Everyone I know wants to be successful. The problem is, there are different definitions of college ministry success. I am currently the Interim College Minister in a church setting that we are re-building. In my past life in a campus based ministry, I would have been in the total doldrums and thinking that I could sell insurance with where we are now numbers wise, etc.
HOWEVER, the ministry is growing, we are touching non-Believers and we are seeing new people every week...every week. To me one of the greatest barometers of how things are going is, if there are continually new people. That means your involved students want to invite and bring friends and the word out there is, it is worth checking out. Right now, that is a "Success Point" for me.
Each situation and each individual has their own "Success Points". Here are ten questions that are worth considering as you evaluate your ministry over-all and your own sense of satisfaction with what is happening. These come from DIFFERENT view points of success.
1. What do your students do after college in regard to faith, church, and ministry? Relax; no one gets a perfect score here.
2. Do your students look like the campus?
3. Are you giving and training students to serve, lead, witness, etc or are you just preaching to them?
4. Do you sense a movement of the Lord in any way in what is happening?
5. Does your large group meeting have a normal attendance equal to one percent (1%) of the student body? A campus of 1,000 would have 10...a campus of 10,000 would have 100, etc. This is usually a deep south campus based ministry metric.
6. Do you try to work with and encourage other ministries/churches that are trying to serve the Lord and students on your campus? Remember the 11th commandment, "Speak no ill of other ministries." But, encouraging is a step beyond that.
7. Are you doing the key things your supporters, boss, contributors, church members think they hired you to do?
8. Are you utilizing to the max the unique gifts God has given you? Or, are you cheating on them to do some things you don't do so well. YOU are the main asset of your ministry!
9. Are you building on the unique opportunities and needs THIS campus has to offer?
10. When you leave this ministry will the next person find it stronger than when you came or will it all collapse when you leave?
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