Campus Ministry | The Overflow

Apr 20 2009

Books, Campus Ministry, Evangelism, Outreach, Resources

Reaching the Campus Tribes – Free Campus Ministry eBook

I just got a Facebook message from Benson Hines.

Those of you interested in campus ministry, give this a look: Reaching the Campus Tribes by Benson Hines.

I met Benson at the 2008 CMU Workshop at Harding – he’s a young campus ministry advocate with Southern Baptist roots, and he wrote this book after spending an entire year (and a lot of student loan money) traveling the United States visiting campus ministries at different universities as a researcher/observer.

Here’s the description from the Reaching the Campus Tribes website:

“I recently returned from a yearlong road trip researching Christian college ministry around the U.S. After 181 campuses, 44 states, and hundreds of interviews, Reaching the Campus Tribes (An Opening Inquiry) reveals the surprising things I found. With lots of great pictures. And it’s free.”

I haven’t read this book all the way through yet (I started the download just now and am writing this blog post while it finishes), but was honored to serve as one of the many editors for the project.

I just heard the ‘ding’ telling me my download is complete – I’m going to check this book out now. I suggest you do too.

Oh, and here’s Benson’s blog and his post on the new book .

Campus Ministry is the hottest mission field in existence today – whether you agree with all of Benson’s conclusions or not, we need more people as excited about campus ministry as he is doing the kinds of things he’s doing (i.e. going out of his way to put campus ministry on the map).

Keep up the good work, bro! Thanks for providing this resource!

Tagged benson hines, exploring college ministry, exploringcollegeministry.com, reaching the campus tribes, reachingthecampustribes.com

Nov 14 2008

Pride – We Are Always the Last to Know!

Here’s an excerpt from The Fuel and the Flame – a gift from my friends Jim & Anne Bevis (whom I previously told you about here).

I’m in the midst of reading through this and other works as part of ongoing research for a guidebook on church-based campus ministry I’m helping to write.

Check it out:

——

Pride – We Are Always the Last to Know

p. 42 of The Fuel and the Flame: 10 Keys to Ignite Your College Campus for Jesus Christ, by Steve Shadrach.

“The marks of pride are usually evident to everyone – except ourselves! It raises its ugly head in the forms of defensiveness, prayerlessness, comparison, and unteachability. We need to ask ourselves this question: Can I follow well? Most Christians are part of the “Loners for Christ” club and are against leadership unless, of course, they can be the leader! You might say, “Oh, I really don’t need any spiritual leadership over me. I’m being discipled by God.” Really? The reason Jesus was the greatest leader of all time was because He was the greatest follower of all time and “only did the things He saw and heard from the Father.” If the Son of God felt the need to humble Himself to spiritual authority, how much more should we?

“You’ll never become a great leader until you learn to be a great follower. If you don’t have someone discipling you, it’s probably because you don’t want anyone discipling you! If that’s true of you, why don’t you stop right now, turn to the Lord, and let Him search your heart for any pride or independence. Pray about which individual you could ask to encourage, to disciple, and, yes, even rebuke you when neccessary. Become a humble, teachable disciple and someday God will honor you with young disciples who will seek you out in the same way. Rarely have I met anyone who was discipling others who hadn’t themselves first been discipled.”

Tagged Anne Bevis, Jim Bevis, Pride, The Fuel and the Flame

Nov 03 2008

1 Comment

Campus Ministry, Outreach

CIA Corpus Christi gives away 130 Bibles signed by King James

Last Friday I spent the day with Clint Hill. Clint is the campus minister for the Arlington Heights Church of Christ in Corpus Christi, TX, and the director of the Corpus Christi chapter of Christians In Action (CIA) – the campus ministry serving Texas A & M Corpus Christi.

CIA Corpus is the latest CMU ministry plant. They’ve barely gotten started (Clint was hired two months ago), and have already seen six students give their lives to Christ.

Clint had organized a promotional event on campus that coincided with my visit there on Halloween day. The event included one of the CIA members – Darryl – dressing up as that creepy king character (from the Burger King commercials) and offering to have his picture taken with people. Prints were made on sight taking about five minutes to be processed. While students waited on their pictures to print, other CIA members handed them a free Bible and info on upcoming ministry events, and also took time to talk to them and get to know them a bit.

This was a great event! I’m very optimistic about what the future holds for CIA Corpus and the Arlington Heights Church.

Here’s a short YouTube vid:

And here are some pics:

Arlington Heights Church of Christ building

The Arlington Heights Church of Christ is the sponsoring congregation of CIA Corpus.

Clint Hill - CIA Corpus Director

"The King"

Tawni & Brian getting ready to "head" to campus

Darryl - king for a day

We went from Arlington Heights to the campus ...

... set up our table full of free Bibles and picture printers ...

... and started meeting people.

Autographing Bibles

When “King James” wasn’t getting his picture taken with someone, he was autographing Bibles. That’s an A & M basketball player standing behind him if you couldn’t tell.

Nice bling

CIA members hanging with students

As the crowds grew larger, CIA members worked quickly to get pictures taken, printed, and handed back to students. The five minutes it took for the pictures to finish printing afforded a great opportunity for us to spend time building relationships with the people around us. Many students asked why were giving away free Bibles and pictures with King James, and we told them all about the CIA and why we exist.

Amanda & Zack work the printers ...

... giving students a free memento courtesy of CIA Corpus.

Being Halloween, other interesting characters showed up.

Beetlejuice

Joker

Two kings

I’ll do another write up on the CMU site when I have some more time later this week. I’d also like to include some stuff there on our other ministry plants.

Anyway, this event in Corpus was a lot of fun and a lot of new contacts were made.

Keep up the good work!

Tagged Arlington Heights Church of Christ, Campus Ministry United, Christians In Action, CIA Corpus, Corpus Christi