Public Campus Ministry Caught Attention of Adventist Leaders
November 6, 2015: Ministries on the campuses of state universities and similar secular institutions kicked up significant discussion during the annual meeting of the denomination’s North American Division earlier this week. Pastor Ricky Melendez from the Dakota Conference and Nina Lim, a graduate student from British Columbia, shared stories from their experience that were so well received by the assembled church administrators that someone made a motion on the spot to add a position to the NAD staff and hire a full-time coordinator.
This is a new area of outreach in the minds of many Adventists who somehow have a hard time seeing sophisticated university communities as mission fields. His first year in the ministry, right out of Union College, Melendez started groups at North Dakota State University in Fargo and the University of Jamestown, a private institution about one hundred miles away. He baptized some young adults and his conference decided to shift him to full time campus ministry.
This year, Melendez and Pastor Brooke Leitzke are working with groups on six campuses across two states. There are literally millions of young adults on these campuses across the United States and Canada, but until recently Adventists avoided these as contexts for outreach.
Lim is a graduate student in psychology and counseling in British Columbia and has campaigned to get campus ministry started in western Canada after helping organize the first Campus Catalyst event for Ontario, Canada, in 2014. “It is time to invest in the thousands of Adventist students attending public universities,” she told the NAD governing committee. Research has shown that about half of young people growing up in Adventist families drop out of the church when they leave home and stop attending Adventist schools. Often there is nothing there for them and the local church is uninviting, dominated by older people.
“I could not have been more proud or thankful for the stories they shared,” Pastor Ron Pickell told Adventist Today. He is pastor of the Adventist congregation in Berkeley, California, near the main campus of the University of California, and coordinates secular campus ministries for the NAD on a part-time basis.
This bit of news is a big deal, or so it seems to me. Why? This ministry breaks the dam of resistance to doing anything as a church that could be viewed as supporting competition to our own schools. In the article, Nina Lim is quoted as saying, “It is time to invest in the thousands of Adventist students in public universities.” Heretofore, we have only invested in students attending our schools. Ms. Lim is so right. It is high time we began investing in Adventists not attending our schools, including K-12. It is spiritually irresponsible not to do so.
The reason I think that adventist kids drop out of the church is they never really get born again. They are raised thinking that if they just keep the ten commandments they are part of the club. They need the ten commandments to do its job and show them they cant be good on there own and that they are sinful and need a heart change and be born again by the Spirit. Then they will have the desire and the power to live a new life in Christ.
With my seventeen year old grandson being college bound next year, I have been doing much college research to assist him in his choices.
The appallingly astronomical rates of tuition increase every passing year. Ivy League and elite universities like Stanford and Duke have annual tuitions of $50-60 thousand dollars. Even the “public Ivys” such as UCLA, UC Berkley have out of state tuitions over $40,000.
With many young people changing their majors, most do not graduate in four years, many requiring six. So we are talking $250,000-$300,000 for a bachelors degree.
In reviewing the college rankings, our Adventist schools do not rate high on the academic ratings list. Where they do rate higher than most was DISTURBING: US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT (the most prestigious of the ranking bodies) rated the graduates of our SDA colleges as being among the ones with the highest student loan debt! This despite the fact that our colleges are reasonably priced compared to most others!
So Adventist parents not surprisingly, are availing themselves of the local public universities, where in state tuition is a fraction of
that of private schools including our SDA colleges.
Although my wife and I were both affiliated with Harvard and PENN, and my daughters have degrees from Yale and Columbia, my grandson will forgo an Ivy League degree on the basis of COST, and avail himself of a degree from an affordable public
university.
As mother of three who graduated from SdA colleges, two received graduate degrees from California State University; and a granddaughter also graduated from UC Santa Cruz. One granddaughter, a senior next year in an excellent charter public school is visiting many colleges and her parents are also trying to determine the best school for her to attend.
My son teaches at a local community college and if one is convenient, I would recommend taking at least a year or two in one before transferring to a four-year degree. Saves lots of money from housing fees if close, and the student will be better prepared to choose a major (changes are costly).
Many studies have shown that a bachelor’s degree from a fine state university is just as widely accepted, based on students GPA and extra-curricular and community activities. For serious students, the studies should take preeminence, and prepare one for employment.
As a senior student was able to take courses from a fine Jesuit University that was offering B.S and M.A. degrees with an extension program. Finding a fully accredited college for an M.A. in liberal studies, I was able to complete the program all online.
Keep investigating: there are many schools and programs that help students achieve their goals.
In addition to implications for Seventh-day Adventist colleges, this response seems to be a tradition of long standing in the church organization. Someone establishes a ministry beachhead, and the church organization swoops in and attempts to claim it as its own and reinstitute it as part of its organizational structure and the process always ultimately suffocates the ministry.
Perhaps it is time for the church nucleus to consider the possibility that holy-spirit enabled ministry is the antithesis of Frederick Taylor’s “Principles of Scientific Management” published in 1911, and for that matter the whole evolutionary follow on chain of management theories.
Let’s explore the possibility that the Holy Spirit uniquely works through the membrane of the religious organism, not at the nucleus.
Let’s consider the priesthood of all believers as the true and practical path forward organizationally.
This is long overdue. They should have done this back in the 60’s. I have degrees from both adventist and non adventist schools. The adventist world has never wanted to engage those not in its school system. I did not attend adventist schools before college and it was clear that parents would not let their children associate with me or others that did not attend sda schools. I cant imagine how many youths were lost this way.
I found this online: The church started in Jerusalem as a fellowship. It moved to Greece and became a philosophy. It moved to Rome and became an institution. Later it moved to the United States and became a business.” True but so sad!
Before I read comments on this article, there were two words I noticed in particular. (Did I attach too much significance to them?) …someone made a motion….to hire a full-time COORDINATOR. …the local church is uninviting, DOMINATED by older people.
I’ve never been a member of a “personal ministries team” but I was once invited to sit in on a meeting of one. I listened for more than an hour and din’t hear one thing about personal ministries. It was all about conference programs.
Not that there is anything intrinsically “wrong” with conference programs–especially for members who haven’t recognized a personal calling direct from the Lord–but the message about the nature of the kingdom and the nature and purpose of the second advent would be more efficiently disseminated if there were a different balance than there currently is between personal and institutional investments of time and other resources.
Where are the pastors who, upon receiving a new assignment, first ask the members individually about their personal contacts with 1. non-Christians 2. non-protestant Christians and 3. non-adventist protestants?
Roger,
Scripture doesn’t ask where we will find the pastors or church institutions who will spread the Gospel, but for individuals who are willing to be used by the Holy Spirit. So, why do you look to the church for leadership when it is waiting for you to discover in God?
William,
The people are right who say I don’t communicate very well. My intended point was the exact opposite of the way you took it.
When I asked one pastor to let me show him some of the ways Sally and I do evangelistic work he listened politely to my 10-minute presentation then said, “That’s all well and good but we still have to get people to understand the Bible the way we do.”
The intent of my previous post was to say that pastors should be encouraging personal ministries–the ways that individuals are inspired to share the gospel–instead of thinking of themselves as managers or foremen and thinking of the laity as unpaid employees of the conference.
Roger,
I like your description of church members as “unpaid employees of the conference.” Still, I think we need to take that concept a significant degree further because what you’re really talking about is volunteers and a good manager treats a volunteer differently than they do an employee. Volunteers serve because they are motivated and they can leave as freely as they come, so that manager must understand what truly motivates them and then let them do what they do well. In the case of church leaders, that requires that pastors give-up on trying to control people and instead turn into coaches who motivate and train people, then stand back and watch how the Holy Spirit uses them.
Some who pastor in university towns seize the opportunity…to further their own education. Must be nice to do as little as possible while furthering your own education and getting a paycheck for work you are really not doing. So called higher education has been a curse to the Adventist church.