And it’s the furthest you can live from the government uh huh huh
Some proud American Christians might disagree/ here in North America
But New York’s the only place we’re keepin’ them off the street
– “North American Scum” by LCD Soundsystem
Elements of Effective Ministry in the Global Universities

All campus ministry is important, but all campus ministry is not equally strategic. Global Universities are perhaps the most strategic mission field in the world. Given the special and unique influence of global universities, churches and campus ministries ought to prioritize ministry staffing, funding, and resourcing.
Effective ministry will be similar to what has been fruitful in the Global Cities. The vice-versa is also true: what has been fruitful at Global Universities will likely be fruitful in the Global Cities, and should be observed by those engaged in ministry there. Not only do they share several important characteristics, but effective campus ministry can serve as a predictor for what will be effective in the cities. The future is always now in campus ministry. The following elements are necessary for effective ministry in the Global Universities.

1.      Amidst secular unbelief, faithfully proclaim & incarnate the orthodox Gospel.
The Gospel is as offensive as it has ever been to unbelievers, and it is tempting for students and even ministries to soften the blunt edges, blur distinctions, and otherwise take the bargain offered by relativism: “You leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone.”
Christians must engage nonChristians and their questions in a humble, respectful, informed manner. This happens in thousands of informal conversations every day, as well as in more official forums, including class and special events.  Most western, college-going nonChristians consider themselves to be “beyond” organized religion, while also believing that they have examined Christianity and found it wanting (they haven’t). In this environment, it is crucial for Christians to clearly and repeatedly explain the Gospel until its clear to nonChristians that they haven’t yet really examined it!
It is unfortunately necessary to make clear that this proclamation of the Gospel must be verbal. Not exclusively verbal, but not exclusively works-based, either.

2.      Amidst the non-missional expectations of Christian, Churched, and Traditional people, pioneer a transparently missional campus ministry.
Missional campus ministry may confound consumeristic Christians, but will effectively reach secular nonChristians. I have argued elsewhere for the need for more missional approaches to campus ministry, since most are highly traditional or attractional, institutional, and programmatic.  Missional forms of campus ministry are sorely lacking.

3.      Amidst the transience and hyper-mobility of “Emerging Adulthood,” challenge students to stay after graduation and renew their campus and city.
Students often treat their campuses as mere rest stops on the highway to the rest of their lives.  It is essential to emphasize that life does not begin later—increasingly, after 30!—but now.  Give them a Jeremiah 29 vision, and we find that they are uniquely equipped, before and after graduation, to reach their global campus and/or city with the Gospel.  Churches have been planted, in part, by the commitment of tribes of college grads committed to renewing their city.  To overcome the tendency to move on, it is essential to form a strong bridge to the local church while still in college. This must go beyond mere attendance, to meaningful involvement in the local Church.  The vision must be cast for their role in seeing the church advance and the Kingdom come.  Church leadership must not be a “closed shop,” but open to their involvement. Campus ministry staff should actively seek to bring students into their local church, and continue shepherding of those students as they become involved in the church.

In the future, I hope that working with and among college students will be seen as a viable and strategic church planting strategy, and one that will bear considerable fruit in renewing entire cities.
4.      Amidst “Relational Retardation” and Sexual & Gender Confusion, provide teaching and healthy models and contexts for Christian relationship.

I realize “retardation” is a loaded word, but I use it here in the original sense, as in slow to develop. Many observers have noted that the prevalence of divorce & family dysfunction, combined with the distance created by technological interaction (texting, IM, etc.) have slowed down students’ ability to develop healthy, face-to-face interaction.

Christians students in many cases come from churches and homes that were afraid to talk about sex.
Add to this that the sexual landscape is constantly changing, and acceptance of virtually every type of sexual practice is regarded as a shibboleth for existing on campus. As many of us are aware, this has even escalated to legal threats towards Christian organizations on some campuses.  Even Christian students are consequently confused about Biblical sexuality and gender.

5.      Amidst diversity and pluralism, contextualize ministry to many different types of people and worldviews.
A survey of campus ministry resources reveals the assumption that college students all basically believe the same thing. But students are not monolithic. It would be nice if this were true, and perhaps it was at one time. But now this assumption is reductionistic and untrue.
In a typical campus, we are likely to find several different worldview people-groups: Traditional and conservative people (often from the heartland or Bible-belt areas); Modern-thinking people (disproportionately found in the sciences); Postmodern-thinking people (still predominant in the arts and humanities); and a fourth group, as yet unnamed. Recognizing that postmodernity is bankrupt (in part because of its inability to call anything evil), people in academia and pop culture have been pointing to what has been called post-postmodernity, hyper-modernity, pseudo-modernity, trans-modernity, and “The New Sincerity.” It is unclear if this will cohere into anything, or what it would be. But it is clear that orienting ministry to only one worldview will not reach the many worldviews present on the typical global university campus.

6.      Amidst the pressures of the larger culture, and the errors of sub-culture on the one hand and cultural assimilation on the other, create a counter-cultural community.

Many campus ministries serve as bunkers for Christian students to hide from campus culture, and little more.  In doing so, they mirror the posture of many churches in North America.  Some others, in the search for relevance, are not much different from campus culture. Both have lost the uniquely Christian character of dynamic, outward-facing engagement without conformity.

This cannot be done alone, and forming a counter-cultural community is essential for discipleship of believers and witness to nonChristians. “The gospel has and always will continue to travel best along relational lines.”  It is in the context of this community that the Gospel is worked down into every area of life.  This means radical departures from cultural approaches to sex, money, power, alcohol, school and work, and entertainment. Christians recognize all of these as gifts, but in the freedom of the Gospel seek to not abuse or idolize them the way the culture does.

This counter-cultural community moves beyond mere fellowship and accountability, to partnership in engaging and renewing the campus culture at large. Don’t be misled by the term “counter-culture.” The posture of this community is to respectfully and humbly engage the larger culture to bless, renew, and redeem it.

This must include unity and Kingdom-centered prayer among Christians.  Various ministries must move beyond the rivalry of competing for students’ attention. They must also move beyond the busy-ness of being so absorbed in their own ministry that they have no time for communication with their co-laborers.  Instead of mirroring the hyper-individualistic autonomy, fragmentation, and alienation of the culture at large, Christian ministries ought to seek active partnership, mutuality, and communication.  Jesus said that the church in complete unity would demonstrate His identity and mission to the world.  In a world that hungers for unity because we see so little, churches and ministries that refuse to partner with one another willingly prop up one of the greatest objections to the Gospel.

7.      Amidst the compartmentalization and relativization of faith to but one, private area of life, integrate Faith with all of life.

This counter-culture equips students to think, speak, and live Christianly in all areas of life. This includes some of the hot points of modern life: the use/abuse of authority, sexuality & relationships (as above), and especially work & the intellect.

Keller notes: There is a surprising amount of anti-intellectualism within the evangelical world.  People have noticed for years that campus fellowships at Ivy League schools are very anti-intellectual and pietistic (A-I-P). In general, however, such A-I-P will not reach the people who tend to “make it” and stay put in city centers.
A-I-P is not limited to Ivy League schools. Missional approaches to campus ministry need to be unashamedly, rigorously intellectual.
Unfortunately, much campus ministry focuses only on the inner, “spiritual” life, and does not take seriously the need to shepherd students through the faith/intellect crises common to the college years. In fact, in the absence of counsel and discipleship, students often create a false dichotomy between faith and intellect. This is a disservice to them, and a “defeater” of Christian belief to nonChristians.

8.      Amidst great suffering and injustice in the world, and the hunger for things to be made right, be actively engaged in ministries of Mercy & Justice.

This generation of students is much more globally aware and engaged. They are a new activist generation. They are cause-driven.  Mercy and Justice is one of the rare areas where Christians can become co-advocates with unbelievers for the same goals of combating poverty, sex-trafficking, climate change, etc.
Done rightly (that is, obediently and faithfully), mercy and justice have the potential to become a powerful apologetic for the Gospel, and a defuser of animosity (1 Peter 2:12; 3:13).

However, it must be recognized that Christians should be coming at mercy and justice from a different place than the secular (or spiritual) nonChristian.  Christians are joining with God in his mission to renew and restore the world, to put things right, “for the praise of His glory.” NonChristians, despite noble motives to alleviate suffering, have no such motivation to glorify God. Oftentimes, they are motivated by underlying spiritual and philosophical belief systems that have set themselves up in opposition to the Gospel.

The current danger is that campus ministries become so enamored with fair trade coffee and the like that we functionally substitute the social gospel for the Gospel. I am not forgetting that the Gospel IS a holistic gospel, and that when Jesus proclaimed the arrival of the Kingdom, it included the alleviation of suffering.  But there is a tendency to forget that the Kingdom which alleviates suffering arrived through the Word AND Deed of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord must be proclaimed. To do any less than this is not faithful to the Gospel.

I am afraid that some are guilty of hiding their light under a bushel while working for justice, or that they are merely employing justice efforts as a seeker-driven strategy for relevance. Let’s not be naïve: people see right through this. If our efforts for mercy and justice are not authentic, proceeding from hearts that genuinely desire Christ’s reign and rule to come, we will be dismissed as hypocrites.

Conclusion
Former President of the United Nations General Assembly (and Christian) Charles Habib Malik was a Lebanese philosopher, theologian, and diplomat.  Educated at Harvard, he spoke prophetically about the importance of reaching the University in his famous address “A Christian Critique of the University” in 1981:

The University is a clear-cut fulcrum with which to move the world. The problem here is for the church to realize that no greater service can it render both itself and the cause of the gospel, with which it is entrusted, than to try to recapture the universities for Christ on whom they were all originally founded. One of the best ways of treating the macrocosm is through the handle of the universities in which millions of youths destined to positions of leadership spend, in rigorous training, between four and ten years of the most formative period of their life.  More potently than by any other means, change the university and you change the world.”
– Charles Habib Malik

In the era of the Global City and the Global University, this message is more true than ever.
Links:
International Students and Global Cities
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/rb/rb161.html

“Berkeley as the ‘Immigrant University’”
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/28/immigrant

National Center for Education Statistics
http://nces.ed.gov/index.asp

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Global University Rankings
http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2007/ARWU2007_Top100.htm

Times of London Higher Education Supplement (THES) Global University Rankings
<http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/results/2007/overall_rankings/top_100_universities/>

Tim Keller on Ministry in the New Global Culture of Major City Centers
Part 1 http://www.redeemer2.com/themovement/issues/2005/may/ministry_in_globalculture.html
Part 2
http://www.redeemer2.com/themovement/issues/2005/fall/ministry_in_globalculture_II_p1.html
Part 3
http://www.redeemer2.com/themovement/issues/2006/winter/ministry_in_globalcultureIII.html
Part 4
http://www.redeemer2.com/themovement/issues/2006/spring/ministry_in_globalculture_IV.html