How to start a church-based college ministry - part 1

Want to start a college ministry that helps your church reach the students in your city? Pro tip: don’t start by launching a college-focused church service. Don’t start by creating a college Sunday school.

Launching a ministry by launching an event is like attempting to build a house by building a living room first. You might be able to do it, but it’s going to be messy, inefficient, and cost a lot more than necessary.

If you buy a piece of land with the intention of building a house, the first thing you do isn’t to start building the house; it’s to have the land surveyed, clear any debris, figure out the size and layout of the house, and then do the work of digging down and laying a foundation.

Starting a ministry is no different.

That’s why when a church comes to us wanting to start a ministry we start them at what we call stage 0: prepare the ground. This stage of ministry has 3 major milestones, and each milestone has two key steps. In this and the next two posts we’ll walk through these milestones and each step that goes with them so that you can have a clear, step-by-step framework for starting your church-based college (or young adult!) ministry. 

Prepare the ground - Milestone 1: P + C groundwork

The first milestone for starting a church-based college (or young adult) ministry is all about surveying the “land” that you’ll be working. You need to take the time to do the preparatory work of prayer and the educatory work of understanding the context. 

Lay a foundation of prayer (seriously!)

The biblical reality is that it’s “God who gives the growth” (1 Cor. 3:5-9), not us. That means that no ministry can truly begin until prayer has begun. Gather a small group of people who are willing to intercede and to go on-campus to prayer walk at least 2-3 times before doing anything else.

This isn’t a magic formula; it’s an intentional way of slowing down, acknowledging God’s presence, and directing our hearts and minds towards him before beginning any human work. You haven’t done your ground work unless you’ve prayed - intentionally and extensively. 

Understand your context

The second step in launching an effective college or young adult ministry is the mental work of discerning your context. Gather data, have conversations, and be present to observe so that you can discover what the problems, opportunities, and needs are in the place you’re wanting to reach with the Gospel. Don’t just assume that because you were a college student recently or because you’ve done campus ministry before elsewhere that you understand the context.

Similarly, you’ll need to do some contextual work within the church as well to identify how the ministry you’ll be developing will fit into the larger body of Christ.

To begin to understand your context you need to do at least three things: 

1. Gather basic data - things like number of students, other campus ministries that are active, what majors are major, etc
2. Learn the backstory - Particularly if you’re new to the city/region, you should do some basic research on the city and campus’ history, even if it’s just skimming through a few wikipedia articles. 
3. Observe and hear personal stories - Take intentional time to be physically present on campus and observe the dynamics and culture. Better yet, have personal conversations with a wide variety of students to get a sense of the types of people who are on campus, what they do, etc. 

How long will this take? 

This first milestone will likely be the fastest to achieve. Even a volunteer ministry leader who works a full-time job and has a spouse and kids could, with minimal inconvenience, set aside a few hours over the course of a month and a half to get on campus to pray, observe, have conversations, and do the research. If you’re taking more than three months to accomplish these two steps, you probably need to evaluate if you have the capacity or the urgency to actually launch and lead the ministry.

Once you’ve reached this milestone, it’s time to move towards the next, which we’ll discuss in the next post.