This historic trend of college students changing the world is even more relevant today. Researchers Neil Howe and William Strauss believe that today’s collegians will “emerge as the next great generation” in American history. It is not hard to see their influence in our world already. Yahoo, Google and Facebook were all founded by students under the age of 22 and many demographic experts site their giving and voting in record numbers as the most important development our last election cycle. Clearly they are a powerful group.

While this generation changes our world, the church struggles to keep their attention. According to Barna a majority of twenty-somethings who grew up in church - 61% of today’s young adults- are spiritually disengaged by age 29. Research by the Southern Baptist convention, UCLA’s institute of Higher Education and others find similar results (http://www.gallup.com/poll/6124/Religiosity-Cycle.aspx, http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/college-transition/, http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/article_main_page/0,1703,A=165949&M=200906,00.html).

Why are we failing to reach these future leaders? One reason is that when they literally scatter after high school to new jobs and news schools the church is literally not going after them.

The best example of this is community colleges. The vast majority of these two year schools receive little or no specific ministry attention from either para-church organizations or denominations. California for instance, has 3.5 million college students, two-thirds of these (2.5 million) attend these highly unreached campuses and yet they are the last place you will find ministry investment.

The two years school environment is where almost all of our students are forming their world view and yet we are no where to be found. The saddest part is that most of these schools are literally just down the street from a church.

If we want to grow churches in the next decade ministries like Chi Alpha must do a better job of working with local churches to mobilize believers on every campus, especially the two years schools.

How? Six years ago I started to take a closer look at what student friendly churches and effective Chi Alpha groups were doing to plant new ministry on commuter campuses. Here are some of the ideas I’ve gathered.

1.    Pray on campus. Strong outreaches almost always start with a small group committed to prayer on campus. Each campus and each church near that campus is different. By spending time listening to God customized plans emerge. Also, busy students need a supernatural touch to become engaged and prayer is the key to making that happen. Is there anyone in your church willing to spend an hour a week on campus asking, “Lord what do you want to do here?” If so, you can start a campus ministry.

2.    Meet and Greet. To start a strong outreach to the campus a church must facilitate
relational connections. Because of their highly volatile jobs and frantic study schedule, college students are more scattered and unconnected than any other demographic. By sponsoring events that are highly relational on or near the places where students live (apartment buildings near campus for instance) churches can facilitate greater connectivity. Is there anyone in your church effective at helping college students build relationships with each other? If so you can start a campus ministry.

3.    Adopt a Leader. Chi Alpha has had great success ministering to international students by recruiting church families to host students in their homes. This approach also works for commuter students. By hosting students for a meal or free use of the washer and dryer, church members gain a greater burden for this generation. When students are well hosted they in turn become committed to the vision and values of the local church. In this way the church effectively recruits new twenty-something leaders. Do you have four or five couples willing to cook for a college student or two? If so you can start a campus ministry.

This is just a sample of the practical ideas available. Our booklet Connecting can help any church start a Chi Alpha ministry. Start here: http://www.chialpha.com/leaders/start-new-group/.

If we are serious about reaching our world we must reach these strategic souls. If we do, more leaders like Wesley and Taylor will send shock waves of revival through the church. If we do not, more leaders like Hume and Stalin will use their political and intellectual skills to convince a generation that God is dead?

Because of this favor, multiple new groups have been launched and a wave of new Campus Missionaries-in-Training from Stanford, Davis, UCLA, Stanislaus and Sacramento State are currently setting the table for the next wave of new groups. Sometimes I wonder if we prayed a bit too hard back in the day.

Jesse and his crew with Curt at is desk.

Not only is Chi Alpha growing but our off the clock informal ministry to all of Jesse’s friends continues to multiply in our living room as well. Yesterday (June 4th) we have about 10 of them over for a last day of school Risk and Spaghetti party. One of the boys told us yesterday, “I didn’t like where my life was going and who I was becoming before I started coming over here.”

God is doing some amazing things in the lives of these youth.

The truly amazing thing for us is however is that all of this growth has been literally been orchestrated from a small corner of our living room.

Due to the high cost of renting office space and the need for me to be home when I am  not on the road, keeping our offices in our home is a must.

Our problem? Our three kids, all their friends and two full-time campus missionaries - running multiple groups in CA, AZ, NV and HI – just do not fit in one small living room. Too often our files are  spread over the top of someone’s homework or one of us is conducting calls in the bathroom.

Not to worry. We have a solution.

Over the last year, several churches, many friends and multiple alumni have given to our special Operation Office campaign. By adding this to our savings, we currently have 100% of the money needed to purchase a home with enough space for both our family and the West Coast office.

This summer we are trying out hardest to find the right place for both our family and our ministry.

Please pray for us as we qualify for the loan and search for the right home. I do not have to tell you how hard it is to qualify these days.

One more thing. We have set up a special account to help with the cost of moving and setting up the new office. This account is separate from our regular missionary support and 100% will go towards the new office. All gifts are tax deductible. If you want to help just drop us a line and we’ll let you know how to contribute.

Mostly importantly PRAY. Qualifying, finding and moving all in one quick summer will be very challenging but we ABSOLUTELY need to find more space to keep up with the growth of our ministry.

Thanks!

Curt and Kelly

Check out this clip of her rocking the podium.

Santa Barbra is where the Garden of Eden must have been. If you have not been, I highly suggest you go. I spent three days in April working with our Chi Alpha leaders at UCSB and the entire time I was there I kept asking God, “Tell me again why you don’t want West Coast Chi Alpha headquartered here?”

It is not an exaggeration to say that the size, power and academic influence of the ten University of California schools represent the most powerful educational institution on the planet. We are currently on 7 of the 10 and UCSB is our oldest Chi Alpha chapter in the group. There are some amazing faithful leaders there and I believe we are about to see our best days ever on this campus. Pray for our UCSB ministry and for us to get on the last three UC campuses.

From Santa Barbara I headed into LA to spend 40 activity filled hours on site at Cal Poly Pomona. Lindsay Fudenna our amazing planter is one of my true campus ministry heros. In the last three years she has done the impossible. On a major commuter campus, in a major urban area, with little funding and lots of obstacles she has forged a healthy Chi Alpha group from scratch. Amazing. She is a Commuter Campus Whisperer.

One of her partners in the Chi Alpha-gineeering is the young adult/worship leader at Covina First, Jarrett LeMaster. Jarrett is a creative funnel cloud of music, ministry and fun. He is a part time voice over artist, song writer, producer and comedian and a full time worship pastor, young adult clairvoyant, father and husband. Oh and Jarrett does the best impression of Christopher Walkin reciting the Beatitudes of any human alive. His equally talented spouse Christina and very cute son (6 mo. old) Liam are also two of my favorite humans.

Speed Tw-editoring: The task of taking your 1247 character tweet down to 140 in less than a minute.

Tweeb-briations: Inventing new abbreviation (usually ones that no one else can understand) to shorten your tweet (often uses when speed tweditoring).

Craig-lecting: Collecting junk from Craig’s list just because it was posted in the Free Stuff area.

Faceback: Lower back pain caused by spending too much time hunched over a laptop on facebook.

Dis-rupt-dating: Awkwardly interrupting any conversation, meal, date, meeting and other live social event for the purpose of updating ones status (especially when accompanied by the phrase, “Quick everyone get together so I can take a picture with my phone”).

Inane-survey-ification: The eventual ruin of all social networking sites due to the bad game, meaningless causes (”let’s see if we can get 1 million people on facebook to start a 1 million people on facebook cause”) and stupid surveys being obsessively forwarded by the 2% of its members who have accepted the internet as their Lord and Savior.

At the risk of playing favorites, here’s the blog of one of my all time favorite leaders and campus ministry colaborers (Stanford) Glen Davis. His brain is very Jesusy.