Campus Ministry Quotes

The money spent by one campus ministry to cover the costs of their Central American mission trip to repaint an orphanage would have been sufficient to hire two local painters and two new full-time teachers and purchase new uniforms for every student in the school.

Jesus spent three decades allowing the Father to prepare Him for three short years of ministry.

Everything we do and say will either underline or undermine our discipleship process. As long as there is one unsaved person on my campus or in my city, then my church is not big enough. One of the underlying principles of our discipleship strategy is that every believer can and should make disciples. When a discipleship process fails, many times the fatal flaw is that the definition of discipleship is either unclear, unbiblical, or not commonly shared by the leadership team. Write down what you love to do most, and then go do it with unbelievers. Whatever you love to do, turn it into an outreach. You have to formulate a system that is appropriate for your cultural setting. Writing your own program for making disciples takes time, prayer, and some trial and error—just as it did with us. Learn and incorporate ideas from other churches around the world, but only after modification to make sure the strategies make sense in our culture and community. Culture is changing so quickly that staying relevant requires our constant attention. If we allow ourselves to be distracted by focusing on the mechanics of our own efforts rather than our culture, we will become irrelevant almost overnight. The easiest and most common way to fail at discipleship is to import a model or copy a method that worked somewhere else without first understanding the values that create a healthy discipleship culture. Principles and process are much more important than material, models, and methods. The church is an organization that exists for its nonmembers. Christianity does not promise a storm-free life. However, if we build our lives on biblical foundations, the storms of life will not destroy us. We cannot have lives that are storm-free, but we can become storm-proof. Just as we have to figure out the most effective way to engage our community for Christ, we also have to figure out the most effective way to establish spiritual foundations in each unique context. There is really only one biblical foundation we can build our lives on, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Pastors, teachers, and church staff believe their primary role is to serve as mentors. Their task is to equip every believer for the work of the ministry. It is not to do all the ministry, but to equip all the people to do it. Their top priority is to equip disciples to do ministry and to make disciples. Do you spend more time ministering to people or preparing people to minister? No matter what your church responsibilities are, you can prepare others for the same ministry. Insecurity in leadership is a deadly thing that will destroy any organization. It drives pastors and presidents to defensive positions, protecting their authority or exercising it simply to show who is the boss. Disciple-making is a process that systematically moves people toward Christ and spiritual maturity; it is not a bunch of randomly disconnected church activities. In the context of church leadership, one of the greatest and most important applications of faith is to trust the Holy Spirit to work in and through those you are leading. Without confidence that the Holy Spirit is in control, there is no empowering, no shared leadership, and, as a consequence, no multiplication.

These mega-churches are springing up all over the country—especially in the suburbs of large cities. And they all follow the same formula: A charismatic, self-anointed pastor starts a church by holding services in a home, then in a school. He targets the young professionals, who make good salaries—although the poorer folks are welcome too, as long as they’re willing to pay their fair share. When there are enough members, the pastor proposes buying land, then buildings, then more buildings, asking the people to give sacrificially to do God’s work. The pastor uses outrageous gimmicks in the worship services to create a massive word-of-mouth campaign for the church. Everybody’s excited about going to the big show on Sundays. For the children and youth, church is like going to a theme park. And what kid wouldn’t want to do that? A local TV ministry is added. Then it goes national. Then global. Services are streamed live to the internet. A satellite campus is opened, then another, and so on. Ministries are established in foreign countries. But whose church is it? The pastor’s. Whose ministry is it? The pastor’s. What is everything built on? The pastor. It is his church. His ministry. His empire. -- Hal, the mega-church blogger

Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked.” —Luke 6:35 (NLT) The late-night call to the hospital twisted my stomach into a hard knot. Danny, a strong, passionate college student studying for ministry, had been in an accident. He lay in a medically induced coma, survival uncertain. I was one of his teachers. I rushed to the hospital and joined his friends. Danny’s parents had not yet arrived; they faced an agonizing four-hour drive. As we waited, we pieced together the tragic story. Danny had seen a homeless man begging on the side of the road. He sensed God’s whisper to feed him; the fast-food gift certificates he had in his pocket would be perfect. While turning his car around, he was T-boned by a pickup truck. His girlfriend suffered minor injuries; the other driver wasn’t hurt, but Danny now fought for his life. We waited and prayed and tried to comfort his parents when they arrived. The waiting stretched into days. Danny’s father, however, was not content with waiting. He had a mission. The day after the accident, he drove to the fast-food joint, loaded up with food, drove to that fateful place, and finished the task his son had begun. While his son lay in a coma, Danny’s father fed that same homeless man who would never fathom the cost of his meal; God’s boundless compassion, disguised as fast food. Danny’s recovery was slow but strong. I saw him recently, working on campus. He waved. He'd just gotten married. Danny, by his life and through his family, has become my teacher. Heavenly Father, grant me grace to press through my heartaches to a place of total forgiveness, supernatural love, and abundant life. —Bill Giovannetti Digging Deeper: Jn 15:4; Eph 4:32; Jas 2:8

In healthy multisite structures, the campus pastor has authority and the ministry leader/champion has influence.

A few years back I was the featured speaker at the Indiana Governor’s Prayer Breakfast. I found myself sitting with the then youngest (thirty-six years old) governor in the country, Evan Bayh. He’s also a very devout Christian. He turned to me and said, “Brennan, you’re in just about every nook and cranny of the United States. You’re in every college and university, from Campus Crusade to Young Life, and in an incredible number of churches as well. What do you hear the Spirit of God saying to the American church?” I said, “Well, Governor Bayh, if there’s one thing I hear with growing clarity, it’s that God is calling each and every Christian to personally participate in the healing ministry of Jesus Christ.

John and Diane Worcester are always on the run. In their amazing pursuit of God’s call, they have planted churches in cities like Moscow, Toronto, and Fort Worth. John tells part of their story: God has called my wife, Diane, and me to be sequential church planters. We move to one city after another to plant churches. Our goal is to make disciples of unsaved people and gather them in churches, where they can mature and be mobilized to make more disciples. By God’s grace, we have planted eight churches and over a dozen other expressions of the church, such as evangelistic campus ministries, singles ministries, etc. We typically apprentice future church planters as we plant, and once the church starts, we turn the church over to a long-term pastor. As planters like John and Diane Worcester run after what God has called them to do, their coaches run alongside them. God has used them to make an incredible gospel impact for thousands of people. No doubt well-intended advisors suggested they stop moving so often, but God had a unique plan. Paul reminds Thessalonian believers to give honor, respect, and love to those who lead: Dear brothers and sisters, honor those who are your leaders in the Lord’s work. They work hard among you and give you spiritual guidance. Show them great respect and wholehearted love because of their work. And live peacefully with each other. (1 Thess. 5:12–13 nlt)

Rev. Dr. Martha R. Jacobs, MDiv, DMin, BCC, is the author of A Clergy Guide to End-of-Life Issues. She provides workshops throughout the country for clergy and congregations on end-of-life issues. Martha is an adjunct professor at New York Theological Seminary, where she is the coordinator for the Doctor of Ministry in Pastoral Care and a per diem chaplain at New York Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia Campus. She is the founding managing editor of PlainViews

Hanawon, located about forty miles south of Seoul, means “House of Unity.” The campus of redbrick buildings and green lawns surrounded by security fences was built in 1999 by South Korea’s Ministry of Unification, a cabinet-level agency created to prepare for the day when North and South would somehow be reunited. Its programs are designed to help defectors transition into a modern society—something that will have to happen on a massive scale if North Korea’s 25 million people are ever allowed to join the twenty-first century. The Republic of Korea has evolved separately from the Hermit Kingdom for more than six decades, and even the language is different now. In a way, Hanawon is like a boot camp for time travelers from the Korea of the 1950s and ’60s who grew up in a world without ATMs, shopping malls, credit cards, or the Internet. South Koreans use a lot of unfamiliar slang,

Madisons are in every church, every youth group, and every campus ministry. Madisons sit in our pews and wonder what their narrative is within the body of Christ, and they have a hard time seeing that the gifts they bring to the table have anything to do with participating in the great mission of God in this world. Instead, because of what they have always seen, and because of what they have always known, they see that task as for their brothers in Christ.

He was wandering around the campus of the University of Illinois and heard a commotion from one of the buildings. Curious by nature, he wandered through the door and found himself in a big hall filled with hundreds of booths manned by attractive young women and men. The booths had big signs proclaiming the names of organizations that served all around the world in various ministries. Not having a background in church, Peter didn’t understand what was going on. But when a pretty girl asks for your name and introduces herself, a lack of understanding becomes secondary!