S3:44 | Why a Fresh Look at Your Campus Matters

[Music] Hi everyone, welcome to the Reach Podcast. My name is Mani. Those of us who are in our network, we just finished our all-team retreat and shout out to Dr. Brian Laritz and Paul Worcester for imparting words of challenge and encouragement from God's Word. Many of us leave having awakened in us a renewed desire to abide in God's Word in a greater appreciation of how the harvest is plentiful, but the labors are few. And I am also thankful that we got to experience the rekindling of relational bonds again through the extended times of fellowship. It was so encouraging to see people laughing and hugging, some in deep conversation, some in light-hearted banter in different pockets throughout our training center here in Chicago. And I especially love the 3D cohort times. 3D meaning three generations of classes and for me personally, I got to facilitate the times with the classes of 1998, 2008 and 2018. So shout out to the 8 cohort. And for the bros, we will always have that baseball card momento to remember our time by each card with an AI-generated picture of ourselves in a baseball uniform, emblazing with our own skill set, some impressive, some not as you might have intended, but I heard some cards, especially the ones of the oldies, which have a special title, Legends, are circulating and are becoming a collector's item. So anyway, thankful for ATR. And so now it begins. I know that sounds ominous, but for those of us in college ministry, this just means the beginning of the fall semester. We are still in the middle of summer, and fall still seems far away, but I did want to give you some things to think about as you start planning out your approach to your campuses. Now, if you have ever been in sunny in my meetings over the years, we have often talked about the importance of taking a fresh look on your campus. Now why? It's because the reality is we get used to things, and that may mean we get used to a certain way of doing ministry or we get used to operating within the constraints of the campus environment that we are at. Also, our experience is that whenever we meet with various college ministry teams and ask them, so why are you doing it that way? Their response is typically, that's just how it's always been, or why change it? It's worked so far, or we've always done it this way. And for us, that is not an adequate enough response, because what if there are better ways, or what if times have changed, and you have been mired in past approaches that are no longer gaining traction? Now, are you guilty of this? Well, maybe now is the time to finally change things up, and it starts with going out on your campus and taking a fresh look. In the book, The Power of Habit, there is an example of why Fubri's, you know, the odor-illiminating spray with those fresh sounding scents like linen and sky or white jasmine, failed. Proctor and gamble, its producers initially thought it would be a billion-dollar product, so why did it fail? Because people who needed it weren't buying it. Now why would I need that? People would say, "My cats smell nice." In other words, they didn't think that their home smelled so bad. People who live with strong odors, whether it was pets or smoke, had gotten used to the smell, so they didn't see any reason to use Fubri's. In other words, if people don't detect a problem, they won't buy into the solution. So the way they fixed it was they changed the messaging. Proctor and gamble marketed it saying, "Use Fubri's as a reward at the end of cleaning. Are you finishing touch that made a room feel fresh?" Guess what, sales skyrocketed. So here's the thing. Could it be true that you have gotten used to your campus so much so that you don't even notice the changes happening? Starting from the campus buildings, the students, its overall culture and vibe, when was the last time you went on campus and walked on its thoroughfare and went into the classrooms and ate at their dining halls? My experience is that unless you're walking on campus regularly, you usually don't notice something new. Paul Worcester recommends that you be on campus 60% of the time in any given week, 60%. That's four days. And I can see why he says this, because once you spend that kind of time on campus, guess what? You will begin to notice things that you hadn't noticed before. Oh wow, there's a new building over there, a new cafe, a new volleyball court. You walk through the thoroughfare and you see how the demographics of the students have evolved over the years. My point is that as time passes, as weeks go into the months, go into years, you might not be privy to the changes in the students, the campus and its culture, unless you are on it. A few years ago, I went to my old house in Fountain Valley, California, 10215 Kingbird Lane. When my parents had bought the house back into 70s for something like $125,000, it was just a three bedroom, two bath, 1,200 square foot house. It was part of a new housing development. The city, at the time, had been one of the best planned communities in Orange County with its centerpiece being a state-of-the-art drive-in movie theater. I remember watching Star Wars, the OG episode four at this drive-in movie theater. Many of you out there may not know what that is, but you drove your car into an outdoor parking lot where the movie's audio track was fed into a mixer, which fed into the AM radio transmitter, and there was a buried coax cable that evenly distributed the signal across the entire drive-in theater. Now, it wasn't Dolby's surround sound, but at the time, it was a state-of-the-art experience. But I digress. So when I went back to my old neighborhood, guess what? My house was there, but it was boarded up. The 7/11 across the street, from which I stole baseball cards and candy back when I was seven years old, which is another story, was still there. That drive-in movie theater was gone and replaced by a medical center. I went to the park down the street where I used to play a little league baseball, and it was still there. I walked across to my neighbor, Robbie's house, who was my accomplice, by the way, in stealing those baseball cards. And yes, his name was Robbie, not making it up. And his house was still there, but with new sighting and fencing around the house. After I finished the tour of my old neighborhood, I noticed that some things had obviously changed. There were new malls and stores. The houses were older, the large avocado tree in our backyard, along with the raspberry and blackberry bushes with its intricate canes were gone. But some things were strikingly the same. Now I want to ask you as a college minister, when was the last time you stepped foot on the campus and walked onto your campus in the way that I took a tour of my old neighborhood? And I'm not talking about going down the familiar routes, necessarily the same places where you go to meet students and have your weekly gatherings. I'm talking about walking those places that are familiar, but you haven't traversed in a long time, or maybe the parts of campuses that you rarely visit. It is so important that you do so. You know how it is that we get into our set patterns and it's hard to change the way you are doing things. You may be feeling stagnant. Your ministry may be plateauing. It's especially during those times you need to break the script. Go to campus, take as many pictures as you can so you can reimagine. Enter the campus from a different entrance. Take a fresh look. When I was at UT Austin doing campus ministry there, I would have the staff do the following. Go onto campus and take as many pictures as you can that seem fresh to you. Or new. Even though you might have passed that place hundreds of times and then come back and present those pictures to the rest of the group and explain why you took that picture of that location. What you envisioned for that space and we even gamified it, the group that did that the fastest would win. Wherever we have gone, actually at UCLA, UC Riverside, Boston, New York, we have had our staff try this. It is surprising how many staff for a ministering on that very campus would return saying things like, "I didn't know that there was that courtyard for outdoor gatherings there." Or, "I noticed a new room with high tech equipment that we can do a Bible study at and it's in a better location too." Or, "I can imagine having a life group or one-on-one meetups there at this outdoor courtyard that I've never noticed before." Well, the point is, until they went on campus with those fresh eyes, they would not have considered those options. And to that extent, they would have lost out on those opportunities for ministry. When I was helping out our team at UC Riverside, Sonny and I took a fresh look on campus and walked and found the Freshman dorms, a place called Pettlin Hills. There was a nice grass area in the middle and several multipurpose rooms right within several of the Freshman residential hall buildings. Now, we asked the staff, "Have you noticed this?" Some had known about it. Some said they had tried to reserve rooms here in the past, but you couldn't bring in food. We thought this is a perfect place for their weekly Bible study in it. And as for the food, we could eat outside on the tables that faced the field. So we had them look into it and they reserved it. And you know what? Students came. Not all that surprising given that the room was within the Freshman dorms. So for the next welcome week, we set up shop there, had spikeball and lawn games and offered free food and created a warm atmosphere around the outdoor tables. And all of this, because we decided to walk onto campus and take a look at it with fresh eyes. And sometimes you need that outsider's perspective to point out what you have just grown accustomed to. And it's not just looking at the physical layout of the campus, of course. You walk onto campus and you end up getting a sense of the traffic flow, the change in student demographics and even the changes in culture. When I went to the University of Florida Gainesville, the Baptist Student Ministry Director there gave me a tour of the campus. He told me that the campus is now a top 10 public University. and has now become a top-notch STEM school. So he pointed out the big grassy areas that normally would have been dotted with students playing spikeball, people throwing a frisbee or catching some rays under the bright Florida sun. But now we're largely empty. He said the students aren't the labs now or studying in the library. So the University of Florida Gators, previously known for Tim Tibo and their football team and the originators of Gatorade, has now become a destination school for academically inclined students, particularly those living in the South, all within the last several years. This would definitely change a college minister's approach to that campus. Now I also pay a visit to the bulletin boards at the student unions and you end up getting a good sense of the changing student interest. For example, like a growing interest in Asian food, I recently saw a poster on a campus that said, "Japanese festival, Matsuri, enjoy Japanese food and activities sponsored by Magumi Club." Or you get a sense for the Christian scene. Especially at this one campus where I saw, quote, "Evangelism workshop, "learn a simple tool for evangelism, "practice sharing the gospel, eat pizza." Now you learn also about what the school administration promotes. Semester in Prague, info session. Point is there are these posters and these posters often represent the changing times. So all this to say, take a fresh look on your campus. It will open up your eyes to new opportunities that you hadn't noticed before. And with the little research, you will find that previous policies with food and room reservations or gym reservations or student traffic flow might have changed. Now some of you out there might be thinking, "Yes, Pastor Mani, I understand what you're saying, "but you know what, if I go out there, "sure they may be things that might have changed "and they may even represent opportunities, "but why bother?" Our ministry's not going that great. We don't have the bandwidth to try new things. We are barely hanging on and besides. What we have in terms of students and student involvement is good enough. Well to those of you who may have such a bleak outlook on the future of your ministry on your campus, I quote J. R. R. Tolkien in his book Two Towers through one of the characters, Erogorn, quote, "There are some things that it is better "to begin than to refuse even though the end may be dark." Now that's profound. It's better to begin even though the end may be dark. That's been my experience. Don't give into your cynicism. When you go out, when you try, it's better that you began, even knowing that this new venture may fail because at least you will have learned some things. What works, what doesn't work, but more importantly, you will get a greater sense of the present reality. You will add to your fund of knowledge regarding your campus, which is what every college minister should be doing because God placed you there so be a student of your campus. And then over time, you will end up adjusting and meeting the reality on the ground, which will eventually translate to greater student impact, God willing. So to help out with those of you listening and you say amen to this or even some of you on the fence, I am providing the following acronym. First, F-I-R-S-T because I want you to look at your campus as if you were looking at it for the very first time. F, fan out across campus. I inspect new spaces. R, reimagine familiar spots. S, snap shots. T, talk to people. F, fan out across the campus. That is walk to the unfamiliar spots. Places you normally would not go to. Go to the edges and make sure you have covered most of the campus. When I was in Austin at UT, I found that it's alumni house building was located next to the football stadium. I didn't notice it before because the stadium cast a foreboding shadow across it because you know in Texas football cast a shadow over everything. Yes, hook 'em horns. But as I walked into the alumni building, I found out some beautiful places for worship and Bible study. And it wasn't a part of the normal reservation system. So go out and you just may discover something new. As I have said, when you notice a new building, a new cafe, places to eat or places for parking, go inside, walk it, take in the vibe, ask questions. When did you get this building? Did the students left a study here, et cetera? You will learn not just about the new spaces, but about the new rules with regards to those spaces, the cost to eating dining, hall food, the price for day passes for the gym, the cost of parking, et cetera. Or re-imagined familiar spots. You know how we often unload our equipment and set up in the same place, the same room? Well, maybe that same place can be re-imagined. Use for, let's say athletic competitions. You say athletic competitions. At Stony Brook, we changed their Bible study space into a hangout space. We made a ping pong net with water bottles placed it in one long line across our folding, lifetime tables to play ping pong. The ping pong paddles are phones, and we had a great time. So re-imagined your space to be used for a game night or a commuter lounge for a place to chill or a study lounge. It can offer new opportunities for ministry. At Northeastern in Boston, our college ministers re-imagined a basketball gym and brought in globe lights and other types of mood lighting and transformed that place into a hipster cafe. S, snap shots. That is, take a video or photos of places on campus, even if it doesn't occur to you on the spot what this might be used for. Take it anyway with the hope that someone can look at that space and say, that would be a great place for blank. For a one-on-one meetup, or if you're telecommuting a great place to work on campus, or to invite students to hang out and eat. We would find such places when I was at UT and we called it hotspot, where we would use those outdoor spaces with large patio umbrellas and stone tables. And we would bring pizza or homemade pasta and invite students to join us for lunch. And gamify it, as I mentioned earlier, and make it a fun activity for your staff. Scavenger Hunt style. In New York City, Sunny and I had made on Google Map, Haler made walking maps for each team where they would go to the five different locations and take a picture and in the process, walk the city and learn about it. It was our way of getting them to walk the neighborhoods, so you can even pre-assign locations, five new and five old as in places they have visited before and see how fast they can do it. We would give one hour and then have all the teams come back to a central location and present their pictures on a PowerPoint and needless to say, Sunny and I would often be the first to return. Finally, T talked to people. Going on campus, it's so important to converse with people. When I was at Kais University recently in Korea on an ERT with our FM team, I talked to students and found out, "Wow, you speak English really well." And they looked at me with that side eye glance and I was confused and then later a student told me, "We all speak English here. Most of our lectures are in English." Oh, okay, got it. No wonder, thank you for letting me know. And in talking to these students, I found out many of them want to go study in America and even settle down there. Who knew? And as you talk to them, you get a sense for the culture, how much they party or study. And at Kais, the students told me that many go to the fun activities offered on campus such as the K-Pop contest that they were having that afternoon followed by a live performance, by a popular K-Pop band. But actually, the students said it was a cover because they don't want to come across as having no life. And so they go, but in actuality, they thought it was dumb and would have preferred to study. So talk to people. You will learn about them and get a sense of the demographic. Even at a campus you have been at for many years. So to recap, F, fan out across campus. I inspect new spaces are re-imagine familiar spots. S, snap scenes, T, pocket people. First, get onto your campus as if you were looking at it for the first time. I want to end with an experience I headed Harvard. One afternoon, I walked onto campus and went looking for its original charter and mission statement to train pastors. I first went to the registrar's office and asked, would you know where the original charter was? The one established in 1650? No one knew. It turns out it was in the Housie Library in Harvard Yard. Buried in the archives somewhere, a document long forgotten. I didn't end up finding it, but if I were to have found it, an excerpt of it would have read to educate youth in knowledge and godliness. In fact, in Harvard, colleges, rules, and precepts a separate document from that era, it says, "Let every student be cleanly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider, well, the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning." As I think about the 250 year anniversary of this country, I can't help but think of how the first English settlers were in fact Puritans, which is another word for Protestant Christians. When they landed at Plymouth and in Massachusetts Bay, Colony, which is present day Boston, they came with the goal of establishing a way of life, if you will, a culture in which they emphasized personal Bible reading, prayer, and valued hard work and self-discipline. They wanted to be a city on a hill where their colony would serve as a model of a Christian community. So as they established churches, they found the need for Bible literacy and education in the scriptures. So they set up schools, including Harvard, especially to train ministers and educate future leaders. I knew this, but it wasn't until I walked onto campus after having done some research in an effort to find the original charter that had began to see the campus differently. Though I didn't end up finding the charter, I was dismayed that there was no prominent display of the college's original intent. And I made note of the change in its motto. The official motto of Harvard is now veritas, Latin for truth, with three books face up, emphasizing man's ability to get at the truth. But originally, two of the books were facedown. symbolizing the limits of human knowledge and elevating truth source in God's revelation. And the OG motto was once "Truth for Christ and the Church." I walked away that day having my heart fired up to reclaim this college for the gospel, and then I shared this with the team. We need to be reclaimers. Hence our church in Boston is called "Reclaimer" College Church. But if I hadn't taken a fresh look at that area, walked onto campus that day, maybe that knowledge would have sat dormant as head knowledge, and it would not have had that galvanizing effect it did on me. All this to say, we must go on campus and take a fresh look. Do it as if you were looking at it for the first time. And out of it, may that visit and subsequent visits have the effect of not only increasing your awareness of the present reality, but may that lead to increasing your evangelistic zeal for that campus and have a galvanizing effect on your team. Excited for all that God will do this fall on your college campus, that's it for this edition of the Reach Podcast, until next time, bye bye.