Para-church ministries abound and serve their purpose — working alongside the church to build up and advance the mission of the church itself. But what about when those ministries inadvertently replace aspects of what the church alone has been called and equipped to do?
If there is one common pitfall among campus ministries across the country, this would be it.
Over the years, I have heard endless variations of statements like this from students:
"I have Christian community on campus — I meet with my discipler weekly, I hear God's word at Large Group, and I have deep fellowship with my friends."
Even worse, I remember a seasoned campus minister sharing something he had said to a pastor regarding a student prioritizing campus over church involvement:
"Just give me your student for four years. I'll give him back to you after college, better equipped for life and ministry."
An entire book could be devoted to the theological problems contained in that statement. But for now, I'll provide my pushback by way of the shared conviction of Across Campus ministries:
Campus ministry is strongest when it remains rooted in the life, authority, and long-term mission of the local church.
I'll elaborate on that in four points on why college ministry should be church-centered.
Because Evangelism without the Church is Spiritual Abandonment
In recent history, countless thousands of individuals have heard the gospel clearly for the first time from the mouth of a campus ministry worker or student — praise the Lord! But what happens, in that context, after God draws a person to repentance and faith in Jesus, converting them to Christ? Who is responsible for this spiritual infant? How is this new believer to find their footing in a world full of deceitful voices and bad theology, not to mention their own ongoing desires of the flesh?
Seeing the joy of another's salvation, only to send them back into the world without the discipleship, oversight, accountability, and encouragement of qualified elders and fellow covenant members in the life and ministry of the local church is the spiritual equivalent of dropping a newborn at the fire station, hoping someone else will take responsibility.
Because Discipleship is the Job of the Church
I was a Christian when I started college, but I was extremely immature. God was gracious in placing me on a hall in the dorms with an upperclassmen RA who was a zealous evangelist and committed student leader in our campus ministry. Luke taught me how he studied scripture, invited me to weekly 6am meetings to pray for the nations, took me out evangelizing door to door, and introduced me to many lifelong, Christian friends.
But I will always be grateful for his humility when I approached him about how to date in a way that honored the Lord. "I dunno man, I've never done that well. You should probably talk to a pastor or somebody older and wiser than me." This was the first of many times he challenged me to plug into the local church where he was a member.
Campus workers who gather students to themselves as their only source of discipleship are perilously blind to the long-term harm they will cause to growing Christians.
The great commission was given by our Lord to his church, the means by which he intends to reach the world with the gospel and grow his gathered people into mature obedience to all of his commands, together. Without the week in and week out, expository preaching of God's word, observance of the ordinances, one-anothering member care, and practice of faithful church discipline, our pursuit of Christ will be out of whack at best and full of false assurance at worst.
How can a hand expect to grow in strength and health while cut off from the tendons and ligaments, veins and blood vessels, and surrounding muscles that are also attached to the head?
Because It Prevents Ala-Carte Christianity
The prevalence and wealth of Bible teaching online in podcasts, sermons, e-books, audiobooks, and even YouTube videos is an astonishing privilege of our day and age. And at the same time, it has contributed greatly to the rise of expressive individualism and a sense of theological autonomy.
100 years ago, if I had a tough theological question, I would have sought the counsel of one of my pastors and wrestled earnestly with the word of God. Today, I can ask an AI chatbot what John Piper says about a contested doctrine. While Piper is a faithful brother whose teaching I hold dear, he has not ever been nor ever will be my pastor.
I ought to seek out doctrinal clarity and its application in my life from the men whom the church has appointed and who will stand before God to give account for how they guarded the good deposit entrusted to them in the lives of members of our church.
Rather than finding community and friendship exclusively among people with whom we share age and stage, college students have the opportunity to believe and display the barrier-destroying gospel wherever they relate to older and younger members of the church as spiritual brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents.
The church is the place that the manifold wisdom of God is made known. Why would we rob students of that knowledge by compartmentalizing their faith and teaching them to practice aspects of it apart from the covenant community of the church?
Because College Ends and the Church Endures
Jesus told us that the gates of hell would not prevail against his church. Suspiciously absent from that promise is any mention of higher education institutions.
Right now in America, college enrollment is slightly up from previous years. However, this increase is driven by enrollment in community colleges, associates programs, and trade certifications. Many students are foregoing liberal arts and even STEM programs to pursue training in the trades. I'm not suggesting that colleges and universities will close up shop any time soon. But I think the point is clear — college is typically at most a four or five year season of a person's life.
But not the church. The believer will have the church their entire life. The church will always be relevant, shining as a beacon of the glorious gospel of our loving savior and head, no matter the myriad ways our world will continue to change.
We will continue to grow in grace, looking more like Jesus and less like the world. We will continue to grow in size and spread, the Lord adding to our number and sending out gospel workers to plant and revitalize more local assemblies, until he has gathered the full number of his elect to himself and brought the good work he began in us to completion.
That's the kind of lifelong, durable discipleship that college students — and the rest of us — need.
Jonathan White
Across Campus Board
Jonathan White serves on the Across Campus board and has given us permission to publish this article.