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Bedtime @ Connect

Finally settling down for the night at Connect, our state-wide retreat for college students that's being hosted at Schweitzer. So far it's been a lot of fun getting to meet new students from all over Missouri, talking with college ministry leaders, and hanging out. This is the first time we've done this type of event with college students and so far it's going great. We had some last minute scramble when we decided it would be better to get a console from the production company rather than feed things from the auxes on our board and I gashed my hand pretty good while raising a lighting tree. Overall I'm happy with day one.

The Wayne Kerr band has been providing some outstanding, rocking worship music and Margaret Feinberg's first session was exactly what I'd hoped it would be. Tomorrow Margaret's speaking twice, there are some breakout sessions, and a concert featuring Todd Agnew. Most everybody is sleeping now, a small group is playing games and watching a movie in the youth room. Time for a few hours of sleep.

Pop Goes The Church

I had the opportunity to read an advance copy of Pop Goes The Church, a new book by Tim Stevens, and make some review comments. I thought I'd share with you what I've gotten out of this book. It's seriously going to challenge church leaders in the way we relate to the culture aroud us. I've been quietly (or not so quietly) beating this drum around Schweitzer since I came on staff. My initial thought about the book is that I'm buying a copy for everybody on the staff. It's that good. I figure if our senior pastor can pass books out to everybody why shouldn't other people?

The book includes an outstanding collection of examples from churches of various size, age, and location. It includes practical steps for any church evaluating how it relates to pop culture. Tim tells his own compelling story including his very first movie experience. Pop Goes The Church is incredibly well researched and it presents a balanced view about the church's relationship to the culture around us and the dangers of connecting inappropriately with the culture. Ultimately Stevens wants the church to engage pop culture, but the approach is Biblically sound and cautions about embracing culture for the wrong reasons. I'm incredibly excited to see what happens as this book gets released and church leaders read it.

Knitting Hobo

Knitting Hobo
Originally uploaded by kerner.

Apparently I'm a knitting hobo. Sarah made me a new scarf (in about two days) and wanted to take a picture this morning. I'm sure this is going to show up on her blog soon too. I just thought it was funny because I'm wearing a sweater she made, a hat because it was only 4° outside (and you have to take knitting pictures in natural light for some crazy reason - even in the freezing cold), and the new scarf. None of it really matches, but it's warm. I really didn't mind not having a coat.

 

 

 

Connect 2008 This Weekend

I'm super excited about Connect this weekend. It's our first state-wide college ministry gathering. We're hosting this year at Schweitzer and it should be a great event. I'm really looking forward to hanging out with Margaret Feinberg and Wayne Kerr. The event starts on Friday night and runs until 4:30 on Saturday. The first session is at 10pm (it is for college students). There's also a concert with Todd Agnew, Manafest, and One Star Story on Saturday. My favorite part of the event is that it's mostly planned by college students. We've got a great student leadership team from all over Missouri that has been working to make this event possible.

This is the first large scale event we've done for college students. I'm really hoping it will be a success. The cost is only $20 so it's a great deal. I know a lot of churches are subsidizing some or all of the registration for their students. Schweitzer is paying half for the students in our ministry. Even at full price it would be hard to pass up.

Not sure how many college students read my blog that wouldn't know about the event already, but registration is open until Thursday at noon if you want to spend a weekend in Springfield, MO.

College Focus Group: What would a new church for college students look like?

This fall as we were exploring what a new college ministry from Schweitzer would look like we thought it would be a good idea to talk with students about the idea. We gathered groups of students together and asked them four questions. This is a summary of their answers to one of those questions. 

What would a new church for college students look like?
Students were very clear that having a regular, church worship service was important to them. They also wanted to have that worship in very close proximity to the college campus. Several said that even the edge of campus may not be close enough to attract some students. Numerous students stated that there were no modern worship offerings within walking distance of Missouri State [to our knowledge there is one modern worship gathering in downtown Springfield]. Most of the students expressed a preference for modern worship; only those growing up in church said they would attend a traditional worship. The time of the worship gathering was of importance to students - evenings primarily, or in the afternoon on Sundays. Students said they want to have a pastor rather than a campus ministry leader [sacraments are important to students who grew up in a church]. Students want a variety of opportunities to be in fellowship, worship, and service primarily with other students but also have opportunities to connect with older and younger generations.

College Focus Group: How can you bridge the two together, a church and a campus ministry?

This fall as we were exploring what a new college ministry from Schweitzer would look like we thought it would be a good idea to talk with students about the idea. We gathered groups of students together and asked them four questions. This is a summary of their answers to one of those questions. 

How can you bridge the two together, a church and a campus ministry?
The best way students claim to bridge the gap between a church and a campus ministry is make sure that what the church does suits college students. It needs to be on their level, in their environment, challenging, and relevant. A common suggestion was that a church should be built on campus. Proximity was the second concern. Students say that having to drive is oftentimes not an option, especially to visit a new church. Students said that they felt the church connection for a ministry on campus was very important - churches are stable, campus ministries sometimes are not. It was also important for students to have opportunities to interact with people of other generations, but that a student worship setting should be primarily ages 18-25. Students said having opportunities to connect with the larger church body from a campus ministry would help to bridge the gap from college to the church.
 

College Focus Group: What are you looking for in a campus ministry?

This fall as we were exploring what a new college ministry from Schweitzer would look like we thought it would be a good idea to talk with students about the idea. We gathered groups of students together and asked them four questions. This is a summary of their answers to one of those questions. 

What are you looking for in a campus ministry?
The primary item discussed in looking at a campus ministry was that it had welcoming people, and provided a comfortable environment. They want the atmosphere to facilitate hanging out and the programming to minimize the possibility of cliques. The biggest shortcoming they say of current campus ministries is that they don’t have significant outreach and follow up with visitors. The relational connection is incredibly important. Students also say they’re looking for a ministry that understands the “flakiness” of students and doesn’t guilt them into participating. As part of the student situation they’re looking for events that are under an hour in duration so there is time for fellowship. Numerous students also said it was important that there was clarity about how to get more involved in the ministry: they want easy steps that don’t involve a huge commitment to test being in leadership. Ultimately the students say the success of a ministry hangs on it’s ability to be a both/and environment where visitors feel welcomed and can build relationships but aren’t harassed into participation.

College Focus Group: How can a church help you develop your faith as a college student?

This fall as we were exploring what a new college ministry from Schweitzer would look like we thought it would be a good idea to talk with students about the idea. We gathered groups of students together and asked them four questions. This is a summary of their answers to one of those questions.  

How can a church help you develop your faith as a college student?
We think the most significant discovery from this question is the distinction students see between a campus ministry and a church. They recognize the importance of being involved in a church. They talked about how campus ministries are most often about activity: fun, fellowship, service. They’re looking for something more in a spiritual venue and want to have more than fun. Students desire an environment of Christian fellowship that incorporates age diversity, but recognizes that college students are at a unique stage in life. They want to be treated with more respect and have more responsibility than youth, but the church needs to realize they are still young. They are looking for a setting where they can be young but still build relationships with those of other generations, particularly mentoring relationships. Students feel like having older people teaching is good and provides a different perspective. That said, students are concerned about their need to feel comfortable, especially as a visitor to a new ministry. They say that many churches are not welcoming to college students, or don’t accept their unique life situation. A church setting helps students to build deep, significant relationships better than a campus ministry. It also provides broader opportunities to be involved. The number one reason stated for not being involved in a church was convenience and availability of a desirable church.

Hacked Web Server Back Online

If you've been following my Twitter you know that the web server at Schweitzer got hacked. Whoever broke in didn't do a very solid job, and managed to kill the network before doing anything terribly malicious. The site was only down about 12 hours. After looking through the system it looks like the vulnerability was caused by my not patching ssh reliably (it was several versions out of date). The server rebuild was time consuming, but easy. The biggest hurdle was slow mirrors for downloading the most recent linux ISOs. This sort of thing is a known risk of running our servers in house. The good news is that our backup strategy was rock solid and there wasn't any data loss (maybe a couple of hours). As an expansion of our current approach to backups I'm going to set up a duplicate server that mirrors the home tree of the main server hourly. In the event of the main system going offline for whatever reason we'll be able to bring up the mirror just by adjusting the firewall. Hopefully we'll never have to use it, but having a hot spare web system seems like a good idea.

College Ministry Grant & Focus Groups

I've spent a good part of my work life the past couple of weeks working on a grant application to fund part of our college ministry on the Missouri State campus. Currently our college ministry consists of small groups (right now there's only one running), mission projects (which will be increasing in the spring), a weekly coffee gathering, special events, and a monthly worship service. We were awarded a grant this fall to help us purchase portable a/v gear to be able to do the worship on campus. We'll start our monthly worship on campus in February. We're planning to go every week in the fall. We still haven't picked out the gear yet, but that's another post.

As we were determining what we wanted our college ministry to look like we did some focus groups. The research methodology isn't very sound, and I'm pretty sure that we couldn't get any statistical significance out of the data (although I'm pretty sure you can't get quantitative data from a focus group without some intense coding). For the focus groups we gathered together groups of students (usually 12-15) and just let them chat about a series of questions. The first group was students currently involved in some way with our ministry, the others have been random assortments of students recruited mainly with free pizza. We didn't do much other than clarify the questions, and ask "is there anything else to add to this question?" until they said they were finished. We then moved on to the next question.

We asked four questions:

1. How can a church help you develop your faith as a college student?
2. What are you looking for in a campus ministry?
3. How can you bridge the two together, a church and a campus ministry?
4. What would a new church for college students look like?

I'll share what we learned from each of the four questions next week.