For a long time, I have believed that by reaching the campus we can ultimately reach the entire world.
I’m not sure when got that idea, but when I heard a passionate presentation from The Traveling Team, as a recent college grad, that conviction certainly intensified.
In the collegiate ministries that I lead, we want to reach the nations here (on the university campus), and also mobilize laborers to go there (to other nations). The commission that Jesus gave in Matthew 28 was to “go make disciples of all nations…” This mean’s thinking much bigger than reaching a few students from our own cultural bubble.
As a great example of a success in this area, this summer we sent three young men from our ministry on a two-month mission trip to Japan, to reach out to high school and college students there.
During their time in Japan, they are already making a significant impact! Austin, one of the members of our team, said this:
God is giving us amazing opportunities every day to meet new students on campus and build relationships with them through which we show Christ’s love and compassion. God is providing countless new open doors on local campuses that allow us to bond with students through teaching English. We are soaking Japan in prayer and believing that revival is coming soon.
At one of the outreaches that these students helped with, there were over 200 Japanese young people!
These American foreigners (gaijin) are attracting the interest of Japanese youth and bypassing the usual social obstacles of Japanese culture. One Japanese pastor commented that it was the largest ministry-oriented gathering of young people that he had ever seen there, outside of a conference setting. Praise God!
But it didn’t start there. It started back on their campus in the U.S. Long before they were in Japan they were growing in vision for the world, praying for people of other ethnic backgrounds to come to know Jesus and reaching out to international students at home.
This story illustrates how you really can reach the world through college campus ministry.
With that said, I believe that there were a few key things that can be done by a campus ministry leader to help facilitate this kind of impact in their ministry.
1. Believe that you can reach the world on your campus.
If you’ve been caught up in small thinking, stop it. We all do it sometimes, of course. But this is too big an opportunity to miss! Some reports say that there are well over one million international students on college and university campuses in the U.S. The world truly is at our doorstep. Nations that are still very resistant to any kind of Christian outreach in their homelands send their best and brightest students to our college campuses to be educated. We have an opportunity to share the love of Christ with these young men and women in a way that is far more accessible and unencumbered than it would be in their homelands.
2. Pray for the unreached peoples of the world.
Ask God to use you and your campus ministry to have a cross-cultural impact. An excellent resource to help you pray for the world, and learn more about it while doing so, is Operation World by Jason Mandryk. I’ve used this myself and love it! But do be careful with it. There is such a wealth of fascinating information in this “prayer guide” that on needs to be careful not to get side-tracked from actually praying when using it. :-)
3. Sow seeds of vision for the world into the students you lead.
As you are believing for the world to know Jesus, and praying for the unreached, begin to talk about this with the students you lead and mentor. Consider buying a few key students a copy of Operation World and invite them to join with you in praying for the nations each day.
4. Encourage the students you lead to engage international students on your campus.
Encourage students to break out of their comfort zone and to spend time with people from other cultures. Many colleges have opportunities to mingle with international students through cultural celebrations. You may be surprised by how much fun they have when they start meeting people from all over the world.
5. Mobilize students into international missions opportunities.
As students get a taste of cross-cultural ministry on their own campus, challenge them to take the next step and go to another nation. If they have been mostly building relationships with students from a particular nation, learning the language and culture of that nation, it may even be possible for them to go to that country. (This was the case with the men we sent to Japan.)
What next step could you take to engage your college ministry in cross-cultural evangelism? Do you have any other ideas about how to do this well?