Why campus ministry?

CSF recently held its staff interest retreat. A retreat for those juniors and seniors who are interested in possibly coming on staff at CSF. We had around 50 who said they were interested, easily the biggest staff interest retreat in history.

While there, before we started with the questions: what do we do day to day at CSF? What is fundraising like? What are the hours life? Before those questions, we just wanted to tackle the question: "Why campus ministry?" What makes it so special.

Lexington is primarily a college town. And of the hundreds of churches in Lexington, only 3 have full time campus minister. Around 40,000 college students in the Lexington area and hardly anyone is reaching out to them full time. It is the most ministry-neglected people group, which is perhaps why it becomes the most in-need people group.

In addition to that, college students are at a rare time in their lives. A crossroads. Where they make decisions that will effect the rest of their lives. Working at CSF, we have usually 3-4 years with them then they are gone forever, having formed habits that will likely carry over for a lifetime. The question is, what kind of habits will they form?

At CSF, we have a saying, which is also the name of my blog: Change the Campus, Change the World. We have students at CSF from states all over the nation and from countries all over the world. If we make disciples here, those students go back to their homes in Lexington, or Western Kentucky, or Georgia, or New York, or Mexico, or China, or Thailand, or England or wherever they hail from, and begin to make disciples there.

If we radically invest in campus, we are investing in the world. That's why we want to invest in the students on campus.

Teaching Opportunity

I told you all that I have had some opportunities to begin teaching and preaching some. I want to share this with my supporters. Just click this link to watch one of my recent teaching jobs. This video was shown in our core groups to our 450 student leaders.

See video of my teaching here.

Dirty Laundry

Every two years, CSF hosts one of the coolest nights I have ever been a part of. It started two years ago, when a girl around CSF said she wanted to invite her friends, but they refused to come because they felt they didn't belong. Like they were too "bad". People in church had it all figured out. They didn't.

This began dirty laundry. We want to show everyone that Christians are not perfect. We are saved by a perfect God, but by no means perfect ourselves. And we all have our dirty laundry. So we just aired out our dirty laundry, and we had nearly 30 students share their stories of a stained past, brought together by God's redemption.

Before dirty laundry a couple weeks ago, CSF's largest Synergy ever was 615 people at the 2011 Christmas Synergy. Two weeks ago for dirty laundry, we had 771 people show up. It was incredible  During the night, we asked for people to anonymously air out their dirty laundry as well. Over 450 of them did, and each one got a personal video response from a staff member or community leader around CSF, leading to great stories and hopefully more of God redeeming a dirty past.