What’s Wrong with Campus Ministries?

For several generations evangelical Christians have attempted to penetrate the secular university with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And with few exceptions the success of their efforts is diminishing.

Many of us remember with nostalgia the deep spiritual foundations of the earliest colleges. We proudly recall the nineteenth century’s determination to found hundreds of church-related colleges as the frontier moved west. We still are thrilled by the story of the unprecedented thrust for world evangelism made through the Student Volunteer Movement. Yet today, faced with the greatest student opportunity we have ever known, we discover that the combined efforts of conservatives and liberals, denominational and non-denominational groups, are losing effectiveness in the university world of students, teachers, and the increasingly important sectors of administration and research.

I believe that the underlying reason for this is the failure of campus religious groups to take either the whole university world or the whole of Christianity seriously. The size of modern universities, their complex structure, their involvement in industry and government, the great varieties of interest and academic levels—all this seems to be ignored in the programs and plans of the religious organizations. And we also seem incapable of presenting the Christian faith as a whole. Campus Crusade concentrates chiefly on evangelism, Wesley Foundations on social issues, Inter-Varsity on Christian maturity, and so on. No wonder the image of campus religion is one of confused irrelevance.

Not since the period around 1910 has an entire institution been the object of Christian witness. That was the heyday of the intercollegiate YMCA, and various denominational foundations were established then also. Unfortunately, the continuing result was not what was expected. Attention was turned away from the university as a whole to the life of the individual student organizations. The result was fragmentation of the witness of the Church and its outlook. The vision of the whole university has never been recovered.

As a result of this fragmentation, several major problems arose that are very evident today. First, denominational foundations normally speak only to students within their own orbit, and their constituency in proportion to the entire student body grows smaller each year. Each group looks after its own health. Now even student chaplains question the validity of this lesser objective. When these groups were founded, their intention was to supplement the great work being done by the student YMCA. Their turn to isolation robbed the Y of the cooperation it needed.

Fragmentation of the Christian witness has prompted the rise of various conceptions and methods of student work. The training of professional student workers and the development of programs on a national scale has institutionalized these ideas and techniques. If greater efficiency through increased specialization had resulted, the Christian witness would have moved forward. In actual practice, however, institutionalization has meant that each group tends to exclude students who do not share its major concerns. For example, unless a student is vitally interested in liturgy, he is a fish out of water in many Canterbury Clubs. If he is concerned with personal spiritual problems, he may find that his own denominational group’s absorption in social problems seems completely non-religious. Unless he enjoys inductive Bible study, he will probably find Inter-Varsity groups uninteresting. If he is not enthusiastic about personal work, he will avoid Campus Crusade.

A second problem concerns the Christian professional groups, for these suffer indirectly from the fragmentation of witness. Such groups as the Faculty Christian Fellowship, the American Scientific Affiliation, and the Evangelical Theological Society face issues in their various fields that are obviously related to the entire university world and to the entire Christian faith. They are not merely Inter-Varsity issues, or Wesley issues, or Westminster issues. Unfortunately, professional societies find it hard to channel their interest in students through any one organization, and their potential for contribution to student work is unrealized.

The same can be said about the potential of other parts of the Christian community for undergirding the witness. In general the churches are ignored, except as a source of financial support. Even within a denomination there is often friction between the campus work and nearby churches. I believe that most of us who are in student work are guilty of considerable pride in downgrading the work of the churches. And pastors know it. Objective consideration would show that the churches are in key positions for penetration of the university world.

We are guilty of the same attitude toward the Christian colleges. In evangelical circles, only Campus Crusade’s recruitment program has taken these colleges seriously, even though over half of the theologically conservative faculty members in secular universities come from Christian colleges.

Today it is agreed that on any campus all the organized student work is not adequate to do the job of communicating the Gospel to the university, and that it is becoming less and less adequate each year as the campus grows. We shall never know whether the single intercollegiate YMCA could have been the answer. But we can be sure that the indefinite multiplication of present forces holds dim promise of success.

A third difficulty on campus, and a blight on student initiative, is an unmistakable protectionism on the part of workers and faculty members. Each student worker is responsible for the “success” of the groups in his care, often in a context of competition with his colleagues. Naturally he must try to demonstrate or protect his own position. There is a certain efficiency in a closely directed group; but where spiritual maturity is at stake, such a commitment can be stunting. In the present student unrest, for student workers to assume a caretaker role is self-defeating. A comprehensive witness will not get far until the average Christian student (as well as faculty member and pastor) is equipped and trusted to do the job required of him.

A fourth problem is the tendency of younger movements to look upon the university as the enemy, with the faculty and administration the entrenched opposition. It seems to take several student generations before a student movement realizes that the university provides a remarkable framework for Christian witness and action, if one is prepared to play according to the rules.

Finally, high-school youth movements such as Young Life, Youth for Christ, Hi-BA, and church youth fellowships generally fail to feed graduating members into their counterparts in the universities. Many students go from these groups to the university without any serious intention of identifying themselves with any witness there. I suspect that one reason is the superior, critical attitude of many university workers toward their high-school and church colleagues.

Having started on the road of fragmentation, we can expect it to continue as long as great areas of the university are unreached by existing groups. The League of Evangelical Students came to fill a gap in 1924, Inter-Varsity in 1939, Campus Crusade in 1952, the Church of God (Missouri) in 1959, and the Conservative Baptists in 1963. We can expect the formation of other groups that will find ample scope for their work.

If the university world is to be reached with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we must find a new method.

1. The new approach must take into account the complexity and the character of the new universities. Schools that fifteen years ago had 1,500 students now have 25,000 and more. Student passiveness has given way to a demand for responsibility.

2. The new approach must include an awareness that each student group has a distinctive contribution to make and that each must be helped to become more effective in sharing its particular strength. For instance, Inter-Varsity can help Campus Crusade with its Bible-study program, and Campus Crusade in turn has a contribution to make to Inter-Varsity.

3. Methods developed by various campus and non-campus groups must be applied to the problem of penetration. The new approach must take advantage of all available resources. Finance is only a small part. Total mobilization must involve pastors, church leaders, researchers, laymen, athletes, academic groups, doctors, and many others.

The first step in arriving at a new approach would involve work at the national level. Leaders of evangelical student movements and others who work with students must share with one another their spiritual burden for the work of God in the university. This group should include the leaders of Christian colleges, seminaries, denominational youth programs, and the Christian professional societies. If in God’s goodness there came out of such a gathering a mutual commitment to the task of university evangelism, leaders could make available the resources of their various organizations. They could work out ways to share facilities and training programs, exchange personnel, coordinate conferences, develop literature programs, combine efforts in such areas as evangelism, missionary emphasis, work projects, and overseas ministries. This group could set up a larger planning-advisory board that would include representatives of missionary boards, seminaries, Christian magazines and publishing houses, camps and conferences, home-mission projects, and so on.

The second step would be to establish a coordinating body for each major university. This group should consist of student representatives of campus groups, faculty members, pastors, laymen, graduates, student workers, and all other evangelicals able to help. For fifteen years an unofficial body like this has existed in Sydney, Australia, and also in Melbourne. No wonder membership in one student group there now tops seven hundred.

The next decade holds great possibilities for evangelical advance, and the alternative to this advance is frightening. In view of the world-wide influence of American universities, for us to shun our responsibility by merely continuing what we are now doing would be tragic. Perhaps God is trying to teach us the complexity of his university world and the fullness of his Gospel. Certainly he wants us to learn how to complement, rather than compete with, one another.

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