Is Uni Ministry Quantifiably Better than Church Ministry?

No.

My comment in response to this post by Mikey on the relationship between church and uni ministry was too long to be published. So I decided to post it here instead.

Mikey wrote a list. Lists always create comments longer than the original post.

p.s. My baby girl is in sleep school at the moment. If she decides to graduate then I may even start blogging again soon.

Thanks Mikey, a thought-provoking list.

You may go on to balance these comments in the next post, but some reflections on point 5 (that's code for "I don't actually have a point, but want to rant for a minute on my personal experience").

Lazy and bloating programming needs to be rectified. Though even if a heavy commitment remains, in terms of the guilt-line "campus ministry is such a great opportunity" I think it is true and should not be downplayed but emphasised, though in a context of serving the wider church.

I always put to potential student leaders that serving on campus would have a significant impact on the time they had available to serve in church. You only have so much time (though always more than the students think they have), and I was asking for a commitment of a big chunk of it.

I always encouraged them to make the decision in conjunction with their minister, and as you suggest that they would need to continue serving in that church. However, my goal was to train them primarily in evangelism to a variety of people that would be unlikely to walk through the doors of their church with any regularity. I was committed to meeting up with them 1-1 each uni week for as long as they were student leaders. Furthermore, I wanted to invest in them for a short period of time to train them to be even more effective leaders within their church. We existed to serve the church.

A lot of the guys I asked ended up continuing in most ministries within the Sunday gatherings as well as attending a church bible study, but they would generally step down from youth ministry in their congregations, as this was another night out and required more additional preparation. The positive of this is that with the quick turnover in youth ministry, churches are theoretically always producing new youth leaders.

Uni ministry was a chance to serve amongst their peers in a bible-teaching and evangelistic capacity that I remain convinced is more effective in training than most church ministry can be, purely for time available face to face with people, talking about Jesus. And at least where I worked, after decades of faithfully training and sending students, churches with our grads would encourage future students to serve with us.

However, having a campus-only model (not an all-encompassing uni-church) probably enabled this pitch to be given with a clear conscience.

Maybe I do have a point to campus ministries:

Know what you are and what you aren't. You are a place where there are lots of people with varying amounts of time with a willingness to hear about Jesus. Realise you have the blessing and curse of 2-3 years with most students. How can you best serve the wider church as their members study in this place? It's certainly not by alienating them from their local congregation with bloated programming. But the best thing might be to take some of their time already serving in that church instead into the campus, for their greater good. And as long as you don't have a uni-church which is virtually synonymous with the campus group, that greater good is unlikely to be building your own little kingdom.

End rant.