A Winning Recipe in College Ministry

My wife, Sue, is great at doing, organizing and managing food for large group college student events.  In recent days I was being her assistant at such an event where the food had been provided by different ladies in a Bible Study group in which she is active.  It was lots of wonderful, homemade, real food.  The event was attended by one of the larger groups to attend any of their events this semester.  It included Christian and non-Christian students from a variety of countries. Some students were there for the first or second time.  It was a terrific worship, witness, and Thanksgiving event.

I was reminded of some basics that we should never forget.  Some years ago one of the committees of the Baptist Collegiate Net (BCNet) did a survey asking approximately 500 students why they attended a Christian event the first time.  These were the top seven answers in order of number of times it was listed:
7. Website
6.  Mail
5.  Social Media
4.  Advertising
3.  Food
2.  Appealing Event
1.  Someone invited me.

Some have interpreted the results of this survey to indicate that the only thing we should do to reach new students is to invite students and teach, urge our core students to invite others.  I think the actual truth is that it is more of a stew with several ingredients.

Often, a student may have seen advertising or gotten mail, etc and are interested, but this is not an action or a risk they are willing to take....to go somewhere new....where they do not know anyone already.  So, an invitation takes part of the fear and reluctance out of going.

THE WINNING RECIPE
I often hear College Ministers lament that their core students do not invite others as they should.  The winning recipe for the event just attended and was numbers 1, 2, and 3.  All of the homemade food made it an APPEALING EVENT.  It is easy to invite friends and acquaintances to an event like that.  It is easier for students to respond positively when they see something as an appealing event.  All of the advertised HOMEMADE FOOD made it an appealing event.  NO, I am not saying there must or should be food at every event.

As the leaders of a college ministry, one of our tasks....especially with special outreach events...is to do all we can to make it an APPEALING EVENT and to communicate that to our core students.  Advertising may communicate that it is an appealing event.  Social media may communicate that, etc.

Some years ago a local church College Minister who related to our campus asked me what the ONE THING was in getting students to attend something out of all the different things we did.  I thought it was interesting that he knew our ministry did lots of different things, but that I really knew it was only one thing.  IT IS A RECIPE FOR STEW!  Every ingredient in a stew counts.  But, some recipes call for more of one ingredient than some of the others.

Every event is not special...or....it is not special.  But, everything we do must be appealing in some way.  Would YOU ATTEND your events, if you were a non-committed or non-Christian student?  Sometimes, our own students do not invite as we wish they would because......some of what we are offering is NOT TOO APPEALING.  It is a reminder to do what we do with EXCELLENCE. 

Check the recipe for the events you are cooking!

Arliss Dickerson is a part time college ministry consultant for Lifeway Christian Resources and the author of five books on college ministry in eBook and print at amazon.com (type in Arliss Dickerson).