I’m in several social media groups full of ministry leaders and pastors who are working with college students and young adults. Across these groups there are at least a couple posts each day asking for resources. There’s questions like “I need resources for our six small group leaders to use with the students in their group…what should I have them use?” or, “Anyone have a good resource for a student struggling with depression?”
Over the last couple years as I’ve read (and often commented on) these posts I’ve noticed something missing in both the questions and responses. It’s something that deeply concerns me.
With pitifully few exceptions, it’s incredibly rare to see someone asking for or responding with something that points them directly to scripture.The questions are almost always asking for books, study guides, podcasts, etc, and the responses are almost always the same.
Here’s a good example. A college ministry leader recently posted:
“I am meeting with a student on campus who has stated interest in growing closer to God. Does anyone have any suggestions of resources to point her to? (note: she is willing to engage me while I’m on campus but not ready to fully engage in the ministry)”
There were four responses that pointed to basic systematic-style theology books and one response that suggested reading through one of the Gospels. Based on my observations, having even one response pointing directly to God’s word is unusual.
I was curious just how unusual, so I took an hour or so to search back through the last couple months of posts in these groups. I found 12 resource request posts that could have easily had responses directly pointing to Scripture. Those 12 posts have a total of 57 responses, only 3 which pointed people directly to the Bible.
Based on those numbers, only 6% of the time do we point ministry leaders directly to God’s word. 94% of the time we’re pointing people to secondary sources.
Why is this a problem?
Maybe you’re reading this and thinking, so what? How is a theology book any less valuable than reading the Bible? How is pointing the student leader toward a video-teaching-based Bible study any less valuable than just reading the Bible?
If you attended college, odds are you had to write a few papers. I wrote a lot as an English major. When writing a college-level paper you’re generally required to cite at least a couple primary sources to support whatever point you’re making in your writing. A primary source is first-hand knowledge. If I’m writing a paper on Shakespeare’s A Midnight Summer’s Dream, I need to quote extensively from that piece of literature since it’s my primary source. My professor won’t be satisfied if I’ve got 23 quotes from literary critics talking about A Midnight Summer’s Dream. I need to personally engage directly with the text and draw conclusions of my own.
If that’s true in a college class about literature, how much more ought it be true with God’s inspired Word? Yet I find leader after leader unintentionally training their people to go to secondary sources by the way they structure their ministry.
Far too many young people are growing up with a second-hand faith and little direct, personal engagement with God’s word. Oh, they’ve heard plenty of sermons. They’ve read Chan’s Crazy Love. You’ve walked your student leaders through The Fuel and the Flame, Grudem’s Christian Beliefs, and The Master Plan of Evangelism. That’s great, but it’s not good enough.
In our post-truth culture we need our people to be grounded in the primary source of truth, which is the Scripture. There’s massive value in numerous books and Bible studies and study bibles. But if we’re not leading those we lead towards directly engaging with God’s Word in a regular, deep, and meaningful way, we’re failing.
If someone can leave your college ministry after 3 years of participating in small groups and large gatherings, without a significantly increased experience of personally engaging God’s word, we’ve failed.
If a young adult can be a part of your church for five years and never be personally invited to read through the entirety of the Bible, that’s a problem.
If someone can be on your leadership team without having the habit of consistent reading of Scripture, that’s asking for trouble.
Three solutions
So what’s the solution? The Bible – especially in its entirety – isn’t a particularly easy book to engage. It was written in a vastly different time period and in a vastly different culture. There’s not a one-size-fits-all strategy for this, but here are three things that will help you as you lead people towards being in God’s word:
Prioritize reading over study
The Bible is a narrative, not a textbook. Yet the primary way I see most ministries engaging the Bible is as a text book to be analyzed for important information to guide the spiritual life. If we’re coming to God’s word as another textbook is it any wonder that those we lead (particularly college students) don’t find it particularly enlivening?
What if we shifted towards reading the Bible like the narrative it is? Rather than encouraging people to read a chapter a day or to spend hours studying a few verses (neither of which are bad!) why not instead help them develop the habit of seeing the big picture of Scripture by reading an entire Epistle in one sitting or by reading the entire Bible from cover to cover, engaging with larger segments at a time.
Doing this will help those we lead get a better sense of the kind of story God is telling and thereby give us lenses through which to interpret the story of our lives.
Have 2-3 frameworks for study on hand
Reading larger chunks of God’s word more like the story it is isn’t the only way we should come to the Bible. Bible study is both valuable and crucial. However, the typical Bible study that I’ve experienced and seen others use are studies that are highly facilitated and filtered, such as the video studies taught by Christian-famous pastors found on RightNow Media or the numerous guides from various Christian publishers. These have their place, but they are, once again, a filtered way of engaging God’s word through the study that someone else (usually a trained theologian) has done.
Along with those facilitated studies we ought to also have 2-3 frameworks on hand that are simple enough for any college student or young adult (even a brand new Christian!) to lead and/or use in their own personal time in God’s word. The Discovery Bible Study and Intervarsity’s OIA frameworks are examples that do this well.
Rather than passing out another book study to our small group leaders, let’s instead train them on one of these simple models, provide them with a few suggested texts or books of the Bible to begin with, and turn them loose to follow the Spirit’s leading in conversations with their groups around the Word of God.
Use biblical engagement as an evaluative tool for identifying leaders
Often we appoint student leaders based on their natural charisma and external//apparent spirituality with little actual insight into the state of their spiritual lives. Perhaps the single most powerful thing you could do in your ministry is to take several months and read a large portion, or even all of, the Bible with those you sense might be potential leaders.
As you do so, observe how their heart responds as you move through God’s Word. Do they pick up on key things in the story? Does the Holy Spirit apply the Truth in a way that makes it easy for them to learn? By the end of the time you’ll have a sense of how they’re resonating with God’s word (or how they’re not). If they’re not, it’s probably better for them to not have a leadership role if the truth of God’s word is going to be central to your ministry.
The impact of this shift
If we can get our people in direct contact with the “primary source” of Scripture there will be a massive impact. As God himself has said, God’s word never fails to accomplish what he has purposed for it to do. Man’s words can and often do fail. God’s don’t. There are at least three things that I can say with confidence will happen as we lead our people to a direct encounter with God in the Bible:
- They will learn to be disciples of Jesus rather than disciples of our ministry model or leadership
- They will have a solid foundation of truth in our ever-shifting world
- They will be prepared for a lifetime of spiritual growth.
And isn’t that exactly what we want?
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