Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Chuck Bomar has been in church-based ministry for over 25 years and serves as a consultant to leaders involved in starting, scaling, and multiplying churches. Chuck also believes local schools represent the ethnic and socio-economic diversity of a community and advises churches that seek strategic relationships with their local school districts. He and his wife, Barbara, have three beautiful daughters: Karis, Hope, and Sayla.

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Written by college ministry expert, Chuck Bomar, College Ministry From Scratch provides simple tips and practical ideas for anyone looking to start something for college-age people in their congregation. Keeping in mind that a youth worker or volunteer launching a college ministry already leads a busy life, this book is easy to digest and offers insights on everything from leading overseas mission trips or winter retreats to leading a small group or Sunday school class. This handy resource addresses the simple, but often intimidating task of initiating meetings with students, and even offers a list of questions they can ask when having coffee with a student. Organized by topic, it's an easy book for leaders to jump in and out of, as they need it, and is sure to help any size church begin to meet the needs of the college-age people in their congregation.

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College Ministry from Scratch

Zondervan

Contents

Introduction.......................................................................15SECTION ONE: LAYING THE FOUNDATION FOR COLLEGE MINISTRY............................17Chapter 1: The Perception of Success...............................................23Chapter 2: Creating and Measuring a Sustainable Ministry...........................33Chapter 3: Developing a Job Description (That Fits Our Goals)......................43Chapter 4: Your First 90 Days in College Ministry..................................53Chapter 5: Understanding College-Age Issues-An Overview............................63Chapter 6: Providing a Place to Belong.............................................71SECTION TWO: ADDRESSING THE UNIQUE NEEDS OF YOUR MINISTRY..........................73Chapter 7: Recruiting Older Adults-Overcoming Obstacles............................81Chapter 8: Recruiting Older Adults-Characteristics to Look For.....................89Chapter 9: Leading College-Age Leaders.............................................99Chapter 10: One-on-One Conversations-Questions to Ask..............................107Chapter 11: Starting and Sustaining Effective Small Groups.........................117Chapter 12: Shifts in Teaching Approaches..........................................125Chapter 13: Seven Critical Teaching Topics.........................................137Chapter 14: Mission Trips-What to Include and Why..................................149Chapter 15: College-Age Retreats...................................................159Chapter 16: Working With Interns...................................................169Chapter 17: Church-Based Campus Ministry...........................................179

Chapter One

My journey in college ministry began in the summer of 1999. It was a Tuesday night at Hume Lake Christian Camp, and I was eating dinner in the staff lounge. In fact I ended up sitting at a table with Francis Chan. I was a member of the high school program staff for the summer, and he was speaking that week.

I'd been doing a Wednesday morning seminar for the students all summer long, and I'd asked a few camp speakers to critique me. These were people who'd served in ministry for some time, were really good communicators, and had gained my respect for their character. I wanted to get their input, advice, and correction.

Since I found myself sitting there with Francis, I asked him if he was going to attend the session the following morning. He said he thought so. I told him I'd be teaching and asked if he'd be willing to give me some feedback on my message. I also asked him to please be blunt and honest. He agreed and we set up a time to connect afterward.

The next day Francis sat in on the session, and we hung out that afternoon. He gave me some great feedback on the seminar; but more than that, we spent almost two hours talking about life, ministry, family, and where I was in my own life. He asked if I had any experience in college ministry. I didn't, and I thought that would be the end of the conversation. (I was wrong.) His church didn't have a ministry for college-age people, so we talked about that for a while. Long story short, I visited his church a week and a half later and was hired part time to start "something for college students" at Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, California.

My first day in the office was September 7, 1999. I remember it was a Tuesday because it was right after Labor Day weekend. I'd moved into town the day before, sort of settled into my room, and showed up at the church at 9 a.m. for my meeting with Francis. We shared some small talk, laughed a little, and then began talking about the college ministry. Well, sort of. He didn't really have any thoughts for me. This was great in that I had a lot of freedom, but I also had no direction or experience to go on. I had to figure out what I needed to do (or not do), where I should focus my energy, and where I was supposed to start.

Francis handed me the "database" of people who were interested in the ministry. It was a blue sticky note with six names and four phone numbers written on it. Some database, huh? This of course was better than nothing at all, but it certainly wasn't much. So I called the four people with phone numbers listed, met with each of them, and planned to host a barbeque at my house. I announced the barbeque one weekend during the church services, and I was excited to see what would happen. A barbeque wasn't much, but at least it was something.

Nine people showed up, including the youth pastor and me. We had a great time hanging out and getting to know each other, and it was at this point that I announced the next step for our ministry: A weekly Bible study.

I reserved a room at the church for our gatherings. I didn't want too big of a room, so I scheduled one of the smallest rooms available. It was a classroom with stale white paint on the walls, no sound system, and bright fluorescent lights. I did my best to make the room feel cozy, but nothing could really be done. We just left it basic. Bare bones. Everything we did was so minimal that we didn't even sing worship songs during our gathering times. We didn't have anyone who could lead. But eventually someone would lead the singing on occasion, and we used an overhead projector with transparencies to put up the song lyrics on the white wall. We gathered, I taught about some basic Christian beliefs, and we just got to know one another. Simple, but fun.

BEYOND EXPECTATIONS

I quickly found out that atmosphere and other forms of aesthetics didn't matter as much as I'd thought. Within six weeks about 50 people were coming. I didn't know where they were all coming from, but I wasn't complaining. Simi Valley is anything but a college town. There was just one community college in the next city over from ours. And there were two bowling alleys and a movie theater-that was about the extent of the "life" of our town. Later they added a mall, which was great, but that didn't come along until 2005.

Regardless of the lack of city life, we soon had to move our gathering to a different room because we no longer fit in that first classroom. And then we had to change rooms yet again. People just kept coming. So I eventually formed all of the typical things you'd expect in a ministry: A leadership team, a band, greeters, and so on.

In the summer of 2000, about eight months after we started, we had roughly 150 people coming every week. There was a great buzz in our ministry. I was teaching through different topics and books of the Bible; we'd started small groups; we offered a winter retreat, a summer camp-you know the drill. At this point I even hired a couple of interns to work about 15 to 20 hours a week. Our worship leader was one of them, and I also hired a female to work with the girls.

Everything continued growing numerically. People were coming to faith, and others really stepped up in various leadership roles. I started being very intentional about making connections on the community college campus, even taking a few classes to help me get more involved with the students there. And we had church members praying every Wednesday morning at 6 a.m. for the ministry, the people, and the city. There were all kinds of good things happening.

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