Just finished Benson Hines' Reaching The College Tribes - if you care about college students, the contemporary university culture, and/or mission(s) then you should check it out (for free) here.
One of the concepts that I found most helpful in the book is the idea of Aggressive Progress - 'a lifetime of strategic modifications in response to changing students, a changing campus, a growing understanding of the tribe, and God's work within the ministry and its leaders' (52). Such progress isn't measured by numeric growth per se, choosing instead to take a much broader view of the ever-expanding work of God, including:
- impacting students more deeply
- becoming a healthier ministry
- more creatively impacting the campus
- better reaching the entire mission field (including under‐reached student groups, faculty, administration members, and even the surrounding community)
- better preparing students for life after college
- better helping freshmen transition into college
- better complementing and cooperating with other campus ministries
In addition, the book furthered some thoughts/ideas/dreams I've had about missional ministry to students in and around Athens:
- Capturing and casting a regional vision that includes UGA but also includes other campuses such as Gainesville State College in Watkinsville (more than 2,300 students)
- Collaborative network among existing campus ministries and churches that serve the campus
- Focus on contextualized, incarnational mission
- Framed by helping students transition into school and out into post-grad life
- Cutting edge, creative, communal, gospel-saturated
- Emphasizing a patient yet persistent process of holistic spiritual formation
Now comes the fun part - prayer and conversations to shape and move this thing forward.
Great stuff, Matt. Thanks for the heads up.
Posted by: Derek | August 19, 2009 at 03:18 PM