A General Approach for Campus Ministry

Our primary strategy is to work toward the building of a group or community of people who share these ideals. We believe the most fertile atmosphere for people to come to faith and maturity in Christ is warm exposure to a group of people fervently committed to the God of the Bible, to one another, and to the task of evangelizing the campus. As a worshiping, loving, discipling, witnessing community, they demonstrate the kingdom of God and most effectively enculturate others in it.

Worship and the Campus

It is expected that the group will structure a significant part of the main weekly meeting for interaction with God in worship, including such elements as music, public reading of Scripture passages, prayer and time set aside for spontaneous expressions of prayer or worship from the body.

Instruction must be given regarding the nature of God, biblical principles and models of worship, and significance and role of the gifts of the Spirit in worship.

Both orchestrated and spontaneous worship, with the oversight of the leaders, should occur. Worship will be experimental and innovative as each group finds its comfortable norm. Leaders will seek to expose the group to known and proven leaders who are finding meaningful worship in keeping with biblical norms.

Fellowship and the Campus

A warm, open lifestyle is essential since one aspect of Christian ministry is the building of close, godly relationships throughout the fellowship. This fostering of relationships begins with the leaders who set the example.

Instruction on the biblical principles of relationships and lifestyle is implemented by introducing fellowship into the following structures: the main weekly meeting, where a portion of the time can be well-employed in helping those attending to share together; small groups, which emphasize both Bible study and caring relationships; extended retreats or conferences sponsored or approved by the district or sponsoring churches; local Assemblies of God churches; serving or task groups; social and recreational activities; prayer meetings; table fellowship; and area or apartment fellowship, where members live in proximity to one another, taking care to abstain from all appearance of evil.

Discipleship and the Campus

Under the direction of the Chi Alpha leadership, locate individuals and form a small group to train. Composed of 4 to 10 members, discipleship groups will meet in addition to the main gathering of the Chi Alpha group.

Time: The discipleship group will meet approximately two hours per week, with individual time in addition. The group life would be expected to be one year.

Curriculum: Bible study methods; prayer; worship; stewardship of time, money and gifts; nature of commitment, motivation and vision; witnessing; missions; leadership; relationship with other Christians; and relationship to the authority structure of the group and the church.

Teaching style: The style should exemplify the message as leaders model their principles (“Jesus began to do and teach,” Acts 1:1). The amount of leadership time decreases as the students mature so that by the end of the term the students are researching and teaching the various concepts. Assignment and review of work must be built into the class.

Bibliography: Along with class notes, bibliographies should be developed. Teaching how to find additional material is vital for growth.

Students who have gone through this course successfully are helped to find other individuals to disciple so they can be facilitators of a group the next year, sharing what they have learned.

Mission and the Campus

Students will have a range of opportunities to live the mission of Christ through creative evangelistic approaches on campus. The campus is a concentrated environment where thousands of students every day rub shoulders, form relationships, and exchange ideas. Instruction must be given as to the implementation of a vision or burden to reach the campus. Implicit in this is mastering the content of the gospel, with some instruction on both private and public speaking (1 Thessalonians 2:1-12).

As a community, we live missionally through:

• Meeting together to pray, worship and teach. Living our faith together has a tremendous witness quality, even when nothing particularly evangelistic is programmed
• Media (digital avenues, literature, movies, book tables, newspapers) 
• Cooperative proclamation events and local churches and other groups of the Body of Christ on campus (concerts, speakers, drama)
• Service, justice, and other benevolent activities
• Cell groups with an emphasis on evangelism and multiplying (i.e., Fusion)
• Valuing the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, expecting miracles and the gifts of the Spirit to flow in every situation, and hearing and obeying God’s leading in our evangelistic opportunities

As individuals within the community, we live missionally by:

• Developing a personal lifestyle of friendship evangelism
• Equipping students for effective one-on-one evangelism in strategic situations
• Leading evangelistic Bible studies 
• Developing a solid Christian worldview and witnessing to that in the classroom
• Living out a practical Christian life as an alternative to typical cultural value systems
• Conducting two-by-two evangelism 
• Distributing evangelistic and Christian literature
• Service and justice ministry

With a view of fulfilling the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19, Mark 16:15), we promote living missionally through:

• Formation of ministry to international students
• Formation of a missions committee
• Participation in mission conventions and conferences 
• Missions education classes and messages
• Participation in summer missions programs
• Establishment of missions prayer meetings
• Financial support of missions work 
• Giving a year of missions service and praying about a lifetime
• Training and equipping students to be released into the marketplace as representatives of Christ

Prayer and the Campus

As a community committed to prayer, we must express our intimacy to our loving Lord from a posture of faith and humility. In doing so we will experience continual, vital communication with our gracious God, which will allow our hearts and lives to be examined by Him. We must engage in persistent intercession for our needs and the needs of our campus community. We must fight the necessary battles of spiritual warfare, and minister to others the grace of God through prayer. With the authority the Lord provides us, we must pray in the Spirit at all times with all our requests.

Fostering prayer in a university community happens on two levels: through the individual, personal prayer life of students and through corporate prayer meetings.

To assist the individual student to grow in prayer, a campus minister should first be an effective example of a consistent prayer life. This could occur as the campus minister schedules time to pray with a student, thus modeling personal worship and intercession before him.

Corporate prayer gatherings can be fostered in a wide variety of expressions. They can occur in dormitory complexes, in academic buildings among students with the same major of study, and within discipleship small groups. Establish a weekly prayer meeting open to all, for example, in the student union at an early morning or noontime hour. Schedule special times for prayer after your main weekly meeting, or an occasional all-night prayer meeting. Build prayer as a ministry just as you would for witness, discipleship or worship.