Youth ministries are very common among Churches of Christ, but very few campus ministries exist … in all, less than 150. There are over 2,600 accredited, four-year institutions in the United States alone, and if you factor in community colleges that number soars to thousands more.
Why am I telling you this? Because 77% of those who make a decision for Christ in the United States do so by the age of 21. Over 97% of the colleges and universities in the United States lack a Church of Christ campus ministry … this matters because as a fellowship we’re barely even trying to reach millions of students (much less actually doing it) when studies show the college years are among some of the best to do so.
Campus Ministry United (CMU) exists to remedy that.
Cryptic messages abounded on Twitter and Facebook last week prophesying “big news” to be announced in one week from CMU. One week is up, and the announcement is here: CMU is hiring two full-time staffers to promote church-run evangelistic campus ministry plants all over the country!
Lynn & Carol Stringfellow wearing traditional South-Floridian garb.
Lynn & Carol Stringfellow – long time campus ministers for the Bay Area Church of Christ in Tampa, FL – will be assuming their new role about a year from now.
Their job will be to work full-time in advancing CMU’s mission in four primary ways:
DIRECTORS OF MINISTRY ADVANCEMENT – PRIMARY INITIATIVES
1)Fundraising
•Provide support for ministry/university church planters trained through CMU.
2) Networking & Recruiting
•Bring new students into CMU’s training program.
•Make connections with churches interested in sponsoring campus ministry/university church plants through CMU.
3) Research & Development
•Organize bi-annual study of Church of Christ campus ministry.
•Provide enrichment materials to address needs through provided outlets (CMU’s web presence, annual CMU workshops).
4) Public Relations
•Serve as an ambassador between planters, churches, Christian colleges and secular universities.
The Park Plaza Church of Christ in Tulsa, OK, has committed to being the sponsoring congregation behind this work, and Tulsa will serve as central headquarters for the Stringfellows and their ministry.
This work is a missionary effort, and like all missionaries the Stringfellows will live on support kindly donated from churches and individuals. We have about $100,000 we need to raise immediately to cover the operational budget (mostly the working fund) for this ministry for the first year.
If you have a heart for reaching college students and would like to find out more about financially supporting this ministry, please email CMU at campusministryunited@gmail.com expressing your interest and someone will get back with you quickly.
I am very excited about this news! People all over the world will now be blessed by Lynn & Carol’s work. Their ministry in Tampa has consistently made an impact on the lives of students, most of whom were not Christians before encountering the Stringfellows. The church as a whole will be blessed as their evangelistic zeal, focus on the unchurched, and influence spreads.
Folks, we’re working toward making CoC campus ministry plants a regular occurrence in a healthy way that’s never been done before. More news will follow – please post any questions you may have in the form of a comment.
Congrats Lynn & Carol – may your work be blessed! I’ll be keeping this work in my prayers, and I hope you will too.
The Overflow 
I am SO excited for Lynn and Carol; as a student in their ministry at Bay Area – I can only imagine the things that are possible for them in this new position. It is great news for CMU and for campus ministries. God is working!
I am ridiculously excited to see some plants start popping up. This field has been way too neglected for way too long. Praise God for new opportunities and we will be praying for some big time Kingdom success.
P.S. My life was changed by Lynn and Carol’s ministry and I’m now a campus minister, so they do tend to have that effect.
Same here – there are a lot of people working full-time in the field of ministry today because of the influence of the Stringfellows.
That will now be multiplied many times over.
CMU and the Stringfellow’s deserve the support of individuals, College’s, and Churches. I look forward to hearing the success stories that will soon be told because of this expansion of CMU. Blessings on this Ministry!
Dude! This news just hit us like a brick. We missed all the cryptic-ness because we were on our honeymoon. This sounds like a great thing!
My question is about the research. I’m a psych major trained in stats. This kind of research is my major. Do you already have a solid team together, or could I maybe be even a long-distance help? Are you doing it through Harding? Could you email me with these
details? I’m graduating next year and would love to offer my skills wherever they’re needed.
Absolutely you can help. Basically the work consists of making lots and lots of phone calls and asking lots and lots of questions. We crunch the numbers when we get all the data together.
We are not doing it through Harding. Flavil Yeakley (a social scientist on staff at Harding) gave me a bit of direction, but the studies we’ve done so far have mainly been me. Dr. Yeakley, did, however, verify some of our data and matched our numbers with his own. Both are accurate.
You can listen to the presentation I made based on the data here (here’s my powerpoint and handouts) and you can listen to Dr. Yeakley’s presentation here (here’s Dr. Yeakley’s powerpoint).
I could not possibly conceive of better news for campus ministry than this. I love Lynn and Carol with all my heart, and CIA Tampa is going to enjoy their presence for as long as they’re here, and not bother slowing down when they head back to the center of the universe.
There can be no mistake that this is a great move for God’s kingdom.
COOL!
Carol and I are Excited and sad at the same time. We love our group here at Bay Area. They are in our heart. We are sad that we will have to move away from them at some point. But we are also excited about the Kingdom growth that will come as a result. We believe that God is making this happen and are excited and humbled to be working for Him!
We are slowly working towards a new campus ministry outreach in San Diego! Ronnie Rutledge is our new interim minister and has great ideas and plans. We are excited and even have a new evening worship called “Live Praise” that meets almost every Sunday evening 7:30p!
Great news – glad to hear it! 🙂
[…] If you haven’t already heard, Lynn and Carol are in the process of raising money to cover expenses for their new ministry of nurturing nationwide campus ministry plants (learn more here). […]