When I am in meetings with college ministers, I Love hearing things God has used in their ministry. Here are some from the great Florida College Ministers both campus and church based).
Cover-To-Cover, read the Bible thru (out loud) outside the student center from Gen 1-Rev 22. Begin Monday 7:00 a.m.-midnight thru Friday and finish Friday night. Send a to the campus that the Bible is still relevant.
To connect with international students, we ask the Indian Student Association to teach us to plausible Cricket. Every year, they tell us we are the only group that shows interest in learning about their culture. As a result, they are excited about planning and hosting it and showing off their favorite sport.
In order to meet new people, we took a day trip to the Kennedy Space Center. We provided free transportation and made it possible for many Internarional students to get to know other students as well as open doors to talk about our ministry.
Lunch Bunch - meet every Friday at the bar/restaurant on campus. No specific agenda. Provides opportunity for people to invite friends to safe environment.
I lead a Senior Community Group each spring semester that wraps up what we have tried to pour into their lives for the last four years and key scriptural principles that will make a difference in their lives. We deal with 6 principles and also deal with what they are and will experience as they are getting ready to graduate and what will come after graduation. Their current issues always trump the planned discussion items.
We provide a community for gamers. We host a party called Overkill. We have around 300 people in our building who would never step foot in a church. We have a BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) and have food, drinks, Xbox, P93, Wii. We have had many conversations.
FSU Luau - we partner with 8-10 other campus ministries/churches to begin the fall semester with new student move-in activities. It is part of the official FSU Welcome week activities. We place the responsibility of building relationships with new students on our current students. We funnel all our conversations towards a huge luau that we throw in the student union at the end of the week. At that event all of our ministries/churches have a table to get info out to students. Www.fsuluau.com
Local churches need to learn to do effective freshmen ministry just like BCMs do. We have found a special freshmen ministry effort led by quality married couples to be a huge benefit. Most churches expect that the high school seniors will assimilate into their college/career group without any special attention given to them. This expectation is unrealistic and false!
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