Steve Lutz in his book, College Ministry in a Post-Christian Culture, published in September of 2011 made five predictions or what he called "5 Disruptions that Could Shake Up College Ministry". As I reviewed them the other day, I thought 11 years later they are holding up pretty well. Here they are in brief and sometimes more in my words. A few years back I was on a program with Steve and was impressed with his insights at that time. After looking back at these "Disruptions"......I would say, his crystal ball was pretty good.
1. The Higher Education Bubble will burst. With tuition costs rising, more students will go to community colleges and trade schools and enrollments will decline. Today we are seeing some campuses close and others struggle with enrollment numbers and being forced to cut budgets.
2. Technology will Distance, Disperse and Depersonalize Connections to students. Students will not spend as much time on campus. It will be harder to connect to them as they will have more fractured schedules. Read Covid and on line classes into this one. Some students are now getting degrees without setting foot on campus or living in the dorm and taking most of their classes on line. They tend to isolate more.
3. Non-Traditional Students will Become more Traditional. Students will become older and more part time. They will be more female and than male and will come from a wider variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds. The number of guys is definitely declining in college enrollments.
4. College Ministers May face Diminished Access to Secular Campuses. Some years ago we saw some ministries not allowed official RSO status due to their requiring certain beliefs by their officers, etc. There were some different legal challenges on different campuses. Many campuses that formally got full religious preference lists now are fortunate to get a few names. This varies greatly from campus to campus and state to state.
5. Financial Sustainability will be Challenged. Lutz said there likely will be a decrease in campus ministry funding. We have seen this one play out in some different Southern Baptist State Conventions with the significant down sizing of College Ministers.
Thanks Steve for your prophetic voice. Any more thoughts for the future, we need to think about? If you want to check it out, it is at amazon.com/dp/0834127652.
What do YOU see as coming trends we need to be prepared to face? Maybe we can do a better job of thinking ahead now as things continue to change.
Arliss Dickerson's book, A College Ministry Success Formula, is available at amazon.com/dp/B091F5S1RF.
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